Old Missoula

Snipehunter Adds Mouthorgan To Candle

Forestry School Men Have a Great Hunt in Big Blackfoot Valley Wilds

John (Oliver D.) Layton, president, organizer and membership of the Society for the Inculcation of Religious Aspiration Upon Snipes, returned yesterday from the Blackfoot, where he conducted a thorough survey of the conditions of religion among the snipes of that great country. The survey so impressed the observer that he has organized a society for the improvement of the situation. The Blackfoot snipes, he declares, are unresponsive to any save materialistic appeals.

In President Layton’s opinion, missionaries should be sent to the benighted wilds. He himself feels unfitted for such service, but will follow his pioneers and reap the harvest they are to sow.

For Layton is a snipe-hunter. Where their morality is higher snipes are powerless against his wiles. But the Blackfoot snipes, being below standard, foiled the trapper.

Why, they hid in the Blackfoot woods and laughed, literally jeered, while Layton sat in the darkness for more than an hour and with skill which those who know him say is truly inimitable played “Nearer My God to Thee,” on his harmonica, tune and instrument to which more enlightened snipes have been surprisingly susceptible.

Snipes of Montana must be educated into more lively appreciation of such music, Layton thinks. The men of Europe have been led into battle by similar strains; why, then, should not snipes follow a sweet harmonica to destruction in a sack? It is argued.

That this end may be achieved, Layton will open the membership rolls of his society today.

The other participants in the University of Montana foresters’ field trip returned with Layton yesterday noon. The circumstances which aroused Layton to organizing zeal provoked rude mirth in them. They were still howling with glee when they reached the campus.

Layton, they say, went wild with enthusiasm when one of the party suggested that last Saturday night be spent in the woods at hunting snipes. Daniel Boone was a busher beside him, Layton proclaimed. He wanted to bet that he could bag more snipes in an hour than the others of the party could trap in a week. To all objections he offered similar arguments until the others were induced to let him hold the sack, a duty of greatest importance, Layton was warned.

Layton laughed at the warning and grabbed the sack.

Five miles from camp in a lonesome gully the hunters established sack and sacker. A candle was lit and placed in the bagger’s hand as a lure to the foolish snipe. To this attraction, music, charmer of savage beasts, was added, when Layton bragged that he could make a mouth-harp talk.

The game was simple, the beaters explained. Frightened from their lairs by the noise of the prowlers, the snipe would rush into the open air. The light of the candle and the soulful strains of the harmonica would attract them from the dark as ball games lure students from afternoon laboratories. Intoxicated by glare and harmony, the snipes would reel helplessly into the bag, where taps from a club would make provender of them.

Layton gulped in this valuable information, propped up the sack, put the candle in front of it and began “Nearer My God to Thee” on his harmonica.

Thus his companions left him as they started out to do the beating. And beating is what they did, too – straight for camp.

At midnight Layton had not come home. The campers became alarmed and started out in search of him. Just outside the camp they met him, wallowing helplessly beside the river bank, sack and club and mouth-harp gone and not a snipe in sight.

Religious instruction for the snipes would remedy matters, Layton says, though disinterested hearers of his tale have vainly urged that missionary work among animals nearer home would be more effective.

The above story appeared in The Daily Missoulian on May 6, 1915.

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