People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1896 — A PARTRIDGE KING. [ARTICLE]

A PARTRIDGE KING.

A Minnesota Man Whose Methods May Make the Birds Become Extinct. Special Argent Gray of the general land department, who has returned from a trip to the Ganadian boundary, reports running across an eccentrio character 20 miles north of Tower, Minn., who is known as the partridge king. His name is Stephen Gheen, and he is a trader. Gheen as a side issue contracts to fnrnish partridges in enormous numbers. He recently completed a contraot of furnishing 5,000 birds, has practically filled another similar one, and is now at work on another for 8,000 birds which was taken by a would be rival, but who found that Gheen had organized all the Indians and half breeds in the region. The birds are sold ostensibly to Twin City parties, but it is believed that this is said merely to evade the state law whioh prohibits partridges from being shipped out of the stata It is suspected that Chicago houses are the real purchasers. The Indians employed by Gheen make it a practioe to kill male birds, and as a result it is feared that one or two seasons of the king’s reign will devastate the northern wilds of the favorite feathered game. On the Canadian boundary partridges are not muoh of a luxury. Dressed birds sell there for 5 cents each. —Cleveland Plain Dealer.