FOREST AND STREAM. 



429 



piout— Ombre Brook, Dec. 20.— Shooting, day be- 

 fore yesterday, 18th, two of ub, and one dog, result ■ Sfiquail 

 ■ ■" nidge. G. H. Di 



Watatm&rum, Dee. 21.— K. Guff*, of this place, has killed 

 even out of eleven deer seen by turn this season. Quail shout- 

 ng has been first rate in this county. J. K. E. 



—John A. Waterman, of Deep River, at a shooting match 

 Hill on Thanksgiving Day, won ten chickens in 

 fifteen Ehota and was then ruled out as beiug too euccessf ul. 

 Mr. Wetberell also, at a match in Deep River the same day, 

 won six chickens in seven shots, purposely missing the 

 ;-eventh. Both used Parker breech-loaders. 



Virginia — Highland, Ike, 19. — A party of huntsmen went 

 out to Bull Pasture Mountain last week and captured ! ,cighl 

 leer. 



FmhhdA— Bl. Augustine, Dec. 21.— With the opening of 

 the hotels, the inrush of visitors, and all the liveliness of the 

 winter season, the spurting interests are assuming importance, 

 The St. Sebastian bridge is the favorite perch for fishing (it is 

 not necessarily perch fishing) and boatmen are looking out to 

 a very near rush of business. The old time spots are nW de- 

 serted, and our anglers must now seek, new fields of conquest. 

 Indeed, if we did not have the whole ocean here before us, we 

 should fear the total extinciont of our finny attractions. St. 

 Augustine's hunters are not to be sneezed at. Many of them 

 have been in the woods six days in the week ever since they 

 could shoulder a gun ; and when tlie.y start out for a deer, as 

 a fule that deer may as well capitulate. ,1. O. Iiopcz lulled 75 

 snipe and 5 quail one day last week. The most forlorn look- 

 ing hunter in town is the man with the trade dollar looking 

 for some one to give him one hundred cents for it. 



Whaabn. 



Illinois — Warsaw, Dec. 15. — There is as great a variety of 

 game in this vicinity as is usually found in close proximity to 

 large towns. A fine buck deer, driven by dogs a week or so 

 ago, made its appearance in the Mississippi in front of our city, 

 and landed on a large island just opposite here, where it has 

 been seen several times since. The undergrowth is veiy dense 

 on the island, and affords fine shelter for game. Two wild 

 turkeys were shot there a week ago, at the first snow fall. I 

 went over to look around, and got two shots at turkeys, one of 

 which I brought down but lost in the dense thicket, having no 

 dog to retrieve. I kicked out rabbits every few steps in some 

 localities, and bagged a few quail. There are a great many 

 turkeys across in Missouri, a short distance, so I learn, and 

 large flocks of prairie chickens have been seen about seven 

 miles out on the M. I. andN. R.R. I saw nine wild geese 

 standing on the ice to-day, some 500 yards from the land, but 

 there is too much ice running to reach them in a skiff. I saw 

 a fine bald eagle pass sixty yajds over my office building yes- 

 turday. A good many ducks are seen daily swimming among 

 the cakes of ice, shelldrakes, teal and now and then a flock of 

 mud hens and mallards. There, were a good many quail in 

 some localities not far from the city, previous to the heavy 

 snow we are now blessed with, but the market and pot- 

 hunters are just murdering them by firing at coveys clustered 

 together in holes and under logs : one man boasted of 

 slaughtering fourteen at one shot. A, A. 



Iowa— VoU, -Dec- 17.— Yesterday I went out for a rabbit 

 hunt and wotdd have been quite successful (having killed six 

 rabbits and two quail in less than an hour) when some hunt- 

 ers " with no regard for my feelings," drove a deer right into 

 the little brush patch where I was hunting and chased the 

 rabbits in all directions. After changing cartridges from fine 

 to buck shot I succeeded in bleeding him pretty "badly, which 

 claim I turned over to the parties who had been trailing him 

 as they were friends and had been after him all day. Deer 

 are getting scarce in these parts, while prairie chickens, quail 

 and rabbits are very plentiful. E. B. B. 



Wisconsin— Baraboo, Dec. 17. —The father of all the deer 

 was killed on the south bluff of Devil's Lake, one day last 

 week. This deer has been seen by different parties for the 

 last six or seven years, his hind hoofs had grown out about ten 

 inches and lopped over, which made a queer impression in 

 the snow, and many a hunter that came across his track 

 wondered what it was. He was brought into town and was 

 seen by many a spectator with curiosity. His horns were 

 fourteen pronged. Weighed nearly 300 pounds. 



Brass Shells.— I have given the Sturtevant Indented Brass 

 Shell an honest trial, and find it fills the bill entirely. I 

 loaded the right and left hand barrels with 5 drachms powder 

 1£ oz. shot, used a pink wad (No. !)) over shot ; fired 10 loads 

 out of right hand barrel, and found that wad over shot in the 

 left hand barrel had not budged, You will admit that the 

 loads were large, and therefore a strong test. Give me the 

 Indented all the time. T. C. Steel. 



What is a Good Pattern.— A correspondent writing from 

 Noroton, Ct., says : " In your last issue ' T. S. S.' wants to 

 know how many pellets his Parker will put in a 2-1-inch circle 

 at 45 yards, but he forgot to tell us if his gun is choked or 

 nut. As I have had a good deal of experience with Parkers I 

 think 1 can answer hirn. If his gun is an open bore it should 

 pattern at 24 in. circle at 45 yards, with 1 1 oz. No. 8, 100 to 

 120 ; if medium choke, 150 to 200 ; if full choke, 250 at least. 

 Shooting has been very good here this season ; have bagged 

 since Oct. 1 48 quail, 2 partridges, 2(1 woodcock, besides lots 

 of rabbits and squirrels, but no"ducks. Where are they ? 



Yours truly, Back Aotion. 



Lks Bottks Sauvages.— A correspondent who has bought a 

 pair of French Canadian moccasins, or bottes sauvages, 

 writes -. 



1 got a pair of them made in Quebec last fall, and they sur- 

 pass anything for footgear or canoeing that I ever tried on. 

 They keep out the watef-as well as India rubber boots as long 

 as they are kept oiled, and are both light, easy to wear, 

 and, above all, cheap. If any of my American sporting 

 brethren would like to get a pair of these articles I 

 will get them made for them and send by express at 

 the maker's price. As I do not deal in this kind of goods, or 

 in fact any other kind, they can address me through you. The 

 prices charged by the habitants here are $3 for a pair reach- 

 ing to the knee and 85 for & pair to strap around the waist. ] 

 will see that they are well made and sent in good order. Of 

 course the buyer pays all expenses, such as express, duty, 

 etc., in New York. The only measurement necessary is 

 length of foot and girth of instep, allowing room for two pair 

 of socks. J. W. D. 



What a Htorts.mah OdBHT to Caki-i in His Pocket.— 

 /fdilor Forest and Btream; I received some weeks ago a 

 1 ih.' - 'i p ■ '■■ pi flflly for ducking in cold weather. It 

 is made of the heaviest duck, pants and coal lined with flexi- 

 ble leather, ana, T must Say, a ulOSt complete thing it is for 

 the purpose, But there is something about the coat (in fact 

 there is about all shooting coats) that I do not understand. 

 Perhaps some of the makers of them would explain it through 

 the columns- of your paper. 1 have asked many sportsmen 

 why they had so many pockets in their coats, and what they 

 were all for, and none could tell. There are seven pockets on 

 j the outside of my coat ; t he two side pockets arc used by some 

 to carry shells ; the two breast pockets are a nuisance, as the 

 butt Of the gun catches on the flap when brought to the 

 shoulder, and if you tuck the flap in it catches the pocket 

 when taken down. Now, I claim that a man cannot do good 

 shooting with everything stuffed in either of these pockets, 

 and the less you have in a coat the better you can shoot, and 

 the less flaps there will bo to curl up and make the coat look 

 bad after it has once been wet. JAias. 



Mid Haven, Dec, 18, 187& 



Our correspondent writes from Connecticut, but he is evi- 

 dently no Yankee. Any schoolboy in the Nutmeg State 

 ■ I i ill up those pockets in half an hour, and then, like 

 Alexander, sit down and cry for more pocket-room. "What 

 are the pockets of your shooting coat for?" Why, for the 

 common necessities that would uaturally occur to any one 

 going out for a half-day's shooting : Shells, jack-knife, strap, 

 pocket cartridge loader, twine, piece of chalk, hem-stitched 

 handkerchief, half dozen tenpenuy nails, pocket dictionary, 

 shoemaker's wax, needles, thread, foot-rule, folding scissors, 

 gimlet, lead pencil, screw-driver, court-plaster, pipe, tack- 

 hammer, tobacco, powder flask, bag of shot, re-loader, piece 

 of leather, Dixon measures, crackers and cheese, Bologna 

 sausage, bottle of arnica, re-capper, Spratt's biscuit for the 

 dog, do-funny, microscope,'Halve, compass, screws, some rags, 

 aneroid barometer, pedometer, chronometer, postal cards, pin- 

 cushion, tourist's photographic outfit, field glass, a receipted 

 subscription for the Forest asd Stream, bit of candle, pho- 

 tograph of your girl, auxiliary rifle barrel, some trade dollars, 

 tweezers, microscope, Tennyson's Poems, bottle of flea 

 powder, diary, Eaton's rust preventer, jack-lamp, fruit knife, 

 musquito netting, cigarette paper, drinking cup, tooth-pick, 

 half-dozen buttons, the grocer's bill, gun oil, railroad time- 

 table, pocket comb and brush and looking glass, receipt for 

 rheumatism, postage-stamps, Fobest and Stream compilation 

 of game seasons, apples, beeswax, watch-key, small bottle 

 homeopathic -pills-f or- coughs-colds-sore-throats-and hoarse- 

 ness-nonc-genuinc-wtthout-tradenmrk-sample-frue, license, 

 razor, crimping machine, barrel of glass balls, H & T traps, 

 man to pull 'em, bit of rope, celluloid collar, buckskin gloves, 

 brad-awl, match-safe, pocket phonograph, file, birds if you 

 shoot any, card with name and address for identification 

 when they find your body, unlimited credit, half a dozen- 

 but, pshaw ! when you come to New York give us a call and 

 we'll tell you all about it. 



Leave Otjt the Wjnsinr— Editor Forest and Stream: 1 

 read with sincere pleasure, in your issue of Nov. 38, the re- 

 marks of Ool. Burnside in reference to the desirability of 

 keeping rifle contests free from "the taint of the gaming 

 table and prize Hug proclivities that are entering into and 

 tending to destroy all proper out-door sports." I wish one 

 endowed with equal weight of influence, vigor of language 

 and earnestness of purpose, would enter his protest against a 

 style of sketch writing which is teuding to fasten the "taint; 

 of " the whisky flask and brandy bottle upon the sports of 

 the gun and rod. I am one of those who do not think, and 

 do not want the public to think, that there is any necessary 

 connection between quail shooting and rum-sucking ; or that 

 a whisky soak through the day and a drunk at night are ab- 

 solutely requisite to the enjoyment of a day's fishing. I am 

 not a total abstainer, and not inclined to be hypercritical ; 

 but 1 don't think there is either sufficient interest or sufficient 

 novelty in the fact of a man's taking a drink to warrant its 

 proclamation in a paper devoted to field sports, however ap- 

 propriate it might be in the police news columns of a daily. 

 Neither is there anything so meritorious in a man's getting 

 noisily drunk that it is entitled to a place of especial promi- 

 nence in the description of a hunting or fishing expedition. 

 Yet, it seems as if many writers thought they would not ap- 

 pear to have done up their expeditions in true sportsmanlike 

 style if they did not notify their readers how much rum they 

 took along and how often they drank of it. One would 

 t h i nk from some of these writings that there was an insep- 

 arable connection between rum and field sports, and I fear 

 the general public will arrive at that conclusion too, if such 

 literature has its legitimate effect. 



I respectfully submit to the writers of sporting sketches 

 that such details would better be omitted, both because it is 

 entirely uninteresting to the readsr to know how often the 

 narrator drank or how drunk ho got, and because such items 

 tend to degrade in popular estimation a class of sports which 

 need rather to have all the support of public opinion that can 

 be brought to bear in their favor, inasmuch as they have al- 

 ways had upon them some stigma of reproach in the minds 

 of those who have never tasted their pleasures and experi- 

 enced their benefits. 



My attention is more particularly drawn to this matter by 

 the perusal of your last two numbers — Nov. 38 and Dec. 5— It 

 isn't just the thing to put into articles intended to be read by 

 gentlemen in a paper by which the true spirit of sports- 

 manship is inculcated. How far away such doings are from 

 that spirit will be best shown by a definition of " rfue sports- 

 man-hip,'' given by one whose little book called "Manual for 

 Young Sportsmen" is fragrant with its very essence. He 

 pays: " True sportsmanship consists in the vigor, manhood 

 and science displayed — in the difficulties to be overcome, in 

 the pleasurable anxiety for success, and the uncertainty of it, 

 and lastly, in the true spirit, the style, the dash, the hand- 

 some way of doing what is to be done, and, above all, in the 

 unalterable love of fair play, that first thought of the genu- 

 ine spurbman. And that it never may be degraded' into 

 aught else is the ardent wish, as it shall ever be the teaching, 

 of Frank Forrester." A men! H. P. T.' 



Boston, December '.), 1878. 



Maryland Wild Cats.— Editor Forent and Stream : On 

 Monday, December 9th, I was pheasant, shooting along the 

 foothills of the Sugar Loaf Mountains, in Frederick County, 

 Md. , accompanied by my three pointer dogs, Dick, Duke and 

 Nell. In this locality there arc quite B number of springheads 

 along the mountain side, and these spring branches and hol- 

 lows, extending out from the mountain, are principally the 

 favorite resort and haunts of the pheasant. These mountain 

 gorges are mostly grown up with forest trees anc, bushes of 

 different species, and many of them are overrun with grape 

 vine and large masses of cat, or green briers, a thorny, climb- 

 ing shrub, and the ground is covered with small vines, briers, 

 rank weeds and long grass. I was beating down one of these 

 ravines with my three dogs, in the hope of springing a pheas- 

 ant, and had gotten almost to the end of the cover without 

 finding anything, when all at once I knew there hud been 

 something about. I noticed my pointer Dick looked strange. 

 He trailed around on the ground, snuffed the air, and sud- 

 denly threw up his head, dropped his tail, and took off at the 

 top of his speed, followed by Nellie, to a piece of wood and 

 thick cover about fifty yards away. I knocked both barrels 

 of my gun, and stood perfectly quiet, supposing the dogs had 

 winded a red or gray fox, and thought they would bounce 

 him from out of the brakes, and I could get a shot at him. 

 Away the dogs went, as fast as they could run, and on reach- 

 ing the wood they gave tongue by two or three sharp, quick 

 yelps, and I knew they had started their game. I still stood 

 perfectly quiet, expecting every moment to get a shot, bu 

 was disappointed, and to my surprise I heard bark falling 

 from off the side of a tree. " I advanced quickly up within 

 range of the spot, and saw that my dogs had treed a large 

 black house cat, and on looking around among the trees, to my 

 utter surprise and astonishment 1 found they had six full 

 grown house cats up trees in a space of ground not more than 

 twenty feet square, and all on separate trees ; some of them 

 were half way up hugging the side of the trunk, others were 

 sitting in the forks quietly looking down and watching the 

 dogs. Now, to my knowledge, there was not a house within 

 a mile of the spot were these six cats were treed. What 

 were they doing there ? It is my opinion that these cats be- 

 longed to the woods, were born there, and subsisted upon 

 young rabbits and birds and the wild game that was found in 

 that locality. I did not disturb them, I called my dogs away 

 and left them on the trees. Frank Souley. " 

 » .»■ — 



wild rice culture-its success. 



WE are pleased to read in the Turf, Field and Farm the 

 experience of one of its Indiana correspondents who 

 has been experimenting in wild rice culture. He says that he 

 has been altogether successful and his statements seem to 

 prove it. We think them of such importance that we are 

 glad to reproduce them in our columns, although we might 

 be accused of some slight feeling of jealousy because having 

 first gotten his cue from Forest and Stream as he admits" 

 he did not bring his results to us direct. We quote : 



Three years ago my attentiou was called to an article in 

 Forest and Stream advising Eastern sportsmen to procure 

 wild rice seed from the West, and sow it in their barrcu lakes 

 and ponds ; the editor staling as his belief that the intro- 

 duction of this favorite food of surface-fecdina; water-fowl 

 would tend to attract them to waters containing it, even 

 though not previously frequented by them. This article at- 

 tracted wide-spread notice, and no doubt many gentlemen 

 profited by it • but none of them, to my knowledge, have ovor 

 given the sporting public any account of their experience in 

 the matter. As mine has been qjiite satisfactory, 1 hope an 

 account of it may interest and benefit others. I live in a 

 region over which pass iu their yearly migration vast num. 

 bers of water-fowl. On my place I have a shallow pond 

 covering several acres, somewhat overgrown with reeds and 

 water-grass, but prior to its introduction by myself containing 

 no food for ducks beyond, perhaps, a few shell-fish etc. I 

 am quite certain of this, because of the fuel that few 

 ever visited it, and those only to rest, immediately upon 

 seeing the article alluded to I wrote Mr. Richard Valentine 

 of Jauesville, Wis., ordering a barrel of the seed (Fobest and 

 Stream recommended that gentlemen). This was in the 

 fall, and I very soon received my wild rice. Mr. Valentine 

 directed me to soak it until it sank and then sow it that fall 

 on ground always covered with water from two inches to five 

 feet deep. I followed his directions irnpltoity, covering 

 about an acre of my pond with the seed. The following 

 spring I watched anxiously for its appearance, and was 

 greatly pleased at its appearance above the water, coming up 

 quite thickly all over the surface covered by the seed. My 

 neighbors, who had been inclined to laugh at my "new 

 crop," as they termed it, became as much interested as my- 

 self; and together we watched its progress through the sum- 

 mer and the growth of its long, slender seed heads as harvest 

 approached. September came and I knew that the early teal 

 ducks would soon put in an appearance. Would they n i 

 of the feast I had so carefully prepared for them? In 

 how anxiously I waited for a practical answer to the qiu 

 The first birds to visit me was a large flock of blackbirds 

 They arrived one afternoon and played havoc while they 

 stayed, but myself and neighbors opened such vigorous war- 

 fare that they found the place too warm and left in a body, 

 Their coming, however, greately encouraged me, for they 

 had never done so before, and Mr. Valentine warned me to 

 lookout for them. Thereafter I was out early every morn- 

 ing in my boat paddling around my pond ou the lookout for 

 ducks. For nearly a week nothing rewarded rny search, but on 

 the seventh morning as I was stepping into my boat I heard a 

 suspicious quacking up the pond, and paddling slowly down 

 the open water my eyes were gladdened by the Bight of a flock 

 of teal and woodducks feeding on the floating rice which 

 the wind had shaken from the stems. The ducks were in the 

 edge of a narrow stretch of open water running through the 

 rice, and from a safe distance, unseen by them, 1 watched 

 their operations with great pleasure. 



After half an hour I paddled toward them, being careful to 

 make no great noise (I had no gun), and, when withfn i 

 rods, they took flight, but only to circle around and liaht in 

 another part of the pond, evidently thoroughly satisfied with 

 the situation. Toward night they flew away, but next day re- 

 turned with a considerable addition to their numbers, ana ^at 

 evening I killed seven flying about the pond. My "new 

 crop" was a success, and [ was as pleased as a boy with hia 

 first pail of boots. During that fall I had many roast ducks 

 on my table, and my success stimulated my neighbors to or- 

 der some seed for their own ponds. I also bought another 

 barrel and sowed most of it in my unoccupied water. But J 

 had an idea that fall sowiug was not necessary ; and, to try it, 



