THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL 



Entered According to Act of Congress, In tne year ibsi, by the Forest and Stream Publishing company, In the Office of tie Librarian of congress, at Washington. 



xerm f ,,.|«Tear. iisl o 4 c l8 .acopy.| NEW Y ORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



EdITOBIAL : — 



The International Match of 1882 143 



The Spobtbman Toubist : — 

 In the Forests of Yucatan ; One Day's Hunt in British Co- 

 lumbia ; Down with the Flood . 444 



NATUBAI, HlSTOBV :— 



Something About Wolves ; The Divining Bod ; The Snow 

 Goose and Blue Goose 447 



Game Bag and Gdn : — 



The Care of Live Quail ; Under the Shadow of White Top ; 

 State Pigeon Tournaments : Winter Quail Grounds ; 

 Wild Celery : Loading for Game j Four Quail at One 

 Wing-Shot 448 



Sea and Riveb Fishing :— 



Game Fishes ; Fresh Water vs. Salt Water Fishes ; Silk 

 Worm Gut ; Piko Fishing Through the Ice 450 



FlSHOtTLTUBE :— 



Maine Lobster Culture ; Trou} and Salmon in North Caro- 

 lina ; Stickleback Breeding 452 



The Kennel :— 



Training vs. Breaking ; German Hunting Dogs Alexan- 

 dra Palace Show ; Bex 453 



BlELE AND TSAP SHOOTING :— 



The International Match 456 



Yachting and Canoeing : — 

 New Club ; Toronto ¥. 0. ; Cutters: Measurement ; Bice 

 Lakers 457 



Answebsto Coebespondents 450 



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FOREST AND STREAM. 



Thursday, January 5. 



Florida. Toubists. — Many sportsmen are visiting Florida 

 this winter. The game along the beaten paths of travel has 

 been so depleted that there is very little sport now to he had. 

 But the recently constructed railroad lines and new routes to 

 the southern and western parts of the State have opened up 

 new game countries, where abundant reward awaits the 

 tourist. Our issue of December 3 contained a description 

 of the Kissimmee Biver country, which is now among the 

 best game districts of the State. 



The Remabkabt.e Accounts which we have published of 

 duck-shooting performances, gone through with by gunners on 

 the Gunpowder Creek Bridge near Baltimore, should, it 

 seems to us, have a teudeDcy to make self respecting sports- 

 men forswear t he locality. If a man cannot get the birds 

 which he kills without fighting for them, he had better give 

 up using the gun where such annoying squabbles are likely 

 to take place. 



The Walking Match Mania has run its course. There 

 are spasmodic rag-tag-and-bob-tail attempts to revive the 

 neat scheme of wheedling the public money into "the 

 management's" pocket. One such sorry attempt was made 

 in this city last week, with the usual dismal ending finan- 

 cial ly. 



THE INTERNATIONAL MATCH OF 

 1882. 



WITH the receipt of the courteous note from the Sub- 

 Committee of the Council of the National Rifle As- 

 sociation of Great Britain, given in our columns of this date, 

 everything seems to promise well for a good conteBt at Wim- 

 bledon during the coming summer. Where there is a will 

 there is a way, and certainly there is desire enough on both 

 sides to have a match. The British rifleman is just now 

 under a cloud. He had for years been vaunting his su- 

 periority with the rifle, and then somehow seemed to stumble 

 and make a bad break of it when he met the American 

 marksman on his own range, and had no better fortune when 

 the Yankee crossed the sea to meet him. He had, extending 

 over a period of four years, a series of matches in which the 

 picked shots of the British Empire — first pitted against us in 

 teams made up from the separate nationalities, and later in a 

 magnificent team sent out by the National Rifle Association 

 itself — were all defeated after full, fair trials before the butts ; 

 but all these contests were! at long-range. They were fought 

 with special rifles by a set of civilian shooters, and were, in 

 a certain degree, artificial tests. They simply showed how 

 proficient men could become in a certain art, but that art had 

 its sole aim and purpose in accomplishing good scores. The 

 long-range shooters are but a drop in the bucket to the great 

 sea of marksmen. If rifle-shooting had no other purpose in 

 being than score-making at the target, then it would soon die 

 out, but if the scores thus made are tests of a proficiency in 

 the real use of the rifle for war or sporting purposes, the 

 practice at the butts takes rank as an important pointer. The 

 coming match, in place of being a struggle between men who 

 represent less than ten per cent, of the entire body of range- 

 habitues, will be one in which the great majority will be in- 

 terested as possible contestants ; and there ought to be, and no 

 doubt will be, a corresponding popular interest in the 

 match. It will be fought out with military rifles, and the 

 result will be taken as a verdict upon the weapons which 

 have been put into the hands of our troops. These weapons 

 have been selected by boards of public officers, and have been 

 provided at public expence by the outlay of large sums. 

 While it is, of course, possible to have bench tests and 

 private trials of the competing rifles, the general public will, 

 very naturally and rightfully, view a public test in a set trial 

 by marksmen as far more satisfactory. It is the man and the 

 gun that become one acting whole, and it is to try that unit 

 that matches on the range are organized. 



The entire detail of the match has not yet been settled, but 

 within a few days or weeks at most the conditions of the 

 proposed contest will have become known. They should be 

 severe and stringent enough to make the .test a thorough one, 

 and if the match could be extended over several days it would 

 seem that enough variations in weather conditions would be 

 secured to give the shooters equal chance of striking their 

 favorite wind, or sky, or light, etc. In any case there ought 

 to be no hesitation on the part of our American shots in ac- 

 cepting any fair set of conditions, though they may differ 

 somewhat from the rules under which we have been accus- 

 tomed to shoot. There will be an abundance of time if it be 

 not wasted to bring together a strong team of American 

 National Guardsmen armed with an American made rifle to 

 contest with good prospect of success with any team that 

 may be pitted against them. To be sure, our National 

 Guardsmen, numbering, perhaps, through the whole couniry, 

 less than 50,000 men, and having in the most favored in- 

 stances about half a dozen years' drill, will have to meet the 

 pick of over 500,000 men who have been assiduously trained 

 in rifle shooting for twenty years past. We have somewhat 

 of a record with which to compare our ability with theirs, 

 and that will not discourage us. We have every reason to 

 believe that our rifles are just a good trifle better than the 

 best that have been turned out of the English armories, and 

 as for familiarity with perplexing conditions of the weather 

 elements our riflemen have little to learn. At any rate, be 

 the chances ever so much against us, the courteous challenge 

 must be accepted, and promptly, and the match fought over to 

 whatever conclusion fate may bring. We have a plucky 

 example in the acceptance of the challenge of the Irish 

 team in 1873 by the American Rifle Club. At that time we 

 had neither rifles nor men, Now we know just what we are 



to do in order to win, and are not rushing blindly forward to 

 stumble upon good luck. Whatever we get in the way of 

 honors must be won, and won by hard, systematic work. 



The attempt of the directors of our Association to secure 

 a team has developed some curious facts about the tendency 

 of our rifle practice. When the Creedmoor Association was 

 started on paper in 1871 the rules of the N. R. A. of Great 

 Britain were adopted entirely. With the opening of practice 

 on the range in 1873 these rules were put in operation, and 

 from that time on there has been a constant changing and 

 tinkering of the regulations, until now it seems that it will 

 require concessions on both sides to bring about anything 

 like a fair regulated match. The British riflemen have 

 abandoned position in shooting, as we knew it ten years 

 ago, and shoulder shooting has become obsolete. Here it 

 has been strictly insisted upon, and, we think, very wisely, 

 keeping in view our distinction that rifle shooting is some- 

 thing more than the making of a certain score, and is rather 

 the preparation for some real work in another field. An 

 overwhelming percentage of the shooting in war and hunting 

 is necessarily done from the shoulder, and so many argu- 

 ments cm be brought to sustain the desirability of retaining 

 this style of marksmanship that our American directors will 

 be very loath to make the concession of "any position" 

 at any distance to the British marksmen. But the question 

 of position may be agreeably arranged, giving to the British- 

 ers plenty of lime to become proficient in off-band work, 

 much more readily than the matter of rifles may. Our 

 Association have been too lax in the matter of the manipula- 

 tion of rifles. The files of the Forest and Stream will 

 bear testimony to our protests against tbe turning of the 

 rifles, especially of militiary weapons, into mere shooting 

 machines. The Board of Management of the British Asso- 

 tion have all along insisted on treating a military weapon as 

 such, and would no more allow each man to exercise his own 

 individual judgment in changing it than they would allow 

 each soldier to interpret the tactics according to his own 

 ideas. A wind gauge on a military gun is an anomaly. It 

 has no business there, and its only raison d'etre is that it may, 

 in the hands of one accustomed to it, and under the quiet 

 work of the range, after, perhaps, the requisite sighting shots, 

 etc., enable the marksmen to show a good string of bull's 

 eyes ; but then to assume from this that he is any the better 

 soldier is so manifestly absurd that no one will for a moment 

 press it. We will have the same charge that the test was a 

 purely artificial one, if fought out with these mongrel rifles, 

 as we had against the old long-range weapons, and it will be 

 much better founded, toj. That good scores may be made 

 without the use of this " lubber hole" -to high aspirations is 

 shown in the fact that two of the best military marksmen at 

 Creedmoor, Messrs. Dolan and VanHeusen. have resisted the 

 temptation to employ it. It is possible they fired to overcome 

 any difficulty of strong winds, by "holding off." They have 

 trained their individual judgments, instead of relying on a 

 device which, under a good coach, reduced their function 

 to that of merely holding on the bullseye. Our own judg- 

 ment would be in favor of the off-hand holding and the use 

 of a practical rnilitao' rifle as such. 



The proposition for the match has met with the heartiest 

 approval from the press of the two countries. Thtreisa 

 disposition to help on the contest in every possible way. 

 The fact that this is to be a match with military rather, than 

 with small-bore rifles, gives much satisfaction. The scrib- 

 bling contingent of the British shooting men have opened 

 their batteries and are firing suggestions with the utmost 

 freedom, and all sorts of curious conditions are urged for 

 adoption. None such are needed ; the simpler the rules are 

 made the better, so that every non-shooting citizen may 

 know and readily understand just what the champions of his 

 country are trying to do. In its issue of Dec. 1, the London 

 Telegraph, speaking of the match, says : 



We have become accustomed to the presence anions us, from 

 to time, ot American riflemen, and our own p 

 reason, more than once, to entertain tot their Transatlantic rival 

 the highest possible respect, Hl< a . ■. . , ^petition he 

 tween the marksmen of the United Kingdom, and the United States 

 has been limited to the match rifle, a delicate and veiy complicated 

 weapon ot very little practical value except In so tar as the improve- 

 ments to which it is continually subject tend to lurther the better 

 construction ot flre-arms generally. Efforts are now being made 

 across the water to send to Wimbledon from America next years, 

 strictly military team, composed of members of the National Guard. 



