THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL. 



Entered According to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, or the Forest and Stream Publishing Company, in the Office ot the Librarian ot 



Congress, at Washington. 



rorm " *ti5 &S*J°.£* a Copy 1 NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 1 9, 1 882. { Nos . 39 .ndKKVew y.,... 



CONTENTS. 



BdITOBIAL :— 



Pistol Shooting; The Delaware Fish Commission; Obcsx 

 ye Wild Gaeth a-Angling ; Bye-Ways of the Northwest. . . 483 



Thb Spobtsman Tooeist : — 

 All Bauds Asleep ; Meruorv in Lions ; Minnesota Game Re- 

 sorts 485 



Natubal Histobi:— 

 Do Crows Hold Court? The Mistletoe ; Questions About 

 Wild Turkeys 486 



Gajhe Bag and Gun :— 

 From Bangeley to Arnold's Bog ; A North Carolina Duck- 

 ing Trip ; Machine Keel aud Target for Testing Guns ; 

 The Cause of Bust in Gun Barrels ; Duck Shooting on 

 Moriches Bay : Wing Shooting bs. Treeing ; Muzzle and 

 Breech; Loading for Game 48S 



Sea and Riveb Fishing :— 

 The Angler's Dream ; The Alewife in Inland Lakes ; Color 

 of Gut ; A Perfect Day ; Directious for Collecting and 

 Preserving Fish ; New England Fisheries 491 



Fishoulttoe :— 



The Great German Fish Hatchery 493 



The Kennel :— 

 Training vs. Breaking ; Quartering, Style>nd Speed ; Pitts- 

 burg Dog Show ; Byron Hounds ; Kennel Notes 493 



Rifle and Tkap Shoottno 495 



Answebs to Cokkespondents 495 



Yachting and Canoeing :— 

 A New Canoe , 496 



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Address: Forest, and Stream Publishing Co., 



Nos. 39 and 40 Park Row, New York City. 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



Thursday, January 19. 



PISTOL SHOOTING. 



TEE doubt with which some of the correspondents of the 

 Forest and Stream met the assertion that the story 

 of the cowboys of the West and South-west hitting telegraph 

 poles from sixty yards off was somewhat of a myth, opens 

 the questioa as to what may fairly be done with these small 

 arms. 



The subject is very barren of record. We have pistol 

 shooting displays in plenty and, probably, in one case in this 

 city may be seen as fine a showing of bona fide targets as can 

 be met with anywhere in ihe world. Each record has upon 

 it, too, the exact conditions under which it was nwde, and 

 those conditions were the best possible for the production of 

 high scores. 



The pistols used in gallery practice are made specially for 

 such employment, with ten or twelve inch barrels, single 

 breech-loaders aud carefully balanced, with sights open, but 

 capable of the finest adjustment. It is very rarely the ease 

 that peep sights are employed, but they may be if thought 

 desirable. With such a weapon the good holder may rely on 

 securing satisfactory results. Using the short .22 calibre 

 cartridges these pistols afford an endless amount of amuse- 



ment at a very limited cost, and up to moderate distances are 

 unexcelled. With them shots may be grouped by ten or a 

 dozen on spaces to be covered- with a silver half dollar. It is 

 such shooting as this that stands recorded in our weekly ac- 

 counts from the shooting galleries. 



But there is another class of small arms, and they out- 

 number the gallery shooting machines one hundred to one. 

 They are the revolvers of all classes that are turned out in 

 such immense numbers from the various factories. They are 

 marvels of strength, ingenuity and cheapness, and in many 

 cases are as inaccurate as they are pretty to inspect and 

 handle. What these weapons will do under careful test is 

 very wide of an unknown quantit)'. A few days ago the 

 question was put to the agent of one of the most popular and 

 generally regarded as the best of this class of weapons, 

 whether any test was made of them before shipment from 

 the factory, and the idea of trying a pistol for accuracy 

 seemed to strike him as a novel one. With him a pistol was 

 a pistol, and having been carefully made, as he knew this 

 particular brand of revolver to be, he could not conceive how 

 it could be anything but an accurate and exact shooter. 

 There is a great deal of pot-Juck work in the pistol manufac- 

 ture, and the majority of those turned out are blank, failures 

 when called upon to do any hitting, even at the most moder- 

 ate distances. Taking, for instance, the regulation distance 

 of li! paces or 30 feet ; over this any pistol worth the making 

 ought to shoot with the utmost exactness. 



We have received many letters from correspondents speak- 

 ing of fine scoring done ; and we should be pleased if the 

 writers would send on a target of 10 consecutive shots fired 

 strictly off-hand at 12 paces distance. We will measure the 

 string and publish the results. In each case particulars of 

 the sort of pistol used ought to accompany the score dia- 

 gram. In this way something practical in the way of record 

 may be arrived at as showing what the various classes of 

 small arms will do. We have seen 10 shots from a smooth 

 bore dueling pistol, carrying a £ ounce ball, crowded on the 

 space of a trade dollar, but this was fine holding and the 

 weapon was of a capital make. What is wanted is some 

 determination of the average value, as shooting implements 

 of the million odd pocket-poppers of every description which 

 are scattered here and there over this land. 



THE DELAWARE PISH COMMISSION. 



ONE of the last to enter upon flshculture, as a State in- 

 dustry, was Delaware. A reason for this might be 

 found in the fact that the culture of salt-water fishes has but 

 just begun, and her fisheries are mainly in salt and brackish 

 water. With the exception of the Delaware River on her 

 Eastern border she has nolarge rivers ; and her small streams, 

 which mainly flow into that river and the great Delaware 

 Bay, are short. 



But little interest had been taken in the culture of fish in 

 Maryland, until the appointment of Col. Enoch Moore, Jr., 

 as Commissioner, on the 22d of April, 1881. His appoint- 

 ment was for two years, and the sum of three hundred 

 dollars was appropriated to carry on the work, allowing the 

 Commissioner $2 pur day for each day of actual service. 

 This fall Col. Moore received and distributed 3,000 German 

 carp, mostly to private ponds, -and, such is the desire of the 

 people for more, he has over fifty applications for them, 

 which he cannot fill until next spring. This is a very good 

 showing for the few months during which Col. Moore has 

 been in office, and shows how an energetic man can awaken 

 public interest in this subject, even with such an insignificant 

 appropriation, by merely taking hold of it. 



Since the appointment of a Commissioner an interest in 

 the good work seems to have sprung up in all parts of the 

 State, and in the city of Wilmington a fishcultural club has 

 been formed, called "The Delaware Fishcultural Associa- 

 tion." Its officers are: Dr. E. G. Shortledge, President ; 

 Hon. Mayor John P. Almond, Secretary; S. N. Pusey, 

 Treasurer. This society has for its object the stocking of 

 the streams with food and game fishes, and they have one 

 pond of seven to nine acres with a few carp in it.; one pond 

 of three-fourths of an acre, containing 30 leather and 39 scale 

 carp, which will spawn this coming spring. From these 

 small beginnings we expect a future for flshculture in the 

 State of Delaware. 



OSCAR Y e WILD GOETH a- ANGLING. 



THE advent of the English Ee3thete Oscar Wild has nearly 

 turned the heads of the ultra-impressables of New 

 York ; and we felt flattered when a highly-perfumed note, 

 in an envelope which exceeded in glory the cover of The 

 Century, invited us to a little lunch and fishing excursion. 



We missed the lunch and hastened to Pier 42, East River, 

 the spot designated as the one to be honored by the poet, 

 aitist and piscator. It was a bright morning ; and the end 

 of the pier was occupied by little Patsy Hooligan, and a few 

 friends of his own age, seven to nine, who were fishing from 

 the string-piece. The sun, glancing brightly upon the liquid 

 surface of a passing mud-scow, caused Mickey Gilhooly to 

 turn his face to avoid its glare, and looking up the dock, he 

 exclaimed : ' ' Hi, Patsy wots this a-coming down the dock ?" 

 Patsy turned quickly, and dropping the broken barrel-hoop 

 which did duty for a rod, simply exclaimed : " Well, I'll be 

 blowed !" We also turned and saw a tall form enveloped in 

 an ulster which reached to his shoes, a sunflower stuck in 

 his button-hole, hair down to his shoulders, and a general 

 lankiness which, to our trained optics, plainly denoted the 

 aesthete, even if he had not been accompanied by " twenty 

 love-sick maidens," each with her waist under her arms, or 

 none at all, and decorated with daisies, lilies, cat-tails and 

 other emblems of the Renaissance. 



We lifted our hat as we bade him "good morning, "feeling 

 that its nine dollar's worth of Broadway style paled before 

 the artistic seal-skin cap with beaver trimmings, which sur- 

 mounted the aesthete's dome. The maidens exclaimed in 

 chorus: "O, isn't this the uttermost verge of the utter?" 

 Patsy Hooligan picked up a stump of a Third avenue cigar 

 and chewed the end in meditative silence, as became a dis- 

 ciple of the gentle Izaak. The gulls flitted toward Black- 

 wells Island, and the breeze laden with the spicy odors from 

 Hunter's Point played with the flowing locks of Oscar the 

 Wild. 



The poet produced a rod made by Keats & Co and a 

 reel by vValt Whitman, and using a silk lily for a fly pro- 

 ceeded to cast. The maidens folded their hands and sighed. 

 Patsy Hooligan whispered ,to Mickey Gilhooly. We caught 

 the words: " She'3 a-lying on top of a spile down under 

 dere; slip down and fix it." "Won't you give me away ?" 

 asked Mickey. " Naw, what dye yer take me fur ?" scorn- 

 fully answered his preceptor ; aud the younger of the two 

 disappeared up the pier, and then down under it. 



The gulls screamed and the water lapped merrily against 

 the pier. We were wrapt in admiration of the beauty of the 

 scene when one of the rapturous maidens exclaimed: "A 

 bite!" The poet's eye and his reel, both in fine frenzy 

 rolling betokened resistance on the pliant rod, which bending 

 under the weight of its prey seemed a sentient thing of life 

 exjoying the struggle. The maidens clasped their handB 

 firmer. We held our breath. He landed on the pier at our 

 feet, his feet and the forty feet of the maidens, a drowned 

 kitten, which was not a recent one. The gulls laughed, the 

 maidens blushed twenty blushes, and the odors of Hunter's 

 Point subsided in deference to superior force. We ordered 

 a horse-car, on the " belt line'' and gave directions to drive 

 to Fulton Market, pondering in the meantime upon the uses 

 of the cat-tail in decorative art, and sorrowing that on Pier 

 42, there was only one to divide oetween those twenty-one 

 persons of refined and elevated tastes. 



The St. Nicholas Gun Cltxb has recently been organized. 

 Its membership is li-nited to the members of the well-known 

 St. Nicholas Club of New York. The new organization 

 starts out with a roll of sixteen names, and includes some 

 experts with the shot-gun. The management is in excellent 

 hands, and the club's future most promising. A novel 

 feature of the published set of rules is the provision of some 

 blank score leaves bound up with the book to serve as a per- 

 manent record of the scores made during the year. We 

 welcome the St. Nicholas Gun Club to the long list of similar 

 societies of business and professional geutlemen, who seek 

 relaxation from their work in the manly sports of the field. 



A Machinb fob Tbbting Gtrxs has been devised by Mr. F. 

 G. Farnham, who publishes a description of it in this paper. 

 We understand that it answers its purpose most admirably 

 It is a very important addition to this class of machines. 



