48o 



RECREATION. 



COULDN'T HIT A DOG. 



A New York policeman recently enter- 

 tained a big crowd on Eighth avenue with 

 an exhibition of wild shooting. He had 

 cornered a so-called mad dog in a door- 

 way and was standing over him so no one 

 should be bitten. A man came along and 

 asked the officer if he wanted a gun. He 

 said, "No, I got one." Then he drew his 

 revolver and said, "I will shoot him 

 through the heart and put him out of his 

 misery." He stepped up within 3 or 4 feet 

 of the dog, fired 4 shots at him and never 

 touched him. Then the policeman turned 

 to the man who had spoken to him and 

 said, "Where's your gun?" The neighbor 

 replied, "I do not mean a revolver ; I mean 

 a shot gun. It is at my house, around the 

 corner." The man offered to go and get 

 his gun, but the policeman said, "Never 

 mind." Then he hit the dog on the head 

 with the revolver, knocked him down, 

 jumped on him with his big feet and 

 trampled the life out of him. 



The dog was probably no more mad than 

 the policeman was. He doubtless had ap- 

 oplexy, indigestion or some other disease 

 from which dogs frequently suffer; but the 

 average city dweller knows but one disease 

 for a sick dog. That is rabies, and when- 

 ever a dog appears on the street suffer- 

 ing from any trouble, no matter what, the 

 cry of "mad dog" is raised and the poor 

 brute is pursued, shot, clubbed or trampled 

 to death, as in this instance. If such must 

 be the fate of every sick dog, then it would 

 seem that Chief Devery should at least 

 train his police officers in the use of the re- 

 volver to such an extent that they could 

 hit a full-grown dog at a distance of 3 feet 

 at the first shot. 



A HERD OF SIDE HUNTERS. 



Another side hunt has been pulled off 

 in Massachusetts. This time the contest- 

 ants were residents of Charlemont and 

 Conway. A Springfield paper states that 

 Deputy Sheriff E. S. Haskins and Albert 

 Veber chose sides and that there were 30 

 contestants on each side. The hunt kept 

 up 2 days, and among the game hogs who 

 are said to have participated in the dirty 

 work are mentioned T. M. Totman, "Capt." 

 D. F. Bond, Gordon Johnson, Solomon 

 Pease, "Capt." J. M. LaChapelle, Hy. Tay- 

 lor, Hy. Dodge and John Bushnell. It is 

 said that the Haskins herd made a score 

 of 7,360 points and that the Veber herd 

 scored 6,740. Bond's herd of Conway 

 swine made a score of 22,500 points and 

 LaChapelle herd 70,200. 



It is strange that the decent sportsmen of 

 Massachusetts and one or 2 other New 

 England States in which these barbarous 

 slaughtering matches are still indulged in, 

 dp not secure the passage of laws to pro- 



hibit them. Nearly all the States of the 

 Union have laws prohibiting prize fights ; 

 yet prize fighters and their gang are gentle- 

 men as compared with the vulgar, illit- 

 erate and unprincipled wretches who par- 

 ticipate in side hunts. 



The San Francisco Examiner prints a 

 statement to the effect that many miners 

 in the Sierra Nevada mountains have de- 

 clared war on deer hounds and that the 

 men kill them wherever and whenever they 

 can find them running deer. This is a radi- 

 cal remedy for the evil, but it is certainly 

 an effective one. There are few deer left 

 in that range of 'mountains, owing to the 

 persistent work of pot hunters, game hogs 

 and sheepmen, and it is eminently proper 

 that the men who are best fitted to protect 

 the few remaining deer, should do it in 

 their own forcible and effective way. I 

 congratulate the Sierra Nevada miners on 

 the adoption of this- plan and hope they 

 may not get tired until they perforate the 

 hide of the last hound that goes into the 

 mountains. 



The Annapolis (N. S.) Spectator states 

 that Charles Gillis, William Durling, 

 George Durling and John McGill, of Dal- 

 housie, were fined $50 and costs each for 

 killing moose out of season. The offenses 

 were committed in March last, and these 

 men have been evading the officers of the 

 law since that time, but were finally cap- 

 tured by Carman O'Dell, the game agent, 

 who was assisted by W. E. Palfrey. The 

 men were unable to pay their fines, and 

 each went to jail for 50 days. Hereafter 

 they will wait until the legal season before 

 killing moose. 



T. W. Home, of Philadelphia, killed a 

 moose in Maine before the opening of the 

 legal season, and buried it in the mud. 

 The Hon. L. T. Carleton got on Mr. 

 Home's trail, rounded him up and made 

 him pay a fine of $500. I understand Mr. 

 Carleton has a large collection of horns of 

 various kinds in his office, but he doubtless 

 considers this Philadelphia specimen the 

 most valuable of the lot. In fact, this im- 

 petuous moose hunter would seem to be a 

 regular cornucopia for the State of Maine. 



Game Warden Fullerton, of Minnesota, 

 writing to a friend recently, said : 



I received a telegram this morning from Ben- 

 son saying that a deputy out there had captured 

 some fellow who had shot 9 prairie chickens. 

 Those chickens will cost him $10 apiece. Besides, 

 his gun and 2 dogs were seized, and will be 

 confiscated. He'll discover, I think, that it would 

 have been much pleasanter and much cheaper to 

 wait until September 1st. His case is a fair 

 sample. We'll see that every man caught shoot- 

 ing out of season pays roundly for his fun. 



