590 
city, and never shot a fox-squirrel in his 
life, or else I make a very poor guess. He 
is just another one of those Eastern 
chickaree-shooting individuals that think 
they. can teach us Western men the ethics 
of sportsmanship. I take no offense at 
Mr. Lott, in particular, but I think a man 
should not be allowed to “talk” in the 
Referendum department until he knows 
what he is talking about. Mr. Lott seems 
to forget, when he talks about “starting 
right,” that the average boy, when he gets 
big enough to hunt, cannot afford more 
than one gun—and even if he could, his 
parents would forbid the additional gun 
as a useless extravagance. Naturally, 
then, he must shoot a shotgun; the small 
game most hunted, and with success, by 
the younger sportsmen the country over, 
are not .22 caliber game, in actual hunting. 
Let the boys start with a shotgun—it is 
not half as dangerous in careless hands 
as a .22 rifle; and as for giving a boy an 
automatic, that would be the worst kind 
of foolishness. It is an actual fact that 
far too many boys are allowed to hunt 
with rifles. Particularly in the Adiron- 
dacks, Vermont, New Hampshire and 
Maine, you find boys and _ tenderfeet 
without number hunting with rifles and 
ready to shoot at anything that moves. 
If they would first learn how to behave 
in the woods by hunting small game with 
a shotgun, it might be safe for a real 
hunter to be abroad in the deer season. 
As for the “shotgun slaughterer of 
small game” exterminating the fox- 
squirrels, I will willingly lend Mr. Lott 
a good 16-gauge hammerless and turn 
him out at daylight in the squirrel timber 
near my place and give him the gun if he 
gets more than a half dozen squirrels by 
the time the cows come home—and we 
have plenty of squirrels. 
New Boston, Iil. Ep. JAMES. 


Leave Well Alone 
Will some reader of RECREATION please 
advise me in regard to the proper load 
for a .32 Special Winchester with black 
powder? How many grains of powder 
and how many grains of lead, say for 
100 yards? 
RECREATION 
I wish to reload my shells for small 
game; how many grains of smokeless 
powder are used in loading the .32 Special 
with nitro powder ? 
I have just purchased a new .32 Special 
and I think I have got the ideal gun for 
both large and small game. However, my 
experience is quite limited in hunting for 
large game. E. F. GREENOUGH. 
Summit, Colo. 
[(1) Use 40 grains of powder and a 
lead bullet weighing 170 grains. 
(2) We do not advise on reloading 
with smokeless, holding the practice a 
dangerous one, excepting for experts.— 
Ep. | 

(Cratanes" 
teste 

Defends the Auto-Loader 
In the September RecREATION I see a 
letter from L. E. Burkett, of Ellwood 
City, Pa., in which he makes a few state- 
ments regarding auto-loading guns, and 
also mentions the .35 caliber auto-loading 
rifle. I note that he says he has seen an 
auto-loading rifle fired at a plank (dry 
oak) at fifty yards, and that the .35-caliber 
ball did not even stick in the plank, but 
rebounded and he picked it up. He also 
says that he would not have one of the 
auto-loading guns because they will not 
kill. Experienced as Mr. Burkett is (for 
he says he has hunted game, big and 
small, for thirty years) I am afraid that 
in the matter of auto-loading guns, and 
especially the rifle, he is just alittle in- 
experienced. 
Now, as a matter of fact, I have per- 
sonally shot my .35 auto-loading rifle 
through four inches of dry oak, using the 
soft point bullet, and I fear that if Mr. 
Burkett were to stand behind an oak 
plank, while someone shot at it with 
the .35, he would feel very unpleasant 
after the first shot. Consulting the Win- 
chester catalogue, Mr. Burkett will find 
the following to be true :— 
“Model 1905—Self loading rifle—Veloc- 
ity of bullet (at 50 ft.) 1,400 ft. per sec. 
Penetration in 7%-inch pine boards, at 15 
