Volume X. 



RECREATION. 



JANUARY, 1899. 

 G. 0. SHIELDS (COQUINA), Editor and Manager. 



Number J. 



PHOTOGRAPHING WILD GAME AT NIGHT. 



E. D. H. 



Many a sportsman has found it dif- 

 ficult to defend himself against the 

 charge of cruelty in killing game. The 

 question is a broad and a deep one 

 and I shall not go into a discussion of 

 it here. Certain it is there has been a 

 marked change of public sentiment on 

 this subject within the past few years. 

 Thousands of men who have always 

 made a practice of killing everything 

 they could find when out with a gun, 

 whether needed for food or not, have 

 learned that this is unsportsmanlike 

 and have quit it. Thousands of these 

 same men now take, in addition to a 

 rifle or a gun, a camera on all hunting 

 trips, and many of them, after killing 

 a reasonable amount of game, leave 

 their guns in camp and hunt with 

 their cameras. 



A Pittsburgh lawyer has devised 

 an attachment for a camera which 

 greatly facilitates this modern kind of 

 hunting. It consists of a flash-light 

 machine, which can readily be at- 

 tached to any camera and which may 

 be carried on the bow of a boat or tied 

 up to a tree and left there over night. 

 In the first case, the hunter sits in the 

 bow of the boat, with a bull's eye lamp 

 in his hand, while his guide sits in the 

 stern and paddles him about the lake 

 or river. When these men see a pair 

 of eyes shining the guide carefully, si- 

 lently and skillfully propels the boat 

 toward the game, until within a few- 

 feet of it. Then the bull's eye lamp is 

 turned away, the magnesium powder 



is exploded and the shutter of the 

 camera is released automatically. 



The result is usually a badly fright- 

 ened deer, or other animal. In several 

 cases which the inventor recounts, the 

 deer have been so blinded and so 

 panic-stricken that they have plunged 

 into the water and one or 2 of them 

 have come near leaping into the boat. 

 One old buck, after making a desper- 

 ate plunge forward, turned and started 

 into the woods, but was so blinded he 

 ran with great force against a tree and 

 was thrown on his back. Then he got 

 up and by that time had recovered his 

 sight and other senses sufficiently to 

 find his way through the woods. 



The inventor has not yet tried this 

 camera on larger game, but intends to 

 make a trip to the Rocky mountains 

 next summer, when he will experiment 

 with it on elk, antelope, bear, etc. 

 From the work already done on deer 

 and smaller animals, we may confi- 

 dently expect some startling results 

 from his trip. 



There can be no comparison be- 

 tween the trophies to be gathered from 

 the 2 kinds of hunting. If you kill a 

 deer and have his head mounted you 

 and your friends can all admire it; 

 but there must always be a pang of 

 regret when you think of having de- 

 stroyed so noble an animal. When 

 you show the head to your lady friends 

 they will ask you if you don't think it 

 wrong to kill so beautiful an animal. 



As I have said, you will find it dif- 



