226 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



LApkh 17, 1884. 



American manufactures. There is too much of the "cheap 

 John' 5 in our goods of all kinds. 



But I will stop at this point, because I am getting on the 

 "lagged edge" of a dangerous subject, upon which my 

 opinions would not he agreeable to the supposed interests— 

 not convictions — of quite a number of my countrymen. 



WlBMiB. 

 Eooktngham, N. C, March 81, 



SUMMER SHOOTING. 



IN this week's issue of Forest and Stream (April 3) I 

 notice a correspondent from Long Island, "G. W. R.," 

 who docs not agree with me in regard to the kilhng of wood- 

 cock in July. "Gr. W. R." thinks he would not have any 

 woodcock shooting at all were summer shooting abolished; 

 but I think he is greatly mistaken, for summer shooting is 

 the very thing to make fall shooting poor. Surely, to kill the 

 parent bird while trying to raise heryoung, is just killing the 

 whole, brood ; whereas, if summer shooting was prohibited, no 

 such thing would occur. . 



What pleasure is there in hunting while the thermometer 

 ranges from 90 to 100° iu the shade? Certainly none. 



It is almost impossible to hunt woodcock in summer with 

 any pleasure after sunrise, and then very often your birds 

 spoil before night in your pockets. I, for one, would like to 

 see a law passed prohibiting summer shooting, just to see 

 what difference it really would make, and I am sure we 

 would have two woodcock in fall for every one shot now in 

 summer. Last fall I was out fifty times or more and I did 

 not mash twenty birds. Last fall's shooting was very poor, 

 and each fall will continue to be poorer until a stop is put to 

 this infernal summer shooting. 



On Long Island, where "G. W. R." resides, there cannot 

 be many pot-hunters, since he says there are no partridges 

 shot in summer, but that they are snared. Snaring is a curse, 

 sure enough; but to kill a bird only half fledged is worse still, 

 when such an act is against the law. Snaring is not carried 

 on to any great extent in my neighborhood, for the simple 

 reason, 1* suppose, that the partridges are much more easily 

 killed in summer than snared in the fall being then only half 

 grown. 



Black ducks have been very scarce with us this spring, 

 unusually so. Sprigtails are quite plentiful on the Passaic 

 River, two miles from here, but very few are killed. 



English snipe were plentiful last*week. This week snipe 

 shooting will be much improved, as the water is much lower 

 on the meadows, making better feeding grounds. 



16-Bore. 



Madison. N. J. 



THE CHOICE OF HUNTING RIFLES. 



Editor Forest and. Stream: 

 When everything has been said concerning the choice_ of 



hunting rifles, the problem of making a judicious selection 

 will still remain practically unsolved, at least for many per- 

 sons. The development of new ideas and inventions, and 

 the march of improvement in the construction of rifles fol- 

 low, one after the other, in such rapid succession as to 

 bewilder and puzzle the chooser and tend to restrain many 

 persons and keep them in doubt as to the wisdom of making 

 a choice now. At the same time the discussion of the sub- 

 ject which has been going on in the many interesting articles 

 kindly published in the Forest and Stream from time to 

 time lately, will result in much good, provided some of the 

 gun makers read these articles carefully enough to catch the 

 drift of them and get the ideas of the majority of the writers 

 of them into practical shape, and will then proceed without 

 delay to construct a hunting rifle which will be in harmony 

 with the majority's views, and will meet their requirements. 

 In the meantime, the careful, cool-headed practical hunter, 

 who has some knowledge of the habits of the game he seeks, 

 and who is a good shot, will continue to succeed in killing 

 it in reasonable plenty, no matter what kind of a rifle he has. 

 Such a hunter, were he armed with an obsolete flintlock 

 muzzle-loader, would probably get, in a given time, more 

 meat with it than could a tyro, or a careless hunter, or one 

 who was an indifferent shot, armed with a modern breech- 

 loader. 



In fancy I think 1 now see "Deerslayer*' and Daniel 

 Boone, restored to life in the prime of their best manhood, 

 arrayed in the conventional backwoods dress of the hunters 

 of their day, armed with their long-barreled, fine-sighted, 

 flintlock, muzzleloading rifles, about to enter into a com- 

 petitive hunt of ten days, against two of the most successful 

 hunters of the present day, armed with the best modern 

 hreechloading rifles; and I am led to marvel as their sinewy 

 forms seem to materialize before me in this dream of fancy, 

 but I quickly get back to the practical in trying to guess 

 which party, which side, will get most meat in this com- 

 petitive hunt. 



Without asserting which rifle is the best, I will say the 

 Peabody Martini, .45-caliber, is my choice for such game as 

 elk, deer and antelope. This gun is very reliable from one 

 hundred to three hundred yards ; if is handy, strong, durable, 

 and will stand any amount of rough knocking about and 

 hard usage. With 80 grains of powder, and 500-grain bullet, 

 sharp-pointed and hardened with about one-tenth part of tin, 

 it is an exceedingly effective and very deadly rifle. I am 

 speaking of the military model, having used one of them 

 more than three years. The sights on it are correctly placed, 

 and have not been changed in any way. It is the same kind 

 of a gun that was used by the Turks with such deadly 

 effect on the Russians, in their late war. For five shots, or 

 forty shots fired iu rapid succession without cleaning, it is 

 the most accurate shooting hreechloading rifle I have ever 

 used. It will, at any distance named, group the shots closer 

 together, and put them nearer to the center of the spot aimed 

 at than any other hreechloading rifle within my knowledge. 



The sliding leaf of the rear sight is straight across its top 

 edge, except the cut out V-shaped notch for aiming; this 

 cau be seen the minute the gun comes to the firing position. 

 The butt-plate is checked and made rough on its outer sur- 

 face to prevent it from slipping on the clothing. The low 

 price of this gun— less than twenty dollars— places it within 

 e*asy reach. Using 70 grains of powder, it has the following 

 drift, penetration in white pine, initial velocity, etc. 



DRIFT. 



405-grain bullet. 



At 100 yards it is V A inch. 

 At 300 yards it is \\& inches. 

 At 300 yards it is 4 inches. 

 At 400 yards it is 8 inches. 



PENETRATION. 



10 yards, 100 yards. £00 yards. 



£0.8/ inches. 17.2 inches. 12.4 inches. 



Initial velocity, 1350 feet; the bullet is then revolving 



around its long axis at, the rate of about 850 times in a second. 



Using the same kind of ammunition, its penetration is about 

 the same as the Springfield rifle. 



1 have a 500-grain bullet in my possession, which was 

 tired with 70 grains of powder from a Springfield rifle, 

 squarely at an old grizzly bear's head, at the distance of 

 about six yards; it flattened out there and failed to penetrate 

 the bear's skull. It cracked the skull bone, however, and 

 lodged under the skin fiom whence it was taken out when 

 the bear was being dressed. This happened last October, 

 near Laramie Peak, about one hundred miles northwest of 

 here. The fact that this bullet did not go through the bear's 

 skull bone is a matter of some astonishment, since it is 

 known that it had a power of penetration equal to twenty 

 inches in pine wood. But to come back to drift, etc., the 

 writer contends that the drift of the bullet will be lessened 

 when we have a cartridge which, in loading, will seat the 

 bearing surface of the bullet well into the bore of the rifle, 

 so that the bullet will start with the spiral motion produced 

 by the grooves. The bullet of the cartridges now universally 

 used is not, in loading the piece, seated in the bore, and con- 

 sequently it must jump straight some distance before it 

 reaches the bore and comes in contact with the grooves, and 

 when it strikes the shoulder which joins the chamber to the 

 bore, it is then moving with such fearful velocity that the 

 vibrations the shock produced by one of the components of 

 the resistance of the sides of the grooves, namely, that which 

 gives to the bullet a rotary motion around its long axis, tends 

 to derange the muzzle of the piece to the right. Moreover, 

 the clement of accuracy, which is undeniably one of the 

 most important in rifle firing, is sacrificed to some extent 

 when the bullet is seated away from the grooves and„is 

 already in rapid motion when it reaches there. 



1 had designed to drop a few words about the different 

 forces which aet on a bullet fired from a rifle; the combined 

 action of these forces, and some of the causes which tend to 

 vary them, but this letter is now longer than was iutended. 



Andy Painter. 



Editor Forest and Streum: 



In your issue of April 3, "Penobscot" says his rifle also 

 blew unburned powder out on the suow T . May I ask him if 

 this is strictly so, or did it only look so? Has he ever col- 

 lected this unburned powder, again placed the same in his 

 gun or rifle, and with what result? Should he take the 

 trouble to do so— from his present standpoint— I think he 

 will be astonished. 



As regards his ideal repeating rifle, he has my idea pre- 

 cisely as to proportion of powder and lead, only I carry the 

 sancic to the shotgun also. That is, by weight, three times 

 as much projectile as powder, or as he sensibly puts it, 80 

 grains powder, 240 grains lead. The above proportion of 

 powder to projectile, whether ball or shot, is close to the 

 maximum shooting qualities of the piece, whatever it may 

 be. M. U. Skrat. 



Baltimore, Md. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



When the first call was sounded in your columns for a 

 new repeating rifle, I was strongly tempted to express 

 my opinion about arms of this type. I thought it 

 better, however, to wait a little and hear what others might 

 have to say on the subject, and 1 am glad that I have done 

 so. Among the many very interesting and remarkable points 

 brought out by this discussion, the most remarkable, to my 

 mind, is the apparent general popularity of the repeater. Of 

 all the letters about rifles that have appeared in your col- 

 umns, I can at this moment recall but two, in which the de- 

 fects of the magazine rifle have been alluded to. One of 

 these was from a gentleman, "W. N. B.," whose experience, 

 extending over more than thirty years, entitles his opinion 

 to great weight. My own use of the rifle in hunting large 

 game extends over only about half that time, but I give it 

 for what it is worth. 



Before stating any facts, however. I shouid perhaps say 

 that I have never habitually used a magazine rifle, and am 

 therefore unaware of all their faults, their failures to act, 

 and their weak points. On the other hand, having always 

 used the singleloader, I am probably prejudiced in favor 

 of that type of arm. Still, I have hunted so much and 

 have been so anxious always to obtain the best gun that 

 was procurable, that, had the repeater presented to my mind 

 any advantagesover the singleloader which outweighed its 

 disadvantages, I should have been very likely to use it. My 

 hunting has always been done in the West, and so far as I 

 can recollect, 1 have never, within the United States borders, 

 killed a single head of large game east of the Mississippi 

 River. In the Western country I have killed all descriptions 

 of large game there found except the moose, the white goat 

 and the grizzly bear; no one of which I have ever seen alive 

 within rifle range. So much of personal explanation seems 

 necessary in order to show that the opinions which I may 

 advance are not ill-considered, hastily formed, or those of a 

 tyro. 



During the fifteen years which I have devoted to hunt- 

 ing on the plains and among the mountains, it happened 

 that for eight or nine I was obliged to journey through a 

 country w T here hostile Indians were very troublesome, and 



500-grain bullet. 

 Wi inches. 

 3 inches. 

 5 inches. 

 8 inches. 



300 yards. 

 10.2 inches. 



country where hostile Indians were very 

 where it might often occur that a man's life would depend 

 on his gun. Simplicity and certainty of action were thus of 

 the first importance in the choice of an arm, and I learned 

 very early that the magazine guns of the present type could 

 not be depended upon in this respect. 



Repeating rifles with the magazine beneath the barrel, or 

 in the stock, I believe to be unsafe, as I know they are unre- 

 liable. 



1. Repeating rifles are unreliable. My first experience with 

 arms of this type was many years ago when I traveled 

 for four or five months with a party of young men, 

 seven or eight of whom were armed with Winchester 

 carbines of the then latest model, Luring all that time there 

 was not. I believe, any single day when all of these weapons 

 were in working order. The common fault was that a little 

 dirt or a grain of sand would get in beside the carrier 

 block, and so long as it was there, the lever was immov- 

 ably fixed, and the gun could only be put in order by 

 taking it to pieces, cleaning and oiling it, I happened 

 to occupy the same tent with a young man who had 

 a taste for machinery, and used to enjoy taking guns to 

 pieces, and every night before going to bed his blankets 

 would be covered with the parts of the guns he was putting 

 to rights. If a gun was dropped in the sand, or a horse ran 

 nea/oue lyina; on the ground and scattered a little dirt over 

 it, or it was not taken to pieces and wiped for a week or two, 

 the arm was useless. And in traveling in the West such 

 things as these constantly happen, and must be expected to 

 happen. It is no answer to such objections to a gun to say 

 that a man should keep his gun clean, and that then it will 

 work weli. Suppose he does not keep his gun clean, and 



that he is jumped by Indians or charged by a bad-tempered 

 grizzly, is he to lose his life because he does not devote every 

 evening in camp to polishing up his weapon? I have heard 

 marksmen complain that at Greedmoor in past seasons, when 

 shooting at the "running deer" with the Winchester, it has 

 been a common thing to have the cartridges stick in the gun 

 and the lever fail to work. Usually this is caused by a bit of 

 dirt acting on the carrier block, and no matter how the open 

 breech is protected, this is something that is always likely to 

 occur. 



In the summer of 1877 1 hunted with two men in a country 

 where game was very abundant. One of my companions 

 was very anxious to kill a bear. He carried a Winchester of 

 the model of 1876, the magazine of which holds, if I recol- 

 lect aright, eleven cartridges. We had one day killed some 

 elk, and seen a great lot of fresh bear signs, which so iu 

 flamed the imagination of this man that the next morning 

 he started out alone, with the avowed determination of shoot- 

 ing at nothing less than a bear. When he came in at night 

 he told the f ollowine story : He had hunted till about 3 P.JJL 

 without seeing anything but elk, and at these he had not 

 shot. Just as he was about to return to the camp, and 

 while he was resting on the edge of a little mountain park, 

 three bears, two cubs and au old she grizzly, made their ap- 

 pearance, one after another, in the Utile park, and traversed 

 it, passing within about seventy-five yards of where he sat. 

 He said that he had intended to shoot at the first of the 

 bears, and that he had not doubted his ability to kill both 

 the small ones, but that, when the third and big one came 

 on the scene, his interest in bear hunting ceased. "We laughed 

 at him, of course, while he was telling the story, a»d 

 when it was ended he tried to take out of his gun the 

 cartridge which was in the barrel, and found that 

 he could not do so. It was at length picked out, 

 and the gun being taken to pieces, this was found 

 to be the state of things: He had filled the magazine full, 

 jamming in all the cartridges it would contain. The spring 

 in the magazine had thus been greatly compressed, and the 

 result had been that the lubricant in "the cartridges had been 

 squeezed into a very small compass and the balls pushed into 

 the shell much further than in a fresh cartridge. Each 

 cartridge was therefore somewhat shorter than it should 

 have been. Now suppose we call the cartridge iu the barrel 

 No. 1, the one beneath it No. 2, and the one in front of two. 

 No. 3. No. 1 could, of course, be fired, but the base of the 

 shell of No. 3 encroaching upon the space which should 

 have been filled by No. 2, interfered with the breech mechan- 

 ism and prevented it from working. Each of the eleven 

 cartridges taken from the magazine was from one-eighth to 

 one-quarter of an inch shorter than a fresh cartridge taken 

 from the box. Now it is very well to say that the man was 

 a fool to put so many cartridges into his magazine, but sup- 

 pose he had fired and killed a cub with his one usable car- 

 tridge, and afterward had been torn to pieces by the old 

 bear, would the fact that he had been a fool have been any 

 special consolation to his widow, or to us who would have 

 been obliged to pack him back to the railroad ? 



I could give other instances where these arms have proven 

 entirely unreliable, but the one cited above, and the letter 

 from "W. N. B." some weeks since, should be enough, I 

 think, to show that sometimes they do not work. And a 

 gun that sometimes fails will never do for me to use. H it is 

 for hunting in the East, or in a country where nothing more 

 dangerous "than a deer or an antelope is to be met with, the 

 getting out of order of your gun is a small matter. To lose 

 your shot, or even to go hungry to bed, is annoying, but no 

 great hardship, but where a gun's failure to work may cost a 

 man his life, the question becomes a more seiious one. if 

 one is going to use his rifle merely to pop away at a deer as 

 Ions as it is in sight, let him use a repeater, if he thinks best, 

 but if he expects to rely on it as a weapon of defense, he hud 

 better choose an arm on which he can place more depend- 

 ence. 



2. Repeaters are unsafe, as I believe. They are unsafe 

 because, with the tube magazine under the barrel, or with 

 the magazine in the stock, there is always liability to a dis- 

 charge of the cartridges in the magazine. This, it is true, 

 may be avoided, provided the primers are very deeply seated, 

 so as to be flush with or below the level of the base of the 

 shell, and the ball of the next cartridge be flat, on the end, 

 but a man who hunts much will use a great many cartridges 

 in a season, and who shall say that every one of these cart- 

 ridges will be perfect in these respects? It is scarcely to be 

 expected that a man should examine each cartridge, and test 

 it before putting it in the magazine. 



In the hands of a friend of mine, the magazine of a Win- 

 chester rifle exploded on the discharge of the cartridge in the 

 rifle. He was shooting from above, at a band of mountain 

 sheep. He heard the sound of the iutended shot, followed 

 at once by the cartridges in the magazine, and involuutanly 

 tossed the gun over the cliff after the running sheep. He 

 then wiped the blood from his face and went back to camp. 

 Fortunately he had but one slight cut on the side of the head 

 from a piece of flying metal. 



In the hands of another friend, a Hotchkiss gun went to 

 pieces. He was prospecting, and was driving a lazy jack, 

 which was packed with his outfit. In trying to hurry the 

 jack he punched it with the gun, which he held by the muz- 

 zle. The magazine exploded, and— well, the jack hurried 

 that time, and the gun flew down the mountainside, as far 

 as a ^ood stout arm could throw it. Those who are m love 

 with the repeater will probably say that a gun should not be 

 used to prod lazy animals. Very true, but I presume that 

 every man who has ever traveled with a pack train, has made 

 use of his rifle for just that purpose. These are my two 

 objections to magazine guns as they are now made and I 

 believe that they apply to all those constructed as I have 

 stated The Lee ffuns are not open to the same objections, 

 but they will probably never come into favor as a hunting 

 arm the clumsy side bar being enough to condemn them 



utterly for that purpose. 



It would not be difficult to show that for other reasons the 

 magazine gun is very faulty as a hunting arm. Its balance 

 is constantly changing, a very grave fault indeed. It con- 

 duces to poor shooting, for a man does not use the same care 

 in aiming that he does with a singleloader, feeling sure that 

 he can get in three or four more shots before the animal gets 

 far and being willing to take his chances of killing on some 

 one of these,. Prom this fact, too, it is a cruel weapon. Ihe 

 shooter keeps on firing away at the herd of animals, shooting 

 at the "bunch" as long as they are within sight, and at the 

 end of the ' 'engagement" he may find one or two dead, but he 

 is quite certain that half a dozen have gone off with broken 

 le<'s or balls through the paunch, and that for days they will 

 linger with festering wounds in which the blow-flies have 

 deposited their eggs, suffering we know not what agonies. 



With the singleloader, this is not so likely to occur, A man 



