426 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



(June 26, 1884. 



smaller the shot the more rapid the diminution of force. 

 Choke-bores did not uniformly excel plain cylinders. One 

 chokebore, which was almost a perfect cylinder in addition 

 to the choke, excelled. One good cylinder of 28 inches ex- 

 celled several ehokebores of SO inches. Too little is known 

 of the shape of the inside of our gun barrels. 



Twenty-five years ago 1 stood on a yacht's deck with seven 

 other shooters. We were at anchor, resting after a coot 

 shoot. A measured Hue of fifty yards was attached to a 

 wounded loon and he swam out to its length. We had muz- 

 zleloaders, double barrel, of various sizes and bores. 8 to 15 

 pounds and from 12 to 8-gauge. All were, anxious for the 

 first shot; all had their chance. Each one loaded to suit his 

 fancy, as had been his habit, for coots. Every one of the 

 sixLeen barrels was discharged; the head and neck of the 

 loon appeared well covered every time, but the loon was ap- 

 parently untouched. The gunners were chagrined and 

 astonished. The loon was drawn in to 25 yards. The six- 

 teen barrels were discharged. at him in succession as before, 

 and the loon was unscathed. At 15 yards the first shot dis- 

 patched him. The gunners of that party Learned something. 

 Bear in mind that in the head and neck of a loon, not over 

 the size of one's finger presented itself for shot. Thirty to 

 40 yards is as far as sea fowl are usually successfully killed. 



1 have seen occasionally a fowl killed at 75 or more yards, 

 but always with a shot through the soft part of his head or 

 neck. 



Ask any one of those gunners what was the force of the 

 recoil of their guns on their shoulder, iu pounds, with 3 

 drams and 1 ounce in 8-pound gun, or 5 drams and 1| ounces 

 iu 12-pound gun, and he would say 10 to 15 pounds. By ex- 

 periment it is 75 pounds in light guns and 100 to 125 pounds 

 in heavy guns 10 to 15 pounds. Some gunners have an idea 

 that guu barrels can be constructed by some shrewd makers 

 of such a form at the breech that when powder explodes in 

 them, it, will manifest force only in propelling shot and have 

 no recoil. If gunners would consider the propelling force 

 requisite to drive shot 50 yards through a duck, they would 

 readily conceive, as the force of exploding powder is equal 

 in every direction, lhat equal force must be exerted against 

 the shoulder. Witness the pains taken to check the great 

 recoil in heavy ordnance. Austin. 



Maine. 



The Shovel Hunters. — A short time ago while out 

 witk dog and gun I met a couple of that peculiar type of 

 "trise sportsmen" who, instead of glorying in the skillful 

 use of a modern guu, go armed with implements which re- 

 quire less skill to handle and cost less money, namely, a 

 pick and shovel. They had just finished a forenoon's job, and 

 the one stood holding a poor kicking "cotton tail" while No. 



2 cut its throat. As the rabbit was supposed to be breathing 

 about his last breath, No. 2 suggested to "throw him down 

 and let the dog smell 'im." This was done as soon as sug- 

 gested, but the dog never "smelled 'im,"as the rabbit had 

 just enough life hit to run a short distance and into another 

 hole.— Bekgold. 



Lono Island Game Protection Fund —New York, 

 June 20. — Editor Forest and Stream: We have received from 

 the Brooklyn Ghu Club the sum of $25, to be used for em- 

 ploying detectives to secure the conviction of game law 

 breakers on Long Island. We have also received for the 

 same purpose $25 from the Richmond County Game and 

 Fish Protective Association. — Francis Endicott and Gus- 

 tave Walter. 



Pennsylvania. — Mount Pleasant, June 19.— I hear Bob 

 White in every direction. Bob wintered well here, partially 

 owing to the tact that some farmers were unable to husk all 

 their corn till spring. Fall shooting will certainly be grand. 

 Woodcock seem to be plentiful also. — Farmer. 



No Ruffed Grouse in August.— New York, June 19.— 

 Editor forest and Stream: I see Mr. Frank Kent, of Monti- 

 cello, N. Y., advertises on page 405 of your paper, to furnish 

 partridge shooting in August. How does he manage it? 

 Where is the game constable'/— W. IIolberton. 



New York Woodcock. — The general open wanonfor wood- 

 cock in this Slate has not been altered. It will begin August 1. 

 Tim applies to Long Island ecu well. 



fod and Mivet Mi 



CAMPS OF THE KINGFISHERS. 



Black Lake, Michlgan.-VII. 



WE found the other boys enjoying their after-lunch 

 pipes in the shade of some bushes not far from the 

 ledge of rocks and pulled in to see "what luck." Here 

 another serious backset struck us in the shape of a distract- 

 ing string of lish — mostly pickerel — tied to each boat, which 

 the boys had taken coining up and along the rocky shore 

 near the Rocks, and from some, of the remarks fired at us 

 we concluded that this must be our day to cut bait, not to 

 fish. Taking a path leading through the bushes and swamp, 

 we started to find a spring that the Deacon said he had dis- 

 covered a few rods back from the beach near an old deserted 

 house, which we had passed shortly after leaving the French- 

 man's, Dick remarking as he took the lead, tin cup in hand, 

 "Must be somethin's goin' to happen to the Deacon when he 

 takes to huntiu' up springs and cultivatm' a taste for water." 



We found the spring, boiling up out of an old barrel sunk 

 in the marshy ground at the foot of the low hill, a good 

 strong stream, and for the benefit of any thirsty soul who 

 may hereafter be fishing in the vicinity of the Rocks, I will 

 say it is the sweetest and coldest water to be found anywhere 

 around the lake. The waters of Black Lake are several 

 degrees higher in temperature than the waters of any of the 

 lakes iu the Six Lakes region, beginning at Fountain Lake— 

 the upper one of the intermediate chain — and having their 

 outlet at Elk Rapids into Grand Traverse Bay on the other 

 side of the State, and (he streams and springs running into 

 it are not nearly as cold and pure as those of the interme- 

 diate region, but "this particular one is an exception, and it is 

 certainly worth a two miles' pull in a boat at any time to get 

 a drink of its waters. 



(Anent springs, streams, and water in general. I am moved 

 to make another digression. My letters in Forest and 

 Stream two years ago appeared to afford right smart amuse- 

 ment to a few of the brethren on account of the frequent 

 reference iu them to "clear streams, cold springs, brooks," 

 etc., and 1 just want to say here that, should any of them 



hereafter be seized with a raging desire to have a little sport 

 over the clearness and coldness of the waters I may take a 

 notion to write about, they will be wasting their time, for I 

 am a water bird, in camp and out of it; as Old Ben would 

 say, * 'From my topknot, plumb down to the eends o 5 my 

 toes," and I am going to talk, drink and write water per- 

 fectly regardless of any little pleasantries that may be in- 

 dulged in at my expense, and I want every brother of the 

 rod who goes to these North Woods for recreation, sport and 

 health to know where all the good springs and streams are 

 at which I have cooled my thrapple, for one-half the comfort 

 and satisfaction of a trip to the wilds of Notth Michigan is 

 to be had in drinking of the waters of its glorious springs and 

 streams, unsurpassed as they are anywhere for their sweet- 

 ness, coldness and purity. As to "camp drinks," I concede 

 the right to every man to drink anything that seems best to 

 him, but. my voice will always be against "beverages in 

 camp," for they are a fruitful cause of ill-feeling, quarrels, 

 broken friendships and accidents. They work harm a score 

 of times where they do good not once. Let us older fellows 

 of the gentle craft, set an example to the younger generation 

 of anglers coming after us, by convincing* them by our prac- 

 tice that spirits and fishing do not necessarily go together; 

 that it only makes the load heavier to balance a lunch in one 

 pocket with a bottle in the other. Let us teach them to shun 

 all "beverages," and encourage them, like our Deacon, to 

 "cultivate a taste for water." Here the digression ends, and 

 I trust it may lead many of the bibulous brethren into a 

 "train of reflection" before the fit seizes them to air their 

 cleverness in an attempt to make sport of pure cold water as 

 a beverage, or hold up to ridicule those that prefer the odors 

 of the virgin woods to the assortment of smells in a brewery.] 



Back in our boat again Dick and I felt it was high time to 

 save our reputations from total wreck by taking a fish or 

 two; and with this end in view we left the boys to their 

 pipes and pulled along shore to the ledge where we were sure 

 to find a bass or pickerel waiting to be snatched out of his 

 native element without as much as a chance to say good-bye 

 to his nearest neighbors. We felt we were capable of per- 

 forming this feat with neatness and dispatch, would some 

 fish of convenient size only give us the opportunity, but after 

 pulling our boat up on the rocky shore and casting for half 

 an hour over twenty yards of water in front and to either 

 side, we scored another backset by failing to raise a fin. 

 Then we set our rods — a sure sign we were getting lazy — and 

 picking out a soft place among the rough and jagged rocks 

 near the foot of the low cliff a few feet back of us, we seated 

 ourselves about twenty yards apart to study the case over 

 and wait tor a "bite." 



For lack of something better to do while waiting for the 

 long-expected nibble, I removed a good sized flat stone from 

 its resting place iu the clay, and iu so doing left a tiny 

 stream trickling from the rocks above soon formed a little 

 "cool spring," which afterward fully paid for the labor ex- 

 pended in scooping it out. Stretched out there on the rocks 

 waiting for the spring to clear I fell into a doze, out of 

 which I was presently aroused by the sharp chatter of a 

 kingfisher winding up his reel, and looking sleepily up with- 

 out changing position, there sat the emblem of our club bal- 

 ancing himself on a limb of a projecting bush that found a 

 precarious hold for its roots in a fissure in the rocks over my 

 head. 



He was not more than four or five feet from me, but he 

 was too busy trying to stop the swaying of the limb on which 

 he sat to notice me at first, when, however, the limb stopped 

 vibrating, he peered inquisitively down at me with his keen 

 eyes, wondering, no doubt, how that curiously-shaped old 

 stone had found its way there since his last fishing excursion 

 to this, his favorite preserve. 



I remained perfectly motionless and he finally seemed to 

 be satisfied in his mind that I was one of the original stones 

 included in the preemption claim, as after a careful scrutiny 

 he settled down on his perch, meditating, I had a notion, on 

 the chances of going supperless to roost, and on the "onsat- 

 isfyiir natur' " of fish as a regular diet, especially when the 

 demand exceeded the supply— exactly Dick's case and mine 

 for that day as near as 1 could figure it out. Suddenly the 

 emblem straightened up and unwound a few yards of line, 

 •with the familiar chatter that greets the angler everywhere 

 in his wanderings where fish are and comfort is to be had 

 with the rod. 



Then he stretched out one leg behind, as though to kick 

 the cramps out of it, and then a like movement was made 

 with the other one, clearly a case of "rheumatiz" brought 

 on by too much dabbling in the water. 



Hitching along the limb an inch or two, he raised his tail 

 with a preliminary flourish and made a profound bow in 

 Dick's direction, this unaccountable mark of politeness being 

 repeated at short and regular intervals for at least ten min- 

 utes. 



Maybe he had just swallowed a young perch and the 

 spines of the dorsal "wus a trublin' ov nis innards," or a 

 fishbone had lodged crosswise in his throat and he was 

 humping himself to get it down, and it may have been a 

 habit of his nature, like the funny tilting up and down of 

 the little "teeter 'snipe" one sees wherever he goes a fishing. 



When this curious and ludicrous performance had con- 

 tinued until I was nigh bursting with smothered laughter, I 

 ended it by suddenly jerking my hat from my head and 

 swinging it up near where he grasped the limb. Whish! 

 Like a flash he went upward, rheumatics, fishbones and all. 

 and shot out over the water, too badly scared to chatter till 

 he was a hundred yards away, and the last I saw of him 

 was a devious, blue' streak of chatter, growing fainter in the 

 distance, going down the lake in the direction of our camp. 



That "emblem," 1 venture, did not 'light on another twig 

 or dead branch that day, nor for a week without first making 

 a careful survey of the adjacent surroundings to satisfy 

 himself there were no odd-shaped rocks lying around loose 

 not indigenous to the soil that were liable to blow up and 

 scare him baldheaded. 



The interest I had taken in watching the kingfisher 

 knocked all the doze out of me, and getting the rifle from 

 the boat I found a place nearby where 1, with some labor, 

 climbed the rocky face of the ledge and stood on top, where 

 I got a very fine view of the lake, which fully repaid me for 

 an abraded' shin that came in contact with a sharp stone just 

 at the hardest point of the climb. 1 took the rifle along be- 

 cause one cannot always know what manner of varmint he 

 may meet in these woods, and a breechloadiug rifle is a 

 famous implement to have about you if caught in a tight 

 place without having carefully mapped out your line of re- 

 treat beforehand. I might chance on a bear in my contem- 

 plated ramble in the woods, and we, the bear ana I, might 

 come to a misunderstanding about the right of way, and 

 then the breechloader would ^be a strong argument on my 

 side. The misunderstanding might bring on a difficulty, and 



as I was not in first-class practice on bears the Tesult would, 

 like as not, prove I would be knocked out in the first, inning, 

 in which case Dick'B verdict as coroner and jury would have 

 been carried back to the boys in about this shape, ' 'served 

 the durned fool right for not stickin' to his fish-pole." 



I struck back up the ridge into a burnt district of a few 

 acres, but the traveling was so hard that by the time I 

 reached the woods lying between the head of the lake and 

 the State road, I had enough of it and turned off the right 

 and came out after a while on the lake shore near Merrill's 

 landing. I saw no bear sign nor anything larger than a 

 ground squirrel in the shape of game. I met an old 

 acquaintance, however, from "Eel River, Eel River," as he 

 persisted in telling me every few rods, in the person of a 

 "sassy" bluejay that followed me for a quarter of a mile, 

 scolding and telling me in the plainest of jay language just 

 what he thought of me. until I was glad when he got so 

 hoarse he had to hie away to the lake to wet his whistle and 

 smooth his ruffled feathers. When I came out to the lake 

 and started along the beach back to the rocks, I was 

 reminded that my brief bear hunt was another failure as far 

 as it had a bear-ing on a supply of meat for the camp, but I 

 reasoned it was best perhaps as it turned out, for had I suc- 

 ceeded in killing a bear, life would have been a burden for 

 the next week by reason of the congratulations and bear 

 stories Merrill and the boys would have overwhelmed me 

 with, and even now, as I write this, 1 feel profoundly grate- 

 ful to any bear that may have been loitering in the vicinity 

 that day, that he or she, as the case may have been, did not 

 come within certain-dealh range of the breechloader. 



During my absence Dick, with a streak of selfishness not 

 usual with him, had selected the very softest bed in the 

 rocks along the shore, and when I came on him he was lying 

 curled up iu the hot sun sound asleep and snoring with a 

 vehemence that threatened to loosen the root* of the few 

 stunted cedars and bushes growing along the brow of the 

 low cliff overlooking the water some thirty feet directly 

 above him. Rousing him up, we reeled in our lines to find 

 the frogs on the hooks dead and stiff without a mark to show 

 that they had been disturbed. Another backset. 



After a hearty drink at the little spring which was now 

 as clear as crystal, we got into the boat and pulled straight 

 out from shore over sixty or seventy yards of rocky bottom 

 that to a river angler would have indicated a ' 'powerful good 

 place for bass," but all signs had failed us that day and we 

 were not much disappointed at not taking a fish here, 

 although the other boys had at this very spot taken their 

 best bass during the forenoon. 



The bottom from the ledge nearly arouud to the mouth of 

 the Rainy is rocky and free from grass and weeds, the water 

 ranging in depth from one to ten and fifteen feet for a 

 hundred yards or more out from the shore, and I am sure it 

 must be as Merrill said, a famous place for bass in the 

 fall. 



Stizo&teth — (life is too short to waste on this word)— pike- 

 perch also flourish in this lake, albeit those we saw were not 

 in a very flourishing condition. We counted five, floating 

 along this [rocky shore, dead and bloated, that were from a 

 foot and a half to two feet long, but an examination dis- 

 closed no spear wounds or marks that might suggest they 

 ban been tampering with the fighting end of a maska- 

 longe, or anything that would indicate the manner of their 

 t dung off, and as we were more interested just then in live 

 fish than dead ones we spent little time in conjectures over 

 them. 



As the sun was now getting well down and our poor luck ap- 

 pearing to stick to us like a "pheasant burr," Dick suggested 

 that" we "make a straight shoot for camp and not squander 

 our time in folleriu' the synopsis of the shore" — a suggest- 

 ion that furnished an immediate excuse for me to lean over 

 the side of the boat to again water the frogs and prevent au 

 explosion. 



Synopsis was a good word, but it fell short a couple of 

 syllable of the word Dick was reaching for; however, it 

 answered his purpose just as well as though it were a yard 

 long, and the satisfied expression of his countenance as he 

 took a puff or two at his pipe said plainly, "Old Webster 

 mustn't come foolin' round me with his big dictionary, for 

 if he does I'll floor him every time." 



We finally decided to "fuller the synopsis" and turning 

 shoreward we fished along the streak of grass clear down to 

 camp with — let me record it truthfully and without hunting 

 around for worn out excuses usually taken to camp in cases 

 of this kind— exactly the same results that had attended 

 us the whole day; but Dick and I were in the best of humor 

 and at peace with ourselves and all the earth, for we had 

 enjoyed the lovely July day and the scenery around the 

 lake thoroughly, aud we felt that, as a lamented brother of 

 the rod has said, "it is not all of fishing to fish." 



We however put it down in our mental log book as 

 "chronicles of an unsuccessful day," (Forest and Stream 

 will please give us credit) for we had fished over fifteen or 

 eighteen miles of goodlooking water without a solitary nibble, 

 a day's experience so unusual that I was not surprised when 

 Old Knots said that evening as we surrounded the camp-fire, 

 "Boys, Old Hickory has forgotton how to fish; his right hand 

 has lost its cunning, and 1 move we break up his rods and 

 start him on the back track for home." K>wftwinmOTi 



[to be continued.] 



Kingfibher. 



TIM AND SEVEN PONDS. 



rpHE suggestion in your issue of June 12 that one may be 

 I. undecided in selecting among the many advertised fish- 

 ing grounds, prompts me to tell what I know about Tim 

 Pond and Seven Ponds, having just returned from that local- 

 ity, where I spent two weeks. "" I wanted trout fishing, and 

 though I fully appreciate the satisfaction of taking and 

 showing a seven-pound Rangeley trout, I did not want him 

 this year. I wailed fly-hskmg, and gci l to a degre;. far 

 exceeding all promises or my own anticipation. And I am 

 fully convinced that this locality is the best in this country 

 for my sport. 



The region of the Dead River is yet in its infancy, and I 

 would feel like wishing it kept a secret, but believe that 

 under the influence of the present degree of intelli 

 the people, the popularity of fish protection and observance 

 of judieiouslaws, that it will not, likeRangeley, ever become 

 so depleted as to require restocking. 



You will here find all and more than is promised by Ken 

 nedy Smith, who has done so much to make these ponds 

 accessible. The buckboard roads through the forest have 

 been cleared of all obstructions since the gale of Id 

 and as evidence of their condition, 1 will gay I made the dis- 

 tance of thirteen miles between camps on foot, with my pack, 

 in four and a quarter hours, and had my morning and 

 evening fishing. 



