486 
+ 
[Jaw, 15 1885. 
‘ 
tradiction to the received opinion among sportsmen in this 
country, but my experience is the result of over twenty years 
use of the shotgun in the United States and South America, 
and of very many different guns at game and the target. I 
have known a deer to be killed by a 24-gauge muzzleloading 
shotgun at 80 yards, and a couple of years ago a wildcat 
(Lynx rufus) was killed near this place with a 20-gauge shot- 
gun, at 65 yards, and any one who has hunted them knows 
the tenacity of life of a wildcat. In using buckshot out of a 
small-bore, it is imperative to get sizes that chamber, and if 
the intersizes between the shot are packed solid with bone 
dust, or bismuth or even dust shot, much better shooting is 
obtained than with loose buckshot. 
A typographical error makes me say in the article referred 
to, ‘the best length for a 16-gauge is 81inches.” I wrote 82. 
For good shooting I would even prefer 34 inches to the 28 of 
most of the 16-gauge guns imported from England. The 
statement that short guns shoot as well as long ones, which 
is found in most moderp works on shooting, is another error 
following in the wake of the big-bore heresy. It is often 
said that long barrels are unfit for wing-shooting, on account 
of their unhandiness. This isnot true. It is a mere matter 
of practiceand education, 1 have used a 34-inch, and found I 
could throw it on a bird just as well as I could the ordinary 
short barrels. Thereis one more fallacy I wish to call atten- 
tion to, that is, that small shot penetrate further than coarse 
shot, as it has less resisting surface. This is as mistaken a 
statement as could well be composed. A few practical trials 
will prove its falsity to any one, and I refer te Long’s 
“American Wildfowl Shooting” for some good remarks on 
this very subject, page 31-32, Chapter LI. d 
Prejudice is hard to overcome, and there has been an un- 
reasonable amount of prejudice in favor of the large-bores 
since the introduction of breechloaders in this country, but— 
“Truth crushed to earth will rise again,* 
and I am confident that sportsmen who try the small-bores, 
and load them intelligently, will soon be convinced that they 
are much more sportsmanlike weapons to use than 10 or 12 
bores, as they require greater skill to hold on the bird, while 
at the same time having equal killing power and range. 
Much of the prejudice against small-bores is due entirely to 
ignorance, and it is for the purpose of throwing some hight 
en the subject that 1] have written these articles. 
CYRTONYX. 
Fort Stanton, New Mexico. 
A SHOT WITH BOTH EYES SHUT. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Tam fearful you will think that in putting out the fire in 
iny cabinet last summer, your humble servant was also ‘‘ex- 
tinguished,” and I write fo say he still kicks with every 
prospect of continuing the exercise for some time to come. 
J must acknowledge, however, that to see so much of a life 
work so up in smoke, is one of the toughest strains human 
fiber is called to endure. There is one comfort left, no other 
person will ever know what I have lost. 
Dr. Johnson once said: ‘‘That the man who so purposes 
should make haste to give while he has power to do so, that 
his gift may be enjoyed.” You will doubtless appreciate 
my regret that the black racer (C7. ewrsor) was not given 
while I had possession and the will to send it to you; now 
both reptiles, with two ground snakes, are gone, the oppor- 
tunity is forever lost, because another like possession who 
can insure me? 
1 spent the summer, as I have done the past ten years, at 
my birthplace far up the Connecticut River, sporting and 
gathering reminiscences of early life. Here the white pine 
grows at its best, and here Turdus imperiahs pours out a 
fiood of song inimitable and unapproachable by any other 
living bird. During the month of October I was out every 
day with my gun (except Sundays), and, although not going 
a mile from the house, we feasted on fifty grouse (partridge) 
without sensible diminution of the stock, a dozen Northern 
hares, gray squirrels without number; while hawks, jays, 
owls, pileated woodpecker, porcupine and smaller animals 
were added to preserved specimens of natural history, 
Partridges were never so abundant in New England as at 
present. Never before had the birds such ‘‘protection” as 
the white pine covers afford and will afford m coming cen- 
turies, The whole Connecticut Valley is being filled again 
with that tree as it wasoue hundred yearsago. The natural 
history of the white pine, its growth in just a century, the 
profit of that growth on two acres of ground I have gathered 
from actual survey and figures. The grove was not a rifle 
shot from my birthplace, and consequently under my eye all 
through early and middle life. 
There has been occasional discussion in the Fores? AND 
StTrREAM on the propriety or possibility of shooting with both 
eyes open as against shooting with one eye closed. 1 do 
not know that any one has recommended shooting with both 
eyes shut, hut the facts I relate go to show the thing has 
been done. I never tried the experiment myself, 1 wanted, 
as I have a thousand times done, to see the shot ruffle the 
feathers of the game, First an instance of shooting with 
both eyes open. I have read somewhere that ‘‘an honest 
man's the noblest work of God,” whatever that meant in 
olden times, it is little used at the present day. At any rate, 
T assume that my grandfather was an honest man (presum- 
ing you have studied logic). When the region was first set- 
iled, betwixt bears, wolves, catamounts and Indians, the 
scattered settlers had rather skittish times, and the few sheep 
they possessed were hardly safe, although penned against the 
house. One night my grandfather was awakened by trouble 
in the sheep pen. He stepped to the door and uttered such 
words of disapprobation at the proceedings, that an old bear 
gathered herself out of the pen with the least possible delay. 
He went back saying, “‘Hestar [giving Hsther the true church 
aceent| Eestar, Tl give that bear a shot if he comes here 
again,” took down an old Queen Anne, a relic of the French 
war, loaded it with a handful of powder and two balls, and 
went to bed. Soon there was another disturbance in the 
pen; he stepped lightly to the door, thrust the muzzle of the 
zun between the logs, then looking over the fence, let drive 
at some dark object inside. 
We ali know the deliberate proceedings of the flintlock. 
There was a click, a whisk, and this was followed immedi- 
ately by a whang, which a mountain just back of the house 
sent broadside against one across the river, and which in 
turn re-echoed the sound with change and interchange, until 
it finally died away in the distance. 
out of the pen, my grandfather returned the gun to the 
hooks, went again to bed, and was undisturbed till morning. 
The bear walked afew steps and ‘‘passed in her checks,” 
where she lay at daylight in the morning. A fatal shot, 
yon will see, with both eyes wide open, and some two feet 
from the gun. 
those boyish, timid men ‘‘afraid of everything,” 
believe he ever rode a horse at gallop, certainly in a lifetime 
IT never saw nor heard of his doing so, 
manhood he one morning discovered in a pond of backwater 
from the river, just beyond the barnyard, a pair of black 
-on our farms, and also at ‘ambering. When at the latter 
plenty of’ lumber camps even now located in the Maine 
The bear again mounted 
His son, contemporary with my own father, was one of 
1 dont 
After growing to 
ducks, Wishing to do something worthy of record, he took 
down the old gun, already loaded, crept across the yard, 
et the ordnance between the logs, and took aim at the 
ucks, 
direction, he shut both eyes and pulled, There were the 
same preliminaries, followed soon after by an explosion, 
which, as on a former occasion, shook the hills and finally 
died out. 
then the other, and then looked around. The ducks lay 
dead, as would a dozen had they been in the neighborhood. 
This | had from his own mouth while living. 
Then turning his face clear around in an opposite 
After all was quiet my uncle opened one eye, 
B. HorsForp. 
NorvTs THETFORD, Vi. 
THE MAINE DEER LAW, 
Editer Horest and Stream: 
A word in answer to the communications of Mr. Henry 
P. Wells in your issue of Dec, 25 may be timely. The 
praises bestowed upon John Danforth no one, to my know- 
ledge, has any wish to controvert. 
tising, however, and utterly foreign to the subject. Im poimt 
of personal honor, courage, and both intellectual and physi- 
cal strength, I would give all credit to the two leading suides 
of the Parinachenee region, but one of them favors jack- 
shooting out of season, and the other hunting with dogs; 
and in fact every other guide has his own pet ideas and 
urgent wishes. 
one as of another, and to grant all would be simply to exter- 
minate, 
They are public adver- 
It would be as just to grant the requests of 
Says Mr. Wells, ‘‘Some of your correspondents virtually 
assume that the addition of this single month [meaning Sep- 
tember] to the open season would annihilate the game of the 
Maine wilderness.” 
only assumption of those who denounce the addition of the 
month of September, is that the general tendency is toward 
annihilation now, and that we need greater restriction and 
not greater license. 
No one has said any such thing. The 
In the quotations from Mr. Danforth’s letters as given by 
Mr. Wells there is some truth. The charge is made in the 
quotations mentioned, that the French Canadians employed 
as lumbermen kill more game and fish than all the sports- 
men put together. Ji this be true it certainly behooves the 
authorities to be on the watch, and the author of this state- 
ment can give his evidence just as well without the month 
of September being an open month, and he would be just as 
likely to do so. But Mr. Wells, in his comments on Mr. 
Danforth’s statement, goes an to say “these Frenchmen come 
over the boundary from Canada and return the same way 
through the woods. They can never be caught in.or near a 
Maine settlement, Screened by the dense forest, blocked by 
impassable snow, they continue the work of slaughter among 
the game and fish, year after year.” Does the gentleman 
stop to think that the French as a class are neither hunters 
nor inclined to a solitary life? They come from Canada into 
Maine, it is true, but they come by a few well-traveled routes, 
and rarely, if ever, stray into the wilderness alone. They 
settle in Our cities and towns and laber in our factories and 
employment, they are neither experts in the art of game 
destruction, nor greatly inclined that way. There are a 
woods that will be supplied with fish and yenison during the 
present winter, but it is not the Frenchman who will furnish 
the supply, It is rather the live Yankee who is employed 
by the lumbering company at better wages as a head man, 
and who delights in hunting. He is the one who combines 
the business of a guide for sportsmen in the summer and 
fall, with that of a lmmberman in winter and a river driver 
in the spring. There are many such. Don‘t swallow the 
camel with a single gulp and yet strain so hard at the little 
gnat of a Frenchman. All that may be said in charity for 
the poor of any race may be said of him. 
The same writer asserts that the season has opened in New 
Hampshire on Sept. 1 for severul years, and yet he is in- 
formed on the very best authority that the deer there have con- 
stantly increased in number. What does that prove? The gen- 
tleman is probably aware that whatever forests there may be 
in New Hampshire are but a supplement fo those of Maine, 
and with no natural or marked divisions. As long as deer 
are well protected in Maine, New Hampshire will still have 
them to some extent, no maiter how poorly the Granite 
State may make and enforce its laws. 
In another paragraph of Mr, Wells's article we find the 
assertion that the Maine trip is one of the most expensive 
that a sportsman can take, that the fishing for the last three 
seasons has greatly deteriorated, and that it is not the sport 
but the character of the guides that brings ‘*the millions” 
into Maine. Cana trip be called expensive when thirteen 
dollars will cover all the expenses of travel from Boston to 
the very center of the Maine fishing ground and back to 
Boston again? Or will he in any way benefit those very 
guides whose cause he presumes to defend, by crying up the 
expense and the deterioration of the sport tobe obtained? 
Besides the fishing in the Androscoggin region has been 
better for the last three years than in the three years preced- 
ing, and the same may be said of all places: where the Com- 
missioners have been supported passably. 
Another statement is that there has been recently opened 
up a new country, where the trout are much larger and more 
abundant than they are in Maine, and which can be visited 
at far less expense and with less sacrifice of personal com- 
fort. Where is this paradise of the sportsman, so cheap, 80 
convenient? Again, are the interests of those guides greatly 
adyanced by such assertions as the above, even if true? 
The scene of the little. clearing and humble cabin of the 
guide, and. his little ones to be fed. clothed and educated, 
may exist in the writer’s imagination, but very rarely else- 
where, The guides of the Maine forests as a class are men 
of energy, often well educated and living in the villages, and 
with comfortable means. Mr. J, G. Rich is perhaps the old- 
est and most widely known of them, He isa hale old man 
of eighty years, and though remoyed recently from the woods 
and a member of the school committee of the town in which 
he lives, he retaivs all his old love of a forest life. He has 
a comfortable and happy home aud a family of grown up 
children, all well educated and occupying honorable and 
prominent positions. The life of this man is but an illustra- 
tion of what the lives of many younger men who are DOW 
employed as guides will be. especially if they shun the temp- 
tations to dissipation presented to them by too'marly of the 
parties whom they accompany. 
would claim for many of the gnides—who does not?—thal 
I admit all Mr. Wells 
they are men in every quality that goes to make up a man. 
The same writer displays indignation at the sentence he 
quotes from the Maine Game Commissioners’ report: ‘“Hyery 
penny expended by our visitors is upon themselyes in pure 
selfishness, and in the indulgence of a license they would not 
care to exhibit elsewhere.” The words of the Commission- 
ers but portray the truth, The actions of too many in the 
years past have given ample provocation for the expression 
of the Commissioners. When legislators of high rank, col- 
lege professors, principals of schools, and professional men: 
of every grade, not excepting the clergy, break the laws of 
a commonwealth at their caprice, it is time that they were 
reminded of it. 
It is yet to be shown in what way the addition of the month 
of September to the opeu season will benefit any class of 
men. The business man who wishes to indulge in deer 
shooting can do so in October as well as in September. As 
far as any good to the guides from such a change is con- 
cerned, or of any more money being turned into the State, 
it would be just the reverse, Under the present law the sea- 
son is longer; for many, after the September fishing, stay 
into October for the sake of the hunting. Make September 
an open month for shooting deer and it is easy to see that 
the season would be shortened which gives the guides em- 
ployment, On the other hand, every license that is given 
adds one to the list of dangers that are already too great for 
a variety of game that hold at present too short a lease of 
life. I can but state again what Ihave before stated in 
these columns: it is greater protection that is needed and not 
greater license to destroy. 
From a personal acquaintance with many of the members 
of the present Legislature, 1 haye no doubt but that the acts 
of that body will be governed by reason, and tha all classes 
will have a fair and impartial hearing, The best ood of the 
public as a whole will, of course, receive the preference in 
these matters. If it should happen that the interests of a few, 
whether such interests are fancied or real, are at variance 
with all others, then such interests must of a necessity be 
sacrificed, Nort Brington. 
A SHY AT A BUFFALO. 
Heiter Forest und Stream: 
Among the many remarkable shots recorded in the col- 
umns of ForEsT AND SrrEAM, I would like fo record one 
of the most singular occurrences, whereby three yery san- 
guine hunters were terribly disappointed, A few years ago 
a party of three determined upon a buffalo hunt on the 
plains, north of the Arkansas River, on what is known as 
the White Woman. Our base of supplies was to be Lakin, 
Kansas, about eighteen miles from the Colorado line, on the 
A. P.and Santa Fe Railroad. We secured a noted feuide 
and two teams to transport our camp equipage, and the 
necessary rations for a week’s outing. The weather was of 
that peculiar hazy, sunless days that proclaim approaching 
storm in the States, but for our latitude ‘ould not be taken 
to mean anything during these first days of November, Our 
first night out was rather pleasant, except as day came on 
we were decidedly chilled, but as we had brought 
with us a few old barrel stayes and pieces of pine 
boxes, we managed to warm up and make some 
coffee, which put us all into good humor, About noon 
of the second day the wind commenced to blow a perfect 
tornado, and when we arrived at White Woman we con- 
cluded to go into camp and wait for the storm to blow over. 
During the afternoon, the wind having ceased somewhat, 
we pulled ont down stream about fifteen miles and put up 
our tent in a low piece of ground sheltered somewhat by a 
sandhill. The night was fearfully cold, and Dr. P. and 
myself got up and tried to keep warm by pulling up and 
burning some coarse marsh grass, as all our fuel was 
exhausted, and no buifalo chips were to be had. The next 
day dawned with the appearance of milder weather. We 
soon had our coffee, and after being assured by our guide 
that we were right in the buffalo range, we all chereed up, 
and soon pulled out in search of game. 
After traveling about three or four miles our driver dis- 
covered a herd of wild horses off to our right, and notwith- 
standing the distance between our party and the herd of 
horses could not have been less than five miles, the herd be- 
gan to show uneasiness and soon moved off to our rear at a 
good speed. In peering over the plains one of the party 
espied some black object ahead of the teams, and not to ex- 
ceed six hundred yards distant. Our guide mounted the 
seat and soon jumped down as though he was shot, and in a 
loud whisper said, ‘Buffalo, boys.” The rifles were 
soon out, and the guide forming us in line, all abreast, 
told us that we must walk straight forward until within 
shooting distance, when we must all be ready at the word 
“Fire,” to give them a volley, We had no sooner reached 
the top of the rise than away scampered the buffalo, six im 
number, all old bulls, and I thought that I never saw such 
fleet-footed animals in my life; and before we got back to 
our teams, it seemed as though these old bulls were at least 
twenty miles off and still going for all that was up. “Well,” 
says we, ‘What next?” “Follow right on,” said the guide, 
“and they'll soon get tired and let us get up with them.” 
So we followed on, all day, no stepping, no eating, the wind 
blowing a regular Arctie winter, and the sky completely 
overcast with dark clouds. About 4 o’clock the herd began 
to stop at short intervals and turn and look after us. Finally 
we suggested to the guide that, as the distance could nof ex- 
ceed four hundred yards, and ag we were all armed with 
heavy guns, we could do no better than give them 4 shot 
anyway. So we got in Jine again and had the teams wait 
until we would try a shot, One old fellow was standing 
broadside; we elevated our sights and at the word fire let 
drive, and of aJl the kicking up you ever saw, that old bull 
did it, It seemed to me that he had the regular broucho 
straddle, and as to running, far outstripped his companions. 
This caused the herd to separate, and one wounded one, 
with.one other, started in a circle back the way we had 
come. The remainder of the herd started for the setting 
sun, This excitement warmed up our blood, and while 
standing watching the fast receeding game, our guide called 
out, “Look, boys, to your left.” Turning we saw 4 buffalo 
calf about a mile off coming up the swale. “‘Now, boys,” 
said the guide, ‘“‘g0 out about three hundred yards and lie 
flat down and wait, and that calf will come right up to you.” 
We did as ordered, and sure enough Mr. Calf came right on 
to within fifty or sixty yards. Dr. P. says, ‘‘It’s a pity to 
shoot that calf.” Mr. H. said that he had come out to kill 
buffalo, and he was going to shoot. ‘‘Hold on,” says Dr. Pe 
‘if you shoot we will all shoot,” So I was to give the 
word, and at the word ‘“‘three” bang went all three gene 
