4^8 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



ing a de-w point of 59.7 and tho humidity of theuiir as 91. per 

 cent. The record stood : 



Bound. 50 Yards. 



S 14,911 in. 



5 14.612 in. 



6.... 14.874 in. 



11 16.015 in. 



18 14.780 in. 



lOO^Yards. 

 20.993 in. 

 20.494 in. 

 20.722 in. 

 23.413 in. 

 20.731 in. 



150 Yards. 

 16.244 in. 

 1.5.844 in. 

 16.144 m, 

 17.413 in. 

 16.066 in. 



Average ...15.038 in SLOYOiu. 16.342 in. 



For 100 yards trial the tip-up weapon was fitted to the rest 

 at 7 o'clock on the morning of Oct. 12, at which time the 

 wind came from the 3 o'clock quarter with a velocity of 18 

 miles per hour. The index on the aneroid barometer stood 

 at 30.290 inches, the dry thermometer column rose to 48.5°, 

 while the wet-bulb thermometer stood at 44.8°. This would 

 show a dew point of 39.8 and the humidity in the atmospkere 

 as 71 per cent. The trajectory table stands 



Round. 25 Yards. 



1 3.539 in. 



3 3.414 in. 



8 .3.433 in. 



4 3.509 in. 



5 3.7S3 in. 



Average 3.534 in- 



50 Yards. 

 4602 in. 

 4.305 in. 

 4.404 in. 

 4.427 in. 

 4736 in. 



75 Yards. 

 3.790 in. 

 3.431 in. 

 3. .578 in. 

 3.449 in. 

 3.908 in. 



4.495 in. 3.651 in. 



THE LYMAN SIGHT. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



In the Dec. 17 number of your paper "Backwoodsman 

 describes how he uses my rear sight, and does not agree 

 with my directions about removing the middle sight from 

 the rifle, provided it is made of a shape not to interfere with 

 much of the view. 



In reply, I say more than is necessarv to meet his case 

 because I know that the ma jority of those who have my sight 

 use it at a great disadvantage. The three principal faults 

 are : First, they leave the ordinary crotch sight on the bar- 

 rel, which shuts out a large part of the view; second they 

 use the small aperture, which makes it too much like a peep 

 sight, and therefore cannot do quick shooting with it; thu-d, 

 they shoot with the sight too far from the eye, which has the 

 eflfect of making the sight rim appear too wide and the aper- 

 ture too small, and consequently it obstructs some of the 

 view, making it more difficult to aim quickly. "Backwoods- 

 man" has so nearly avoided all of these faults that I cannot 

 criticise his method of using it very severely. As, however 

 he comes very far from getting the full benefit from my 

 sight, I will discuss his method. For convenience I speak 

 of the rear sight which is on the barrel of the rifle as the 

 "middle" sight, and my rear sight as the "rear" sight. This 



middle sight, which "Backwoodsman" has made by cutting 

 off the top and sides of the ordinary crotch sight, is a great 

 improvement over the ordinary middle sight, for, as he says, 

 it offers little obstraction to the view, and the top of the 

 front sight is plainly visible. 



The advantages which "Backwoodsman" claims for his 

 middle sight are that in hunting, where there is no time to 

 change the elevation of the rear sight, "one cau use the rear 

 sight by aiming through the lower part, the center, and top 

 of the large aperture, always knowing by the height of the 

 front sight above the middle sight whether the elevation is 

 right." I would say here that as long as the rear sight is 

 not disturbed it can be used in this way quite as accurately 

 when the middle sight is not there; and then when hunting, 

 if a small elevation is needed, it is much better to get it by 

 holding the front sight a trifle hi.srh on the object, for it is 

 quite an effort to get the eye away from the center of the 

 aperture, and although this aperture appears so krge it is 

 really so small and so far from the front sight that very little 

 elevation can be obtained by looking through it from the 

 bottom and again from the top. "Backwoodsman" very 

 truly says that "if the elevation of the rear sight is disturbed 

 the middle sight will indicate whether it is too high or too 

 low. " There is no reason, however, why the elevation should 

 not be right, for the sight can be turned down instantly as 

 far as it will go without even looking at it, and this should 

 be the point blank range. 



If for any reason the sight is too short and turns down too 

 far, a piece of brass can be soldered on to the lower end of 

 the sight stem, so that it will be impossible to turn it down 

 too low. Lastly, "Backwoodsman" says, "there are times 

 when this sight cannot be used at all, when it becomes too 

 dark to see with it." Now, as shooting in the dim light is 

 one of the advantages that this rear sight has over any form 

 of middle sight, I will explain how it should be used. As a 

 good test, try it with an ivory front sight and a white bulls- 

 eye. Use the large aperture and have no middle sight on 

 the rifle. Commence shooting at dusk. As the light be- 

 comes more dim the rim of the rear sight becomes indistinct. 

 Do not try to adjust your eye to the aperture, for it will be 

 guided without any effort on your part, but continue to shoot 

 as long as the front sight and the bullseye are visible, and 

 the result will be that you will make a better score than you 

 can possibly make with the middle sight. One is almost 

 sure to overshoot with a middle sight when the light is poor 

 and it is also very difficult to make good line shots. Just 

 here I will speak of the advantage of keeping both eyes open. 



In shooting with both eyes open the right eye does the 

 aiming. Although the left eye does not do the aiming it 

 sees everything except the rear .sight. 



The result is the shooter has more light, does not make the 

 effort of keeping the left eye closed and consequently can 

 shoot quicker and with greater ease— aud what is more im- 

 portant-— just as accurately as when only the right eye is 

 used. 



When the middle and front sights are used alone, double- 

 eyed shooting is more difficult, partly owing to the ditflculty 

 of keeping the attention of the left eye away from the mid- 

 dle sight. 



But to return to the subject of sights, many who use the 

 rear sight correctly think that the middle sight would be a 

 help to the rear sight in guiding the eye, so that if there was 

 plenty of time to aim the shooting would be more accurate. 

 This is not the case, however; for, as far as aiming is con- 

 cerned in any ordinary light, the middle sight virtually be- 

 comes a part of the front sight when the rear sight is used. 

 The part that it forms is, however, less distinct and twice as 

 large as if it were at the muzzle, and really one could shoot 

 better if it were at the muzzle with the front sight. 



I repeat to those whose preconceived ideas will not prevent 



them from at least trying this sight as it is intended to be 

 used, that the best results can only be obtained when the 

 eye IS close to the sight (as it naturally will be if the rifle is 

 held properly) and the middle sight out of the way. Use 

 the small aperture only for target shooting, and even then 

 most persons can do fully as well with the larger aperture 

 owing to the better light which is obtained. Keeping both 

 eyes open will also be a help, especially if shooting rapidlv 

 or m a dim light. & j 



When the rifle is used in this way there are only two 

 things to be considered, viz. : the front sight and the object 

 to be hit. The rear sight docs not need your attention and 

 in a short time you will almost be unconsious of its presence. 

 When you make a bad shot do not think it is owing to the 

 aperture of the rear sight being so large, for although its ap- 

 pearance is rather startling to one who has been accustomed 

 to use other sights it would still be accurate if it were con- 

 siderably larger. It often happens that, owing to a very long 

 rifle stock or |to a bad position when shooting, the sight 

 is so far from the eye that the rim appears too wide and its 

 aperture too small, so that it requires an effort to aim quickly, 

 especially at a moving object. In such a case matters can 

 be improved by having the aperture reamed out inch 

 larger in diameter; but it would be better to remedy the rifle 

 stock or the position and not change the sight. 



When first using this sight it is an excellent plan— after 

 adjusting it carefully by shooting at a target— to turn it 

 down and shoot at some near object, using only the front 

 sight as one would with a shotgun. 



A FUI.L VIEW OF THE FKONT SIGHT AND THE OBJECT. 



It will be apparent at once how easy rifle shooting would 

 become if one had to use only the front sight, but of course 

 to hit the mark one must use a rear sight. 



Now turn up the rear sight with the large aperture and 

 continue shooting, only giving the front sight and the 

 object your attention as before, and you will be surprised to 

 find that aiming is as easily done as it was with the front 

 sight alone and that you have obtained — what is essential in 

 a rifle — means of using it accurately as well as rapidly. 



William Lyman. 



MUor Forest and Stream : 



I have used the Lyman .«ight ever since it was first given 

 to the public, and no one improvement has added so much 

 to the pleasure of a day in the woods. The first three or 

 four years were spent with varied experiments with the 

 middle sight, among which I recognize the one illustrated in 

 "Backwoodsman's" article. Becoming tired of this, the 

 next move was to knock out the middle sight one morning 

 before starting out on a squirrel shoot. More misses than 

 hits were the result. After securing a reasonably fair bag 

 the rest of the day was spent in target practice, in which 

 was found a constant tendency to undershoot or overshoot, 

 the first caused by the tendency of the eye in a person accus- 

 tomed to the use of open sights to get down into the notch 

 as close as possible, and the latter by a tendency to cover 

 the game with too much of the front sight. Both of these 

 tendencies are overcome in a few days' practice, not at aby 

 regulation target (for that is never seen in the woods), but 

 at knots and spots on the trees and such like objects. When 

 you have become thoroughly accustomed to this sight, which 

 to an old hunter is a complete revolution in rifle sights, you 

 will find that you can do much closer shooting, for the 

 varying lights and shades of the forest will not affect you, 

 and you can shoot fully an hour earlier in the morning and 

 later at night than before. The last game I killed was two 

 squirrels after it was so dark that they were invisible except 

 when outlined against the western sky. Open sights would 

 have been useless long before. 



The rule "Backwoodsman" lays down for varying the 

 range by sighting high or low in the aperture, calls for" some 

 explanation. The aperture is i,^- of an inch in diameter, 

 which, if your sights are 30 inches apart, will give a total 

 variation at 50 yards of 5.63 inches, which may and may not 

 be enough, according to the loads you are using. See tra- 

 jectory tests in this paper. ' I. 

 Akron, Ohio. 



VAGARIES OF THE RUFFED GROUSE. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



During my trip I visited the Winchester, Shawinnegan 

 and Lauren tian Ciubs' lakes, and consequently traveled 

 through a large extent of virgin forest, in which ruffed 

 grouse are usually found in great abundance. This year 

 there are scarcely any, only one being seen by my party. 

 No one in these parts can suggest a plausible reason for 

 their disappearance. Snaring or slaughter by man has 

 nothing to do with it, as the country is uninhabited. 



H. R 



Montreal, Dec. 20, 1885^ 



Editor Fored and Stream: 



When we were boys together, Charlie Gilchrist one day 

 paddled me along the shores of Rice Lake. We were in 

 search of ducks, when a grouse took wing from the edge, 

 making straight for the swamp. I winged it, and we both 

 saw where it fell. Jumping ashore, we sought it, but to our 

 surprise, failed to find it at once. I stood near the spot 

 where it fell, and Charlie hunted it in circles without avail. 

 We were nonplussed, and agreed to give it up, when not six 

 feet from us I espied the gentleman standing erect and mo- 

 tionless as a statue ; nor did it stir until Charlie took it by 

 the head, twisted its neck and bagged it. This showed great 

 nerve and cunning. When in a tree a grouse is the same 

 solid lump, with not a twist of its head by a hair's breadth. 



At times the ruffed grouse exhibits the greatest stupidity, 

 flying slap bang against a barn, and j^et at others, fleet as an 

 arrow, goes through the wood, scarcely touching a twig. 



A humorous instance of one of its vagaries is the follow- 

 ing, which I vouch for: A friend of mine, living in a large 

 house in the city of Belleville, who was given to late hours 

 and "old rye," betook himself to bed and sleep among the 

 wee, sma' " hours. He had not rested long nor well when 

 he was disturbed by an unusual racket, but dozed off again. 

 About 10 A. M., when he opened his peepers, he saw a bii^ 

 perched on the footboard winking and blinking at him. 



31, iSSf*^ 



Could it be a bird? No, no I he thought. Just as 1 expected, . , _ 



Snakes!" At last, half wild with fear and wet with mois- ' it did not prove sufficiently powerful for dropping quickly any 



ture, in desperation he seized a pillow, sayint 



Beelzebub, here goes!" The bird, knocked off 

 went bang through a window. Taking courage 

 to his window, and to his joy saw the subject of iiis scare, 

 a grouse, dead on the pavement. He told me that he never 

 relished £,uch a dinner as he made from its carcass. The 

 grouse had made its entrance at one window and its fatal 

 exit at the other. Truly this "patridge" is a bundle of in- 

 consistencies. R. P J 

 PiCToti, Ontario. 



RIFLES AND SHOOTING. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I have been greatly interested by the letters of many of 

 your correspondents, respecting the trajectory test, but there 

 are two (one in Fokest and Stkeaji of Sept 17, by Mr. 

 Van Dyke, and another in the paper of the following week, 

 signed "Mississippi Lowlands") which contain statements 

 that fairly astonish me. In the latter letter the shooting of a 

 .46-caliber muzzleloader is contrasted with that of two breech- 

 loaders, a Ballard and a Sharps. Con.sidering that the dis- 

 tance was only 40 yards, there was nothing extraordinary in 

 a heavy small-gauge gun hitting a S^-inch disc with every 

 bullet when fired from a dead rest. It would require a 

 poor rifle to miss a mark of that size. Certainly the charge 

 of powder was very heavy, but in many of the old-fashioned 

 American rifles the danger of stripping was almost obvi- 

 ated by making the grooves with onlv a twist in about 6 

 feet, and probably with the light round bullet, a consider- 

 able portion of the 90 grains was burnt outside the muzzle. 

 As to the shooting above mentioned, it could have been 

 readily equalled by a double muzzleloading rifle which 1 

 formerly owned, weighing only 84- pounds and carrying 

 round bullets of 17 to the pound with 55 grains of powder. 

 I once tried it carefully at 40 yards, sitting down and rest- 

 ing one elbow on each knee, six successive shots from right 

 and left barrels alternately, were in such a small cluster that 

 any one of them would have killed a sparrow. 



I cannot help believing that there must have been some 

 thing wrong either in the cartridges or the grooves of the 

 two breechloaders, when the Ballard hit a 3|-inch disc only 

 four times in seven shots, and the Sharp only five times in 

 ten shots. The enormous weight of those rifles certainly 

 increases their accuracy, and yet it would not be difficult to 

 find plenty of English breechloading .45 express rifles not 

 more than 9 pounds in weight, and loaded wiili 120 grains 

 of powder, which would hit a disc of the above mentioned 

 size eight or ten times in succession at 40 or 50 yards. The 

 advertised targets, some apparently well authenticated, of 

 the Ballard and other rifles, show that they shoot into rings 

 of 3 or 4 inches in diameter at 200 yards. ' If the accuracy 

 increase only in proportion to the diminution of distance 

 (but it really increases much more), they would hit a ring 1 

 inch in diameter at 50 yards. The new riflle now being 

 made for the British army, when fired at Enfield from a 

 machine rest, put ten successive bullets into a square 5 inches 

 wide by 9 inches deep at 500 yards. It weighs a httle more 

 than 9 pounds and carries a bullet of 385 grains with 85 

 grains of powder. The gauge is .40 and the grooves have 

 one turn in 15 inches. Such shooting proves that there is 

 nothing in the mere mechanism of breechloaders to prevent 

 their fully equalling the accuracy of muzzleloaders. 



With regard to the letter of Mr. Van Dyke, I will first say 

 that there is no one for whose opinion upon sporting rifles I 

 have a greater respect than that gentleman's. 



I have read the chapters about them in the latter part of 

 his work upon "Still-hunting" many times over, and think 

 that every sportsman who uses a riile ought to po.ssess the 

 book, even if it contained nothing else. It was, therefore, 

 actually startling to see such an authority write that he 

 "could bring plenty of muzzle loaders which, at 30 yards, 

 would play upon a half-inch ring all day." Undoubtedly 

 he could, and undoubtedly smoothbores of the same small 

 gauge, with barrels of the same size, could be made to do 

 precisely the same. Rifling is not required to keep a tightly 

 fitting round bullet straight up to such a ridiculous di&tance. 

 1 know this from the performances of two smoothbores of 

 my own, one a heavy 14-gauge, made expressly for ball 

 shooting, and the other, a 43-gauge, with barrels thick up to 

 the muzzle like those of a rifle. The former, when fired 

 from a rest, would almost invariably hit a mark the size of 

 half a dollar at 40 yards, or at the most be within an inch of 

 it. The latter, at 100 yards, used to put bullet after bullet 

 through a page of note paper when loaded with If drams 

 of powder or about 50 grains. The bullets weighed 43 to 

 the pound, and fitted very tightly with a thin patch. 



Some of the settlers in the Canadian backwoods use what 

 are incorrectly called "smoothbore rifles," which carry 

 round bullets of about 50 to the pound, and weigh 9 or 10 

 pounds — being sighted like rifles. The only time 1 saw one of 

 them fired it hit the center of a small black spot marked on 

 a tree 75 yards distant. This may have been a fluke, but a 

 professional hunter, with whom I passed two months in the 

 bush, said that he had used a weapon of the same kind for 

 some time and could never discover any difference in accu- 

 racy between it and a grooved rifle, at the distances within 

 which deer are usually killed. 



All rifle shooting at such short ranges as 40 yards is delu- 

 sive, and this the following fact, among others, will prove: 

 About eight years ago 1 had a .30-gauge single breech- 

 loading express built to order by a London gunmakcr, who 

 guaranteed in writing that it should put several successive 

 shots into a 4-inch square at 150 yards. It was to weigh 6^ 

 poimds, and carry hollow bullets of 150 grains with 50 gi'ains 

 of powder. When it was finished the maker wrote to me 

 inclosing the target of six successive shots fired in his shot- 

 gun range at 40 yards. I forget the exact measurements, 

 but the bullet holes were all in a cluster about the size of 

 two postage stamps. I called upon the maker and told him 

 that the shooting at 40 yards was no test of what a rifle 

 could do at 100 or 150 yards. 



He insisted that if it carried straight at the first-named 

 distance, it would maintain the same proportionate accuracy 

 at the longer ranges, and told me to try the weapon myself 

 before paying for it. I fired it at 100 yards and could not, 

 with the" utmost care, make sure of hitting anything less 

 than a square foot. The maker said that this must be in 

 consequence of my bad aiming, and accompanied me on a 

 second journey to the range in order to show what the 

 weapon would do when held really straight. To his own 

 stupefaction, when he fired from a fixed wooden rest at 100 

 yards, he failed to get the bullets into less than 18 inches 

 square. After some alteration in the workshop, the rifle was 

 so far improved as to hit a 4-inch square nearly every time 

 at 100 yards, and I kept it, being on the point of sailing for 

 India, I may remark, for the benefit of your readers, that 



