Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $1 a Yeah. 10 Cts. a Copt. I 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 11, 1886. 



J VOL. XXVII.-No. 16. 



1 Nos. 39 & 40 Park Rq-w, New York. 





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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 

 The National Horse Show. 

 Atlantic. 



New York Militia Practice. 



The Maine Tragedy. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Coast Fishing in Superior.— n. 

 Natural History. 



The Sport of Hawking. 



The American Ornithologists' 

 LTnion. 



An Arkansas Idyl. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



A Squirrel Hunt. 



Moose in Maine. 



Game Preserving in Britain. 



Pennslyvania Game. 



South Carolina Game. 



Illinois River Ducking 

 Grounds. 



Murdered by Deer Doggers. 



Game Notes. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Two Fish. 



Numbering Fish Hooks. 

 Central Lake, Mich. 



Sea ANT) RwER Fishing. 



^^Tiite Perch With the Flv. 



The Albany Fly-Casting. 

 The Kennt:l. 



News From High Point. 



National Field Trials. 



The American Mastiff Club. 



Mastitis. 



Pennsylvania Trials. 



Western Trials. 



Kennel Management. 



Kennel Notes. 

 RiFiiE AND Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 

 Yachting. 



Cruise of the Coot.— xxviii. 



The Construction of Racing 

 Yachts. 



The Thetis— Stranger Contro- 

 versy. 

 Canoeing. 



A. C. A. and the Clubs. 



The Oakland C. C. 



Paddle and Current. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



ATLANTIC. 



IT is never pleasant to chronicle the failure of an honest 

 attempt to promote the interests of any sport, and all 

 true yachtsmen will sympathize with the liberal and 

 spirited gentlemen who gave imlimited time and money 

 to the construction of an American champion, and who 

 have met with such a poor return. With the certainty 

 before them that the venture would be financially a losing 

 one, and that, at most, all they could hope for would be 

 the honor which a victory would bring to their club and 

 city, they subscribed liberally to a scheme which has re- 

 stxlted in a complete failure in every way. Perhaps the 

 least severe loss is that of the money, though this is no 

 small item. The cost of the Atlantic is given as $30,000, 

 but the aggregate expense of building, altering and racing 

 will probably bring it much higher, while at her sale last 

 week she realized but $7,500. Further than this, as a 

 racer, she has completely failed to fill the purpose for 

 which she was built, and it is very doubtful what dispo- 

 sition will be ultimately made of her, as she is unfitted 

 both in design and construction for a cruising yacht or 

 even a trading vessel. 



Whether she will be broken up for her lead and gear, 

 whether she will in some way be sold into trade, or 

 whether she will disappear among the wrecks which line 

 the shores of Brooklyn, is as yet an uncertainty. Surely 

 the last fate is the worst that can happen to any boat, to 

 join the melancholy collection which tugs and surges at 

 its cables as the tide rises and falls, from one year to the 

 next. High speed steamers whose engines decline to turn 

 over, wonderful propellers whose promoters evidently 

 have not yet "found it," cumbrous but gorgeous schoon- 

 ers, and racing sloops; all classes are represented in the 

 motley collection, and yet the list is not full. 



It cannot be claimed for the Atlantic that she has 

 demonstrated any new principle or has added in the least 

 to the data that form the chief tools of the naval archi- 

 tect. There are some points, however, about her con- 

 struction which are not only interesting but which carry 

 their ovm lessons, Those who were chiefly concerned, 

 both in her design and construction, have been known for 

 many years as the most prominent defenders of the 

 theories which have been considered as distinctively 



American; of light displacement, shoal draft, sloop rig 

 and a single jib; and they have owned and raced the very 

 fastest of these craft. Year after year through a long 

 and bitter discussion they have boldly advanced and de- 

 fended certain definite views expressed in no doubtful 

 language; and their position on the questions of ballast, 

 displacement, dimensions and rig have been known to all. 

 After a stpabborn defense of these opinions they have 

 never yet renounced them or admitted their error, and 

 when the time came that wood and iron could be put in 

 place of words it was expected that their new boat would 

 embody the practical application of their doctrines. 



What she was need not be retold. In every detail a 

 complete surrender to the ideas of their opponents, deep, 

 heavily ballasted, with lead keel and cutter rig, she 

 proved but a clumsy and unsuccessful burlesque of the 

 boats which her sponsors had persistently decried. 



Had they fought the battle with their own weapons a 

 victory would have been greater and a defeat less crush- 

 ing; had they been consistent to their principles on the one 

 hand or had they boldly avowed their error when it was 

 apparent, their com-se would at least have commanded 

 respect; but while adhering tenaciously to their theories 

 to the very last, when the time to test them came they 

 abandoned them as rapidly as possible and sought safety 

 in the lead keel they had so long ridiculed, only to burn 

 their fijigers with it. Had they built a single-stick Gray- 

 ling last winter they might possibly have swept the field 

 in the light weather of the season's races; had they 

 watched and studied the whole drift of American yacht- 

 ing for the past half dozen years they might in good time 

 have adapted themselves to the new dispensation and 

 have avoided the charge that they have simply followed 

 Mr. Burgess and the cutters in adopting the lead keel. 



As it stands to-day they have hastily abandoned their 

 avowed beliefs, they have copied the Boston and the British 

 cutter, and the resulting nondescript has proved an utter 

 failure. Money and skill have done all that is possible 

 with the Atlantic, she has had the benefit of all the talent 

 available and has been sailed by a skipper of undisputed 

 ability and whose personal efforts only have saved her 

 to a certain extent, and yet she is out of the racing; her 

 shortcomings being made still more apparent by the 

 injudicious newspaper gush over the "Pi'ide of Bay 

 Eidge" which heralded her building. 



Whether with the consent of her ownei's or not, the 

 Atlantic has been put forward prominently as an exam- 

 ple of the so-called "rule of thumb" methods, and as such 

 she must now be judged. Her modeler, whose sole handi- 

 work we believe her to be, is widely known as the mod- 

 eler of many very successful boats. His vessels are found 

 among the winners in all classes, and he has fairly won 

 an enviable reputation with a certain type of boat. His 

 genius and skill in certain lines are tmdisputed, but he 

 has not, and lays no claim to the wider and more ex- 

 tended training which we consider is essential to the 

 thorough designer. With his own tools he is expert, but 

 they are limited in number; with the tools of others he is 

 unfamiliar, and attempts to borrow them will, in all 

 probability, result as this last. The value of such skill as 

 his, and such a sense of form and fairness is apparent, 

 but we contend that to meet the many problems that con- 

 front the designer to-day, to obtain the greatest speed 

 from the wood, steel and iron which nature places before 

 him, requires not only a natural aptitude but such a 

 thorough and systematic course of training as the engi- 

 neer, the artist or the architect expects to undergo as a 

 matter of coixrse. The theory of inborn genius and the 

 accompanying ridicule of solid scientific attainments (not 

 mere superficial dabbling), which is the chief support of 

 the so-called "practical man" and the "rule of thumb'' 

 mechanic is a thing of the past, and hard work, careful 

 study and a thorough training are more certain than ever 

 of meeting their just reward. 



THE MAINE TRAGEDY. 



THE tragedy at Fletcher Brook, in Washington county, 

 Me. , last Monday, when two game wardens were 

 mm'dered by a deer dogger, reveals, as by a lightning 

 flash, a condition of affairs in the Maine woods little 

 understood by the general public, though known 

 and appreciated by the plucky game oflicials. The 

 deer doggers are, for the most part, a set of law-de- 

 fying ruffians, murdei'ous at heart, fertile in threats, 

 desperate in resistance, and vindictive in avenging 

 any attempt to punish their crimes. They burn barns 



and houses, poison cows, behead horses, shoot at officers 

 from ambush, or, as in this case, murder them in broad 

 daylight. The notorious Wesley barn burners were fair 

 types of Maine deer doggers; the sympathy manifested 

 for them by Wesley people was a fair indication of the 

 depraved moral sentiment which upholds and encourages 

 these outlaws. Maine game officials, commissioners and 

 wardens, understand the character of those whose law- 

 lessness they are pledged to punish; and it is not unlikely 

 that Hill and Niles knew full well, when they started out 

 on then- mission to apprehend the Fletcher Brook doggers, 

 that they were taking their lives in theiir hands. 



It is well that the citizens of Maine and of other States 

 should now once and for aU comprehend that no sym- 

 pathy is to be wasted on the classes of poachers who 

 complain bitterly of the hardships of game laws. These 

 poachers are not good citizens, they are not hardy front- 

 iersmen, they are not poverty-stricken woods dwellers, 

 eking out a bare subsistence by tilling the unfruitful 

 sou and killing a deer now and then to save themselves 

 from starvation. They are, on the contrary, shiftless 

 ruffians, too lazy to earn an honest living ; outlaws who 

 defy righteous statutes and who want only occasion to 

 become firebugs and murderers. 



The Gallery Epidemic— The metropolis is having a 

 bad outbreak of shooting galleries. Vacant stores on the 

 principal streets are hired, undergo a transformation dur- 

 ing the night and blossom on the morrow in dazzling 

 tinsel. A dozen yards is ample length for these courts of 

 arms, and big bullseyes, with bells easily set ringing by 

 even a mediocre shot, make up the plant. The craze is 

 on and patronage runs heavy for sixteen hours a day. 

 Practice is cheap, and, thanks to the low rates fixed by 

 our cartridge makers, the gallery bosses can profitably 

 allow their customers to bang away at a cent a shot. 

 Those who shoot come from all classes. There are boys 

 getting ready to go on Indian slaughtering raids; pirates 

 in then- teens; anarchists getting ready to pick off mil- 

 lionaires by cheap practice upon the pink-tighted effigies 

 before them, are helping to consume the milHon-a-day 

 output of our. cartridge factories. The rifles are more or 

 less erratic in their work, the shooters more so in their 

 manipulation of them. Altogether the places are nuis- 

 ances, more or less dangerous through the firearms in 

 use, and serving no valuable purpose. Gallery practice, 

 imder proper conditions, is an enticing sport and a pleas- 

 ant way of passing the time. It helps the marksmen and 

 the scores made are worthy of notice; but no such word 

 of commendation can be said of the catch-penny concerns 

 that fringe our akeady too noisy streets of the cheaper 

 section of the city. 



The Massachusettts Fish and Game Protective 

 Association has been very active during the past year 

 in making known the game laws and secirring their en- 

 forcement. Cloth posters, with a draft of the law, have 

 been sent to every post-office in the State, and more than 

 4,000 pamphlet copies of the laws have been distributed. 

 The association has much important work now in hand, 

 and needs fmids to carry it on. This work is of direct 

 benefit to all Massachusetts sportsmen, and to other citi- 

 zens of the State as well. It should be supported more 

 freely than it is, both morally and financially. The sec- 

 retary's address is H. J. Thayer, 346 Washington street, 

 Boston. Applications for membership, and subscriptions 

 of money for carrying on the work of law enforcement 

 may be sent to him. 



The Field Trial Season.— November and December 

 are the seasons for running field trials, and for a couple 

 of months now the columns of the kennel papers will be 

 filled with reports of the races. It is earnestly to be hoped 

 that the meetings this fall may pass off without any of 

 those unseemly wrangles which in the past have gone far 

 toward destroying the pleasm-e, not only of those who 

 were present on the ground but of all dog lovers as weU. 

 To almost every question there are two sides, and it ought 

 certainly to be possible for sportsmen to discuss their dif- 

 ferences m a quiet, well-bred way. Those who cannot 

 control themselves have no business to take part in the 

 competitions, and might far better remain away alto- 

 gether. 



Oysters are Fish is the dictum of the Treasury De- 

 partment, after considering the question of customs. 



