Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Yeah. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 

 Srx Months, $3. f 



NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 15, 1888. 



( VOL. XXXI.-No. 17. 



) No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

 The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 

 ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 

 Communications on the subject to which its pages are devoted are 

 respectfully invited. Anonymous communications will not be re- 

 garded. No name will be published except with writer's consent. 

 The Editors are not responsible for the views of correspondents. 



AD VERTISEMENTS. 

 Only advertisements of an approved character inserted. Inside 

 . ages, nonpareil type, 30 cents per line. Special rates for three, six, 

 and twelve months. Seven words to the line, twelve lines to one 

 inch. Advertisements should be sent in by Saturday previous to 

 issue in which they are to be inserted. Transient advertisements 

 must invariably be accompanied by the money or they will not be 

 Inserted. Reading notices $1.00 per line. 



SUBSCRIPTIONS 

 May begin at any time. Subscription price, $i per year; $2 for six 

 months; to a club of three annual subscribers, three copies for $10; 

 five copies for $16. Remit by express money-order, regi ered letter, 

 money-order, or draft, payable to the Forest and Stream Publishing 

 Company. The paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 

 the United States, Canadas and Great Britain. For sale by Davies 

 & Co., No. 1 Finch Lane, Cornhill, London. General subscription 

 agents fer Great Britain, Messrs. Davies & Co., and Messrs. Samp- 

 son Low, Marston, Seartes and Rivington, 188 Fleet street, London, 

 Eng. Brentano's, 17 Avenue de l'Opera, Paris, France, sole Paris 

 agent for sales and subscriptions. Foreign subscription price, $5 

 per year; $2.50 for six months. 

 Address all communications 



Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

 No. 318 Broadway. New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Concerning Contentment. 



The Small Bird Problem. 



Cruelty of Pigeon Shooting. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Our Lake (poetry). 



Notes on Western Florida.— II 

 Natural History. 



Game in Town. 

 Game Bao and Gun. 



Adirondack Deer Hunts. 



A Plea for the Chase. 



An Elk Hunt in the Rockies. 



An Incident on the Stanislaus. 



Maine Deer. 



St. Louis Duck Shooting. 



Chicago and the West. 



Elk Hunting Ethics. 



Rifles for Small Game. 



The Woodcock Flight. 

 Camp- Fire Fdiokerings. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



His Highness Salvelinus Na- 

 maycush. 



A House Warming. 



Fish Protection in Delaware. 



Skunk River. 



Pike in the Hudson. 



Fishcuuture. 



The U. S. Station at, Clacka- 

 mas, Oregon. 

 The Kennel. 



Indiana Kennel Club's Trials. 



Southern Field Trials. 



Blue Nell. 



Judging at the Richmond 



Show. 

 Those Spaniels. 

 Practical Judging. 

 Kennel Notes. 

 Rupee and Trap Shooting. 

 Range and Gallery. 

 The Trap. 



Election Day Scores. 



Thanksgiving Day Shoot. 

 Yachting. 



The Forty Foot Class. 



Biscayne Bay, Fla., and its 

 Yacht Club. 



The America's Cup. 



New Yachts. 



Seawanhaka C. Y. C. 



Duck Shooting Under Difficul- 

 ties. 

 Canoeing. 



The White Squall. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



CONCERNING CONTENTMENT. 



INHERE is no happier frame of mind attainable titan 

 - that which makes one satisfied with what he has or 

 can get; and happy is he who, going to the field with gun 

 or to the stream with rod in these days of depleted woods 

 and waters, has become philosopher enough to accept 

 thankfully the little or nothing he is likely to shoot or 

 catch. 



He must have overcome the natural savage desire for 

 mere slaughter and the mean ambition to kill more than 

 another; he must have schooled himself to contentment 

 with the small visible results of a day's outing; have 

 learned to laugh with others at his own light bag or 

 empty creel; to be satisfied with intangible proofs of suc- 

 cess and to have faith that what he only sees shall abide 

 with him in more enduring comfort than the immediate 

 result of a good shot or a skillful cast or the memory 

 thereof. 



More spiritual than sensual, this enjoyment of the field 

 is the better part of what goes to the making up of what 

 we call the love of sport, and the sportsman who culti- 

 vates this to the overgrowth of the baser sense enjoys the 

 finer pleasure, suffers the fewer pangs of regret and the 

 ess self-condemnation. Eveiy kind-hearted sportsman 

 and paradoxical as it may seem, almost every sports man 

 s kind-hearted) is sorry for the wounded object of his 

 pursuit and feels a twinge of remorse for the taking of a 

 happy life. If we examine our feelings in the moment of 

 triumph over the conquest of one of our lesser brethren, 

 we detect a sort of savagery that as civilized men we are 

 ashamed of. What poor lords of creation we are to exult 

 n the death of those which we have been set above, we 

 with our cunningly contrived implements and trans- 

 mitted lore, glorying to have done to death our poor 

 vassal, outfitted only with the means of defense that he 

 was born with, his instinct and few acquired wits, and to 

 revile him when he escapes our assaults as if he had 



wronged us in not suffering death or capture at our will. 

 Desirable as it may be for humanity's sake that we 

 should rid ourselves of this propensity to kill, it is hardly 

 probable that the millennial day when the sportsman 

 craves not fur, feather nor fin, will come while wild 

 beast runs, wild bird flies or free fish swims. Generations 

 of our race will be born and pass away and become dust 

 of the earth before the old instinct of slaughter shall die 

 out of men's desires, but is not the tendency even now 

 toward its eradication? The shot at the inanimate flying 

 target, the competitive cast of the fly on blank waters 

 are becoming more and more in vogue, and many a 

 sportsman satisfies himself with the thought of what he 

 might have done if the glass ball or clay-pigeon had been 

 a hurtling grouse, a woodcock dodging among the alders, 

 a swift-winged duck speeding down wind; or with 

 imagining what might have been if a trout or bass had 

 been lured by his skillful cast. 



Year by year more men go afield, with gun and rod 

 as only a handy excuse for gathering in what shot 

 never brought down nor hook ever caught. Who shall 

 say that by and by it may not become the common 

 usage of sportsmen to go hunting without a gun and 

 fishing without a rod? 



THE CRUELTY OF PIGEON SHOOTING. 



THERE is a diversity of opinion respecting the merits 

 of shooting live pigeons at the trap. While the 

 champions of the practice contend that there can be no 

 more cruelty in shooting a pigeon after it leaves the trap 

 than in shooting a quail in the field after it leaves the 

 ground, there are other equally sturdy champions who, 

 while ardent followers of field shooting, cannot approve 

 the trap. In so far as these holders of divergent opinions 

 are honest and sincere in their convictions, they are 

 entitled to the respectful consideration which is ever the 

 due of sincerity. Sometimes it happens that a professed 

 humanitarian rises up to denounce pigeon shooting not 

 because he honestly thinks there is anything wrong in it, 

 but because he hopes by turning the anti-cruelty crank to 

 grind his own little axe. Two instances of this character 

 are perhaps worth making note of. 



At the time of the last appearance of Dr. Carver at the 

 trap in New Jersey, it was understood by a certain clique 

 that the match was all cut and dried in advance. They 

 were given to understand by one of the principals that the 

 match was to result in a victory for one of the contestants 

 named in advance. Acting on this supposed reliable in- 

 formation these virtuous gamblers set out to pluck then- 

 fellows not in the secret by laying heavy wagers which 

 they believed themselves certain to win, because they 

 were "betting on a sure thing." As it turned out they 

 were the ones sold. Their information had been given 

 in order to hoodwink them. They had been stuffed 

 before being roasted. The match resulted in a manner 

 just opposite to what they imagined they knew it would 

 and had wagered on. The biters were bitten. The next 

 thing was for one of these chagrined New Jersey gam- 

 blers, posing as a gentleman and a humanitarian, to 

 proclaim that pigeon-shooting was cruel and must be 

 abolished from New Jersey. He has done what he could 

 to abolish it; and will probably persevere in his efforts 

 until he has accomplished his end, or has made friends 

 with some other shooter who will let Mm into the secret 

 of a proposed selling out and keep faith with him until 

 the match is over, for there is said to be honor even 

 among hippodrome trap-shooters and their gentleman, 

 gambler hangers-on. 



The second case is that recent one where the shooting 

 of live birds at the tournament of the New York Suburban 

 Shooting Grounds Association was severely criticised by 

 some of the reporters. The facts in the case are interest- 

 ing. The grounds were not in complete readiness for the 

 tournament, and it happened that some of the pigeons, 

 instead of being retrieved and killed at once, as is 

 the rule, were perforce permitted to escape. It was 

 an unforeseen exigency, but the best was made of 

 it under the circumstances, and no harsh criticisms 

 would have appeared had there not been pres- 

 ent one of the editors of a New York paper chiefly 

 devoted to matters of the turf. This man had failed 

 to secure some advertising from one of the parties 

 prominently connected with the tournament. He saw 

 in the pigeon incident an opportunity to gratify his spite. 

 This he did by expatiating to one of the daily paper re- 

 porters on the cruelty of all pigeon shooting in general 



and the aggravated form of inhumanity here exhibited. 

 Not only this, but he caused the matter to be brought to 

 the attention of the local branch of the Society for the 

 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with the result of set- 

 ting on foot a prosecution, which may have been proper 

 enough so far as the Society is concerned, for we have no 

 reason to believe that the Society did not act in perfect 

 good faith, but it was in effect only an employment of 

 the Society's agency to gratify individual meanness. 

 The transaction thus savors of blackmail all through. 

 It had its origin in no tender heart, jealous of the rights 

 of the lower animals; it Was the expression of a mean 

 and petty personal ill will. If a man honestly believes 

 that pigeon shooting is cruel, let his opinion be respected } 

 if he poses as a reformer when actuated by base ulterior 

 motives, his actions are likely to have little credit at- 

 tached to the m. 



THE SMALL BIRD PROBLEM, 



ESSAYS have been written to demonstrate the f oolisii- 

 ness of small bird destruction, laws have been 

 passed to protect the useful species, societies have been 

 organized and tens of thousands of members enrolled 

 pledged against the fatuous fashion of wearing bird skins 

 as dress, arguments, pleas, appeals to reason and appeals 

 to sentiment have been urged; and what is the outcome 

 of it all? Fashion decrees feathers; and feathers it is. 

 The headgear of women is made up in as large degree as 

 ever before of the various parts of small birds. Thousands 

 and millions of the disjecta membra of birds are dis- 

 played in every conceivable shape on the hats and bon- 

 nets. This condition of affairs must be something of a 

 shook to the leaders of the Audubon Society, who were 

 sanguine enough to believe that the moral idea repre- 

 sented by their movement would be efficacious to influx 

 ence society at large. Morai suasion is a potent force, 

 but it operates within very narrow limits only. A very 

 small section of humanity is capable of being a law unto 

 itself and regulating its conduct by the dictates of con- 

 science; but for the great majority selfn-estraint can only 

 be secured by the dictates of fashion, which are stronger 

 than penal legislation. 



It is quite possible, as has been urged by the Audubon 

 Society, that the wholesale destruction of wild birds 

 which has been indulged in since the introduction of 

 feather millinery, threatens the extinction of useful 

 species and genera, and that if persisted in, it will dis- 

 turb the balance of life, fostering the increase of noxious 

 insects and proving in other ways inimical to human 

 well-being; but these conclusions are regarded with in- 

 difference so long as the milliners make feathers the 

 mode. 



Meantime the reintroduction of feather millinery in no 

 way derogates from the value of the work done by the Au- 

 dubon Society. It has called attention to the ethical and 

 economic aspects of the question and has educated a 

 very respectable minority to organized action. In the 

 face of this minority thoroughly convinced that indulg- 

 ence in feather millinery is wrong in itself, or conducive 

 to consequences inimical to human well-being, the 

 arbiters of fashion cannot achieve that complete success 

 they have been accustomed to look for. 



DEATH OF " SPICEWOOD." 



THERE were some touching incidents connected with 

 the recent death of Mr. Lewis A. Riley, of Centra- 

 lia, Pa., who was a frequent contributor to these columns 

 over the signature of "Spicewood." It was in the after- 

 noon: the party were engaged in the favorite sport of 

 quail shooting; and Mr. Riley was separated for a moment 

 from Lis son-in-law, when the latter was approached by 

 one of the dogs, which, whining and barking, urged him 

 to follow. Led by this brute guide the son came upon 

 the form of his father lying prostrate on a bed of moss, 

 dead, while the three faithful dogs were sitting by him, 

 one licking his face. It had been only a half hour before 

 this that Mr. Riley had said that they would "go on a 

 little further and then go home." What a strangely sig- 

 nificant and exalted meaning such expressions assume, 

 when the unbooked for realization of the. intent expressed 

 is so tremendously different from the commonplace and 

 expected. Mr. Riley's death resulted from heart failure. 

 Known to the readers of this journsl as a pleasing 

 writer of angling and shooting sketches, Mr. Riley was a 

 highly respected citizen, esteemed for his integrity and 

 happy in the attachment of many warm friends. 



