Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 A Yeah. 10 Cts. A Copt. 1 

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NEW YORK, DECEMBER 13, 1888. 



j VOL. XXXI.-No. 31. 

 INo. 313 Bboadway, New York. 





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CONTENTS, 



Editorial. 



Duck Shooting in the West. 



Hempstead Rabbit Baiting. 



Rifle Practice in Schools. 

 The Sportsman Toumsi. 



Notes on Western Florida -VI. 



Nothing New Under the Sun. 



Another Glimpse at Demerara 

 Natural History. 



The Bird Hosts. 



The Ways of Snakes. 



Turkey Buzzards and Cow- 

 birds. 



Range of the Wild Turkey. 

 Camp-Fire Flickerings. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Goats and Glaciers. 



Rifles for All- Around Work. 



Bullets. 



Chicago and the West. 

 Maine and its Big Game. 

 Souvenirs of Pond Quogue. 

 The Woodcock Supply. 

 Michigan's Northern Penin- 

 sula. 



After Blacktail in Montana. 

 Covers near New York. 

 Game Notes. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Croppie Fishing. 

 Tarpon Fishing at Cedar Keys 

 Effect of Sawdust on Trout. 

 Some Fun in Seininrfor Carp. 

 Lysander G. Hill. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Terrapin Culture. 

 Salmon Culture. 



The Kennel. 

 Southern Sield Trials. 

 The St. Bernard Prizes. 

 Mastiff Prizes. 

 Breeder and Exhibitor. 

 The Spaniels. 

 Salisbury's Pedigree. 

 American Field Trials. 

 The Hempstead Rabbit Busi- 

 ness. 

 Patsy. 



The Ethics of Fox Hunting. 

 American Kennel Club Meet- 

 ing. 



Annual Meeting of the 



Southern Field Trial Club. 

 "Our Prize Digs." 

 That Rabbit Baiting. 

 Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shoottng. 

 Range and Gallery. 

 The Trap. 



New Jersey Championship 



Trophy. 

 Canadian Trap Notes. 

 Yachting. 

 Yachting in Australia. 

 A Cruise in the Sylvia. 

 Cat Yawls. 

 Brooklyn Y. C. 

 The 70ft. Class. 



Quadruple Expansion Engines 

 Canoeing. 



A Sliding Seat for Canoes. 



Through Bull's Falls to Har- 

 per's Ferry. 

 Answers to Correspondents' 



This number contains thirty -two pages. 



DUCK SHOOTING IN THE WEST. 



ALTHOUGH the duck shooting reports from the West 

 are so discouraging, and the gunners generally ap- 

 pear to believe that the season is over, we still hear that 

 the late ducks and geese are lingering in certain localities 

 in Minnesota and in Wisconsin. The weather, except 

 for one or two storms, has been unusually mild for the 

 season of the year, and there is still much open water 

 which the birds occupy. 



The apparent entire failure of birds in the middle West 

 this autumn naturally fills the gunners of that section 

 with alarm, and they are looking about to discover the 

 reason for the scarcity of birds. There appears to be a 

 wide difference of opinion on this subject, but this is not 

 because there is any lack of causes to which the absence 

 of the birds may be attributed, but rather because these 

 causes are so many that it is difficult to settle upon the 

 precise one which has brought about the failure of the 

 shooting season. 



The birds seem to have been absent from many of their 

 favorite stopping places, or, if they made their appear- 

 ance, it was only for a day or two, and then they took 

 their departure, going no one knows whither. Even the 

 preserves, where the shooting over large tracts of marsh 

 is limited to the few members of the clubs, seem to have 

 failed to attract the ducks, and only where the birds have 

 been baited , and so those gathered together in one cir- 

 cumscribed spot, which would otherwise have been scat- 

 tered out over a wide extent of territory, has there been 

 any satisfactory shooting. 



The birds have been growing fewer in numbers year 

 after year, and some of the reasons are obvious enough. 

 Now the country in the middle West, and in many parts 

 of the far West, is so thickly settled up that the ancient 

 nesting places of the wildfowl are no longer open to 

 them. Where formerly ducks and geese were hatched by 

 thousands, now no young birds are reared, and so there 

 are in the early autumn no local fowl, and such places 

 have to depend on the uncertainties of the migration. 

 Localities once famous as duck shooting resorts are now 



deserted by the migrating fowl, and the men who used 

 to visit them must seek out new shooting grounds already 

 occupied by their proportion of gunners. This added 

 force makes the shooting less for each individual. The 

 birds are shot at seasons when they should not be dis- 

 turbed, when they are on their way to their breeding 

 grounds, and the number of birds hatched each year is 

 reduced by the destruction of females which are almost 

 ready to lay their eggs. More than to anything else, 

 however, the decrease of birds is due to the great growth 

 of shooting in the United States, and to the fact that the 

 shotgun is part and parcel of the equipment of almost 

 every man and boy who lives in the country. It is vain 

 to complain of this state of things. We cannot logically 

 grumble at it until we are prepared to put in practice the 

 only possible remedy for it, by ourselves laying aside our 

 shotguns and entering on a crusade to bring about a total 

 abolition of shooting for a term of years. If a man com- 

 plains that too many shotguns are used, the obvious reply 

 is that his own should be laid aside. 



Along the Atlantic coast where at the best of times 

 the duck shooting is poor enough, the birds have been 

 about as numerous as usual. During the past week, fowl 

 have been flying in unusual numbers in the Great South 

 Bay on Long Island, and the shooting is reported to have 

 been good. Up to December 1 there had been no birds 

 at all, however. 



Though the fowl shooting in the middle West has en- 

 tirely failed, it is not to be supposed that the birds have 

 all disappeared forever. There will yet be good shooting 

 seasons on the marshes of Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, 

 and many a day of glorious sport will be had with the 

 mallards, the redheads and the bluebills, where other 

 glorious days have been had in the past. But as time 

 goes on the bad seasons will come more often and the 

 good ones more seldom, until the bags such as not long 

 ago we used to make will be known no more. Good 

 game laws, their strict enforcement, preserving large 

 tracts of country, and above all, moderation in sport, may 

 do much to put off the evil day; and it should be the ef- 

 fort of every thoughtful sportsman to do what he can to 

 delay its coming. 



RIFLE PRACTICE IN SCHOOLS. 



IN the recent report of Secretary Endicott, of the War 

 Department, is a paragraph which has provoked more 

 than ordinary attention. He embodies the regular re- 

 turns which come from the ordnance officers and from 

 the Adjutant-General, narrating what is doing or at- 

 tempted to be done in small-arms work, and what the 

 militia of the several States have been at in the way of 

 improvement. In this the Secretary follows the beaten 

 track, but he sees a new field which he thinks might 

 with profit be cultivated. 



His suggestion is that the schools, colleges and acade- 

 mies, to which under the present laws officers of the 

 army are detailed to act as instructors, shall have a cer- 

 tain allowance of ball cartridges made yearly, so that 

 actual target practice may be indulged in and the techni- 

 cal skill of. the professional instructor utilized to the full- 

 est extent. 



There are now nearly fifty colleges and other institu- 

 tions of learning in the country to which under authority 

 the Secretary has detailed officers of the regular army or 

 consented to their employment by the college authorities. 

 Generally these men of arms are employed as tacticians, 

 or as drill masters. They teach the lads correct carriage 

 in walk and bearing and act very much as a professor of 

 deportment and dancing might in a girls' seminary. Not 

 unfrequently the young men are given an inkling of the 

 art of war, and, being in uniform, the scholars are on a 

 sort of perpetual parade, put on their good behavior and 

 get some idea of that fundamental fact of a good soldier, 

 and a good citizen as well, that obedience to properly con- 

 stituted authority can not be too promptly nor too willingly 

 given. 



The officers detailed from an army body where there 

 is a surplusage of officers as compared with men, are 

 doing a good work. They are well thought of by the 

 institutions enjoying their presence and would not be 

 spared. The suggestion of the Secretary is to extend 

 their work; to introduce a feature which will at once en- 

 list the attention of the young men and afford them a 

 novel sport, but will do more, for it will turn out as 

 graduates not only men of elegant bearing, but men who 

 when occasion demands it may shoulder a musket and 

 use it, too. This is what it may do in the far future, but 



the report hints at a more immediate result. It is 

 proposed to so arrange this system of butt practice that 

 one college may shoot against another, and soon the Sec- 

 retary thinks there will be sharp contests exciting public 

 attention and interest, just as football matches do now. 



Perhaps it is too much to expect a rush of spectators at 

 a rifle match, where a dull target is peppered with well 

 sent balls, but it is not too much to hope that year after 

 year college teams may be organized, records made, com- 

 petitions held and the old essential necessity for good 

 scoring, a sound body with a clear eye and a steady 

 hand, all guided by a trained judgment, once more im- 

 pressed upon these young team men. 



This is but one channel of extension for the athleticism 

 which is now so popular in the college world. It is not 

 a form of sj>ort liable to run riot< It will certainly lead 

 to nothing out of the way on the part of its devotees, and 

 that it may be carried on with safety the fifteen year 

 record of Creedmoor without an accident abundantly 

 proves. 



With its agents at each of their schools, the War De- 

 partment ought to be able to present in a very short time 

 and in a clear fashion a mass of information on this 

 topic. We think the suggestion a good one, a perfectly 

 feasible one, and the new administration in the War 

 Office cannot do better than give it a fair, full and prompt 

 trial. 



THE HEMPSTEAD RABBIT KILLERS. 



THE Hempstead Coursing Club has again been killing 

 hares with fox terriers, and the agents of the Society 

 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have again 

 arrested the participants, and declare that they will arrest 

 every member of the club every time they attempt to kill 

 hares in this fashion. The method pursued at Hempstead 

 is to take the hares from a pen, drop them to the ground 

 and slip the terriers at them. The dogs catch and kill the 

 hares in very quick time, less than a minute elapsing 

 between the dropping of the hare to the ground by the 

 attendant and its death in the jaws of the dog. 



It is quite clear that to argu? upon the degree of cruelty 

 involved in this opens a wide discussion. If we are to 

 designate the cruelty in this case as the infliction of 

 physical pain, it may be urged, and very truly too, that 

 the suffering is extremely trifling in comparison with 

 that caused by many other methods of killing wild ani- 

 mals, the legitimacy of which modes of killing is gen- 

 erally conceded by healthy-minded persons. But if the 

 consideration of cruelty be left out, or even if it be 

 granted that the practice is not cruel, there is yet in it that 

 which makes it revolting to lovers of fair play and manly 

 field sports. The Hempstead style of hare killing is most 

 certainly opposed to public sentiment, and finds no ap- 

 proval even among those who thoroughly believe in field 

 sports. This is because it violates the first principle of 

 sport, inasmuch as it gives no "law" to the game. There 

 is absolutely no chance for the game to get away, its 

 death is sure; the only uncertainty about the affair is as 

 to which of the dogs will do the killing in the shortest 

 time, but the killing itself is a thing of certainty. This is 

 that part of it all which is out of harmony with the ac- 

 cepted ethics of field sport. 



If the victim had any chance for its life, if there were 

 even the remotest possibility of its getting away, the 

 "sport" (save the mark) would lose much of its brutality. 

 What decent man would go gunning after rabbits, if 

 attendants had been hired to go out in advance to tie 

 the bunnies to stakes so that they could not elude the 

 pursuit? To come to a nearer parallel, who would 

 shoot pigeons from a trap, if the birds were tied 

 with a string so that they could not get away if 

 repeatedly missed ? Any mode of killing game, which 

 first puts that game into a condition of utter helplessness 

 and makes its destruction "a dead sure thing," violates 

 the first principles of legitimate sport, and no one with 

 any manliness or the least spark of instinct for fair play 

 would demean himself by taking part in it. 



The participants in this Long Island rabbit-killing 

 engage in it because they think it to be English, and 

 they feel they must ape English customs. It is yet to be 

 shown that such proceedings are countenanced by any 

 decent classes of British sportsmen. Eat-baiting and 

 cock-fighting are also practiced in England, but they are 

 under the ban of the law and public sentiment; and it 

 would be a very poor excuse for the arrested participants 

 in a Long Island rat-pit "meet" to plead that their "sport" 

 was ••English." 



