Forest and Stream, 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 C 

 Six Months, J 



NEW YORK, DECEMBER 20, 1888. 



I VOL. XXXI.-No. 33. 



1 No. 313 Broadway, New york, 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

 The Forest ajud Stream is rhe 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 ot an approved enaracter inserted. Inside 

 pages, 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 Lhe money or they will not be 

 inserted. Reading notices $1.00 per line. 



SUBSCRIPTIONS 

 May begin at any time. Subscription price, $1 per year; $3 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 far 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: $3.50 for six months. 

 Address all communications 



Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

 No. 318 Broadway. New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The Fate of Creedmoor. 



Snap Snots. 

 The sportsman Tourist. 



Notes on Western Florida -vn. 



Old-Time Christmas Under 

 Canvas. 



The Charms of Beaufort. 



A Christmas Anniversary. 



A Day's Ride. 



Bill Dave's Bear Fight. 



A Retrospect of Forty Years. 



Moon Lake. 

 Natural History. 



Tae Super-Sense of Animals. 



Buffalo Domestication. 



Game in Town. 



Owl and Man. 



Nesting of Leach's Petrel. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



That Christmas Hunt. 



The Season m Minnesota. 



"Deer Hunting in Newfound- 

 land." 



Maine Deer. 



"The Ethics of Elk Hunting." 

 Chicago and the West. 

 The Keene Bullet. 

 Megantic Fish and Game Club 



CAMP-FlltE FLICKEHINGS. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 An Outing on the Big Huron. 

 Salmon Fishing m Newfound- 

 land. 



Trout Fishing in Grand Island 

 Bay. 



Public Trout in Private 

 Effect of Sawdust on Fish. 



FlSHCUXTURE. 



Teirapm Catching. 



Fishculture m Scotland. 



IUiuois Fish Commission. 



Suadin UtahLaKe. 

 The Kennel. 



American Field Trials Club. 



Prevention of Gun-Shyness. 



Richmond (ind.) Dog Show. 



The American Coursing Club. 



The Chase of t'le Hare. 



New England Fox Hunting. 



Dog Talk. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



Slingshot Gun. 



New Expert Target. 



Canadian Rifle Notes. 



The Trap. 



Shooting Clay-Birds in a Gale. 

 Canadian Trap Notes. 

 Yachting. 

 Ancient Cutters and Sloops. 

 A Cruise in the Sylvia. 

 Lines of the Sylvia. 

 Yacht Building in Great 



Britain. 

 Thornycroft Watertube 



Boiler. 



A Challenge from Katrina. 

 Canoeing. 



The White Squall's 1387 Cruise 



Legitimate Cruising Appli- 

 ances. 



New York C. C. 



W. C. A. Executive Commit- 

 tee. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



This number contains thirty two pages. 



THE FATE OE CREEDMOOR. 



FOR the past few days there has been no end of talk 

 over the proposition to rearrange the control of 

 Creedmoor, and place the National Guard authorities of the 

 State and the officials of the National Rifle Association on 

 a more definite understanding one with the other. The 

 proposition simply stated is that Creedmoor shall repass 

 into possession of the State, but with the proviso that the 

 civilian shooters represented by the National Rifle Asso- 

 ciation shall have certain rights reserved for them. 



A bit of history will make matters clear. Creedmoor 

 owes its origin to the energy of a number of National 

 Guard officers, who saw the absurdity of a Home Guard 

 that could not shoot, and determined to remedy it. There 

 was with it a desire to afford a place for outdoor niark- 

 manship generally, but the desire to make the Guards- 

 men into marksmtn was the main motive. They turned 

 to the State for the money to cany out these very laudable 

 objects, and through the kind offices of D. W. Judd, then 

 a member of the Assembly of New York, a liberal appio- 

 priation was made and Creedmoor was purchased and 

 fitted up for its work. The committee having charge of 

 the selection of a site had done its work well, and a care- 

 ful survey of the entire neighborhood of the metropolis 

 failed to find such another broad plateau for the flight 

 of rifle balls. 



The history of this mother range in this country is 

 familiar to every reader of the Forest and Stream. 

 For a time the popular interest in rifle shooting was up 

 to high-water mark. The international matches were 

 shot extending over a series of years, and the popular 

 6upportof the range and its work could not have been 



better. Then came the waning period, and to-day the 

 citizen marksman has become almost a memory or tradi- 

 tion, The short-range men find the range inconvenient 

 to reach, and do their outdoor shooting at other ranges 

 nearer town and more accessible. The long-range 

 men reached about the top notch of possibility so far as 

 scores went, and no new recruits came to take the place 

 of the pioneer guard of which Col. John Bodine may be 

 taken as the type. The blame for this change during these 

 past years cannot fairly, or at most only in a very small 

 extent, be lodged against the officers of the Association. 

 They have worked with enthusiastic unselfishness in many 

 instances, and have adopted the suggestions, as far as lay 

 in their power and accorded with their judgment, of the 

 host of advice givers which came to the surface from time 

 to time. Just now these know-ails are particularly ram- 

 pant. 



The range was well fitted up at the start, and for now 

 a half generation the butts have endured the leaden hail 

 which poured into tliem, but the time has come when the 

 Association managers have to face the question of a com- 

 plete renovation of the range plant, and the money for it 

 they have not been able to lay aside for the purpose. 



They might, were they so disposed, simply let every- 

 thing go by default. The fences would fall, the butts 

 slide down into a heap of soil, the trenches fill up, the 

 club house decay and tumble, and the Association cease 

 its corporate existence by sheer neglect, but this the 

 Association do not propose shall come to pass. Creed- 

 moor has a history which is worth continuing; the Asso- 

 ciation has done too good work in the past to die now by 

 any such dry rot process, and it is to preserve, not to 

 obliterate the Association, that the present scheme has 

 been brought forward. 



From the day the first shot was fired at Creedmoor by 

 a member of the State Guard down to the last shot fired 

 this season by a member of that same guard, the great 

 bulk of the practice has been done by men in uniform. 

 For years the bulk of the income which the Association 

 enjoyed came from the coffers of the State as payment 

 for the use of the range in the official National Guard 

 matches. In the matches put on from week to week, 

 and at the annual fall and spring meetings, it was the 

 matches open to or specially designed for National 

 Guardsmen which, by then- liberal list of entries, brought 

 the outlay for prizes and the income from entries some- 

 where near a balance. Had the State withdrawn its 

 patronage, as it might have done, had the Adjutant- 

 General, on the recommendation of the Inspector-Gen- 

 eral of Rifle Practice, been so minded, Creedmoor would 

 ere now have been in the slough of despond, from which 

 it now cries out for help. 



What then is now proposed by the bill which is under 

 preparation for presentation to the Legislature, with the 

 sanction of the military authorities? Simply that the State 

 shall take Creedmoor and at once spend a good round 

 sum in securing additional land, putting the entire 

 property in good order, and in general making it for all 

 time the finest range in the world. 



The Association would not be stamped out, for the bill 

 provides that it shall come in upon the range and hold 

 the regular fall meeting, and more than that, the Associa- 

 tion members will have the use of the range for any sort 

 of practice as often and as freely as the Adjutant-General 

 can see his way to accord the privilege. The troops are 

 not going to crowd upon the range any more when it 

 shall become State property out and out, than they do 

 now when the State holds it only by daily rental. It is a 

 question whether the orders for this ball practice are not 

 already too onerous. The disposition of the authorities is 

 to encourage target practice by civilians, and this is more 

 likely to increase than diminish. 



The opponents of the present plan of relief, so far as 

 they can be discovered to have any plan of their own, 

 insist that the State shall absolutely assure them the use 

 of the range on certain fixed days, and the State and its 

 military authorities be placed in a position to be dictated to 

 by private citizens. For these opponents to say that 

 they fear they may be crowded off the range is to say 

 what a moment's consideration of the situation will con. 

 vincethem is a falsity, if they do not already know it, 

 and is it likely that there is to be any sudden rush into 

 rifle practice in the near or even remote future? 



After all, it is a sort of Hobson's choice tis far as the 

 Association is concerned. It may shut up shop at once 

 and render itself false to the trust which was put in it 



when the State advanced a large sum on the understand- 

 ing that it was to be expended in the establishment and 

 maintenance of a range, or the Association may turn its 

 work over in part to the State and yet retain its own life, 

 ready to carry on the work as far as may be and with 

 the assurance that the prestige which already is part of 

 the Creedrnoor record will yet cling to it. We hope to 

 see the bill go through, and feel confident that under it 

 the range will enter upon a new term of increased use- 

 fulness. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



HP HE land of wooden nutmegs appears to be happy in 

 the possession of wooden-headed justices of tbe 

 peace. The Connecticut Association gathered evidence 

 and caused the arrest of one Albert Goddard, of Simsbury, 

 for having snared ruffed grouse on ground owned by 

 James Laughlin, a farmer. Goddard was caught in the 

 act and made no attempt to disprove his infraction of 

 the law. which provides that any person who "shall, ex- 

 cept on his own land, with a trap, snare or net, take, or 

 attempt to take, snare, net or take any woodcock, par- 

 tridge or quail, shall be fined not more than twenty-five 

 dollars." It was shown that Goddard had been given 

 verbal permission by Laughlin to snare on his (Laughlin 's) 

 land ; and on this showing the Dogberry dismissed the 

 case, and has made of himself a laughing-stock for peo" 

 pie gifted with brains. The officers of the Connecticut 

 Association have clearly made a mistake; they have gone 

 to work at the wrong end; before they can reasonably 

 'ook for any good to come of the game laws, they must 

 raise up a new crop of police justices who shall have in- 

 telligence enough to construe simple every-day English, 

 and administer the statutes as they find them. The 

 Simsbury justice would find ample scope for his intellect 

 in a Browning club. 



The current report of the Maine Commissioners of 

 Fisheries and Game is a meaty document, for it touches 

 on many topics, each one of which is suggestive and 

 worthy of attention. The ill effects of the change of 

 the law, by which the incentive of sharing in the fines is 

 taken from the detectives and wardens, has been in a cer- 

 tain measure counterbalanced by an improved local pub- 

 lic sentiment strongly in support of game conservation; 

 but the necessity of restoring the old law is urgent and 

 should have the favorable attention of the next Legis- 

 lature. The increase of moose and deer is accounted for 

 by the authors of the report on the theory of an immi- 

 gration from over the border. The game has frequented 

 districts where they have been unknown in former years; 

 to be explained, perhaps, by the abolition of hunting with 

 dogs. The report urges the opening of the deer season on 

 September 1st, and the adoption of a clause forbidding 

 the killing of a cow or a yearling moose at any time. 

 Other topics comprised in the report will be reverted to 

 in our next number. 



How differently do camp talk and camp yarns sound 

 in the warm glow of the fire from that same talk and 

 those same yarns put into cold type. The inspiration of 

 the moment, the sympathetic attention of comrades, the 

 scene, the surroundings, the sparks of wit that scintillate 

 and coruscate as when steel strikes flint — all these are 

 wanting in the printed page. To hear camp stories 

 aright one must go into camp. There is something in 

 this principle, too, which explains the distinction which 

 surely exists between camp stories and field experiences 

 as related in the Forest and Stream and other but 

 similar reading in journals devoted to general topics. The 

 hunting tale related in a sportsman's paper seems to 

 belong there, to partake more fully of the true spirit of 

 the woods, than when it is sandwiched in news columns 

 with political and social items. Thus it comes to pass 

 that a special journal like the Forest and Stream has 

 a hold on its readers like unto that tie by which camp 

 comrades are bound together in common sympathy. 



At Atlanta last week the American Forestry Congress 

 elected officers as follows: President, Gov. J. A. Beaver, 

 of Pennsylvania; Vice-Presidents, H. G. Joly, of Quebec; 

 J. Y. W. French, of Boston: Charles Moore, of Mobile; 

 Hubert Welsh, of Philadelphia, and George H. Parsons, 

 of Denver; Secretaries, J. B. Hudson, of New Hampshire, 

 and N. H. Eggleston, of Washington. The next meeting 

 will probably be held in Philadelphia. 



