Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts, a Copy. ( 

 Six Months, $2. ( 



NEW YORK, AUGUST IB, 1889. 



I VOL. XXXIII.-No. 4. 

 1 No 318 Broadway, New Y ork. 



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 he 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 

 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 the money or they will not be 

 Inserted. Reading notices $1.00 per line. 



SUBSCRIPTIONS 

 May begin at any time. Subscription price, $4 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, registered 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, and Brentano's, 430 Strand, 

 London. General subscription agents for Great Britain, Messrs. 

 Davies & Co., Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, Searles and Riving- 

 toh, 188 Fleet street, and Brentano's, 430 Strand, 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. 



Put the Dog in Condition. 



Bits of Talk. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Shooting on Mount OJympus. 



Kennebago Mountain Cave. 



The National Park. 



Concerning Certain Writers. 



atural History. 



The Eared Seals.— u. 



A Woodcock's Whistle. 

 Game Bag and Run. 



An Outing in Wyoming. 



A Maine Hunting Ground., 



Bear Hunting in New Mexico. 



Gen. Henry Du Pont. # 



Chicago and the W.-st. 



Pattern and Penetration. 

 Camp-Fire Flickerings. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



A Bass Stand. 



Chicaao and the West. 



Camps of the Kingfishers.— v. 



Three Reckless Trout. 



New England Fishing. 



St. Lawrence Association. 



Angling Notes. 



The Kennel. 



Nights with the Coons.— ix. 



Fleas and Lice. 



Dog Talk. 



London Dog Show. 



Toronto Dog Sh'-w. 



Contagious Diseases of Dogs. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap shooting. 



Range and Gallerv. 



Our Team at Home. 



Creedmoor Fall Meeting. 



The Trap. 



Compton Hill. 



Elm City Gun Club Meet. 



Park Ridge Shoot. 



Illinois Association. 

 Yachting. 



A Plea, for the New York Y. C. 



Cape Cats and Cutters. 



New York Y. C. Cruise. 



Quaker City Y. C. Cruise. 



Corinthian Y. C. of Marble- 

 head. 

 Canoeing. 



Brooklyn C. C. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



PUT THE DOG IN CONDITION. 

 rpHE hunting season will soon be here, and the sports- 

 man should see to it that the companion, upon 

 whom he depends for so much of his pleasure while en- 

 joying his outing, is in suitable condition to perform his 

 part in a satisfactory manner. Nothing is more dis- 

 heartening and disgusting in shooting than to see one's 

 dog quit after an hour or two of work, fagged out and 

 done for. A long hunt with little or nothing to show for 

 it may yet have compensations if man and dog have 

 worked together sturdily and faithfully, each doing his 

 part. But there is no bright gleam amid the gloom 

 when before fairly warming up to the day's work, one's 

 pointer or setter gives out from simple inability to go on. 

 And it is all the worse when the shooter knows that his 

 own negligence is to be charged with the dog's lack of 

 condition. The poor animal that lies panting at your 

 feet, or with drooping head and stern slowly drags him- 

 self along at heel, you well know would go if he could; 

 and when you reflect that he would hunt if he had only 

 been properly treated, you resolve that the next time you 

 will attend to the matter and see that he has the neces- 

 sary preparation, forgetting that the same thing hap- 

 pened last year, and that this same resolve was then 

 made. 



It is comparatively an easy matter to put a dog in 

 proper condition for work if he is in good health. Get 

 out of bed at break of day, whistle up your companion 

 and take a tramp with him through the fields 

 or on the road. A mile out and back will perhaps be 

 sufficient the first day, the distance to be gradually in- 

 creased as your judgment dictates, until you can easily 

 do at least five times the distance. A couple of weeks of 

 this work, with proper attention to diet, will bring out 

 both dog and man in better condition for opening day 

 than would be believed by those who have not under- 

 taken such a preparatory course. 



Many a good field dog has been put down for a "quit- 

 ter," when the owner was much more to be blamed than 



the dog. It not infrequently happens that the sportsman 

 who joys in the possession of a bench winner, and fondly 

 dreams that he has a canine paragon, takes the poor 

 brute into the field and puts him through a half day's 

 hunting, which should be pleasure, but is actually hard 

 punishment: and all because not the first thing has been 

 done to condition the animal for the field. One encoun- 

 ters scores of sportsmen who are ready to decry bench 

 shows, and to pooh pooh bench show form and bench win- 

 nings, because they have known some famous bench 

 winner to be "all beat out" by a homely, ungainly dog 

 that would be hooted off the bench; and this simply be- 

 cause the bench show dog's master has foolishly been 

 content wdth his prize records, and has paid no attention 

 to conditioning his dog for field work. The biggest pile 

 of bench winnings ever accumulated could not make a 

 pointer nor a setter a stayer in the stubble, but there is 

 no reason under heaven why the bench winner, if prop- 

 erly cared for, should not be a field winner also. 



BITS OF TALK. 



IX.— FIRST LESSONS. 



" TT E was the first one I ever saw shoot on the wing, 

 .and over a dog," said the Famous Shot, "and he gave 

 me a cue that day to the best sport in the world. I have 

 often thought that I owed that man some acknowledg- 

 ment, but, as a matter of course, he was my instructor 

 only by the purest chance; he was out after a bag of 

 birds, and a pile of fun: and never dreamed that the 

 country boy perched on the top rail of that old Virginia 

 fence was taking it all in as a new and joyous revelation 

 of what partridges, as we called them, were made for. I 

 have tried to hunt him up, but he must have been dead 

 for years; he was white-haired then, and that was twenty- 

 five years ago." 



" One does feel a peculiar gratitude toward the shooter 

 who initiated him into the mysteries of the craft or the 

 angler who first showed him the knack of throwing a 

 fly," said the Fisherman, " they are our fathers in sports- 

 manship, and for all you know you yourself may even 

 now be an object of such tender regard on the part of 

 some urchin to whom you have ' all unbeknownst ' taught 

 the art." 



"I took my first lesson," said the Major, "from that 

 rare sportsman, Ethan Allin, whose death was recorded 

 in Forest and Stream only a week or two ago. One 

 day when I was out, I came across Ethan. He was 

 shooting with an old dog and a puppy, which he was 

 putting through a course of sprouts. I don't remember 

 whether he asked me to go along with him or not, but I 

 joined him anyway, for youngsters don't always wait to 

 be asked: and by and by the old dog came to a point. 

 Ethan sent me in to flush the bird. I could go right to 

 the spot now with my^eyes shut, though it happened 

 forty years ago." 



"Your photographic memory is as good as an amateur 

 camera for reproducing field scenes," put in the Fisher- 

 man. 



"At any rate it's worth more to me than a thousand 

 cameras. Wtll, I flushed the bird, which flew from me 

 out of the cover into the open across Ethan's left. He 

 deliberately raised his gun and dropped her, slick and 

 clean. I started for the bird, 'broke shot' so to speak, for 

 according to all the light I had had up to that time the 

 approved thing was to get to the game as soon after the 

 charge of shot had got there as was possible: I had never 

 heard of a dog retrieving. "With a yell, 'Hi, hi, there !' 

 and frantic gesticulations Ethan held me back, and sent 

 the puppy in to point the bird, and then the old dog to 

 show the young one how to retrieve it according to Gunter. 

 When I saw Ethan drop his bird so easily and calmly, I 

 said to myself, 'If he can shoot partridges flying I reckon 

 I can do it too, and I will.' I went home that night, 

 cleaned out my old flintlock, and went down to the store 

 for a quarter of a pound of powder and a pound of shot, 

 the regulation allowance in those days. I had No. 8 shot 

 this time, for Ethan had told me that the BBs I had been 

 using were not the right sort for birds. The next morn- 

 ing early I whistled up my yellow and white rabbit dog 

 Carlo." 



"The one you tell the tears-and-sobs story about?" 



"Yes, the same cur. We started out for glory or the 

 grave. I posted myself at a rock ledge, near a ravine, 

 where I knew well enough there were sure to be 

 pa'tridges, and I had studied them enough to know that 

 when they broke cover they would fly my way. Then I 



ordered the dog to go in, he had been through it many'a 

 time before for rabbits; and I clutched the old gun and 

 waited. It was not long before sure enough a cock 

 grouse came out of the brush and made directly toward 

 me. I waited as long as I could, then banged away, and 

 the bird tumbled down as dead as a stone. That was the 

 first bird I ever aimed at flying and I could not do better 

 to-day. 'There,' said 1, 'I knew I could do it. It's easy 

 enough to kill pa'tridges flying.' Before I could load up 

 four or five more birds had gone out, all good easy shots, 

 which I confidently reasoned would have been mine had 

 I been ready for them. I went on, and when the next 

 grouse came in range it did its part beautifully, and I 

 went through the motions too, but at the shot it did not 

 stop, but sailed right on, only a bit faster. At this I 

 was simply dumbfounded; and in'my astonishment I for- 

 got all about loading, and the rest of the birds got away 

 without a shot. 



"I tried another one, and a fourth; and kept it up until 

 powder and shot were gone, but not another bird was 

 added to the victim of my first lucky shot. The next 

 day I took another quarter-pound of powder and pound 

 of shot and set out for some more of it. That ammuni- 

 tion was all fired out of the flintlock before night; but 

 there were just as many pa'tridges flying around alive 

 and well in that part of the country at night as there had 

 been in the morning. My blazing at them was a per- 

 fectly healthy and invigorating course of treatment for 

 the grouse tribe. Before the last charge had been fired, 

 I came to the conclusion that it was not, after all, so 

 beautifully simple to kill pa'tridges on the wing; and I 

 decided, too, that a flintlock gun could not get there; it 

 took up too much time in getting started, and the shot 

 could not catch the bird. So I resolved to have the arm 

 converted into a percussion lock. 



"The next morning I took the gun and a dollar, and 

 walked seven miles to the shop of Graves the gunsmith. 

 'Could he alter the gun?' 'Yes.' 'What would it cost?' 

 'A dollar and a quarter.' My jaw dropped. A dollar 

 was big in those days, and it was just the size of my pile. 

 Graves was a man of feeling, he recognized the disap- 

 pointment of the small boy with the big gun, and he 

 bargained to fix over the lock for the dollar and two 

 pa'tridges to be delivered at some future time. Joy 

 reigned again; but there was another damper when 

 Graves told me to come back in three days for the gun. 

 Again my jaw dropped; there were pa'tridges to be shot, 

 I must shoot them, and I did not see how I should ever 

 wait three days before trying it again. But this time 

 again fortune favored the boy with the gun. A man who 

 was in the shop said to Graves, with a laugh, 'Let my job 

 wait, and fix the boy's gun; I can wait; he can't.' And 

 Graves took hold of it. I watched every motion, every 

 movement of hammer and file; and by night I was home 

 again, with a percussion gun, another supply of powder 

 and shot, and a box of G. D. caps. I left my dog home in 

 the morning, for I had come to the conclusion that I 

 could do better without him. To make a long story short, 

 before the end of the season, by sticking to business 

 pretty close, I could kill about one out of every three 

 grouse flushed: and if you think I cannot shoot on the 

 wing now, come up next month, and I'll open your eyes. 

 But what I started out to say was that I have always had 

 a kindly feeling toward the man Avho first showed me 

 that the thing could be done." 



The terrible drouth which has prevaled in the Park 

 this summer has resulted in an unusual number of forest 

 fires, but by his energy and promptness Captain Boutelle, 

 the Superintendent of the Park, has succeeded in subduing 

 or limiting them in every case except one. This fire, 

 which is still raging between Yellowstone and Shoshone 

 Lakes, was not discovered until it had been burning for 

 some days and was entirely beyond man's control. Only 

 a rain storm can put it out. 



A wise game law reflects the intelligence of a com- 

 munity; a foolish one its want of sense. The North 

 Carolina law protected deer from the first of January to 

 August fifteenth. It having been repealed, with respect 

 to that portion of the State lying east of the Wilmington 

 and Weldon Railroad, any one who is mean enough to do 

 such a thing can now kill deer at any season, even in the 

 Florida style of butchering does heavy with fawn. 



The index to Volume XXXII. is contained in this issue. 



