Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Tkrms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts, a Copy. 1 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 12, 1889. 



J VOL. XXXIII.— No. 8. 

 1 No 318 Broadway, New York. 





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CONTENTS. 



Editorial 



The State Shoots. » 



A Third Chapter of Accidents. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Shooting atMt. Olympus.— IV. 

 Natural History. 



Aquaria Notes. 



Notes on Back Numbers. 



Whistle of the Woodcock. 



A Two-headed Snake. 

 Game Baq and gun. 



Texas Game Law. 



Pattern and Penetration. 



Bullets from Shotguns. 



Chicago and the West. 



Worcester Opening Day. 



Rifle Facts and Theories. 



A Trip ov<>r Clip. 



Ducks in South Dakota. 



A Big Bear. 



Game Notes. 

 Camp-Firb Fuickkrings. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



A Week in the Laurentians. 



Camps of the Kingfishers.— IX. 



About Land Sharks. 



Taking in a Big One. 



St. Lawrence Fish Protection. 



Angling Notes. 



Fish culture. 



Fish Breeding in Canada. 

 The Kennel. 



Registration in the Gazette. 



Great Dane Standard. 



Helena Dog Show. 



Wilmington Dog Show. 



Brooklyn Dog Show. 



Dog Talk. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallerv. 



Inter-State Match in New 

 Jersey. 



The Canadian Wimbledon. 



Minnesota State Shoot. 



Pennsylvania State Shoot. 



The Trap. 



Seville Tournament. 

 Canoeing. 



The A. C. A. Meet. 



Arlington C. C. Regatta. 



A. C. A. Paddling Trophy. 

 Yachting. 



Beverly Y. C. 



Eastern Y. C. Regatta. 



Hull Y. C. Regatta. 



Larchmont Y. C. Regatta. 



An Accident to Electra. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE STATE SHOOTS. 



IN our columns this week Minnesota, Pennsylvania and 

 New Jersey appear side by side in rivalry, each State 

 displaying the doings of its militiamen at the butts. 

 Canada sends down the story of her Colonial Wimbledon, 

 and next week will come the narrative of the scores 

 made at the annual fall meeting of the National Eifle 

 Association at Creedmoor. This is good so far as it goes: 

 but instead of having less than a half dozen States hold- 

 ing shoots, the list should run through the entire Union, 

 and every section show what it can do in comparison 

 with its sister Commonwealths. In any National Guard 

 a system of rifle practice once started is sure to be a very 

 popular feature of military life. The men will be sure to 

 keep it up, provided the official heads of the Guard give 

 even a half-way support. The old-time enthusiasm, 

 which expended itself, at the annual musters, in show- 

 ing how this separate company could beat another sepa- 

 rate company in marching ramrod fashion and in going 

 through the manual of arms like well-greased automata, 

 finds a far more sensible outlet through the rivalry of the 

 contests at the targets; and all the time the men, instead 

 of becoming a fine-looking and obedient uniformed 

 machine, are trained into self-reliant fighters, for no man 

 has yet been able to find any royal road to becoming a 

 good shot. Practice, practice, pkactice, is the one path- 

 way to success and fame as a marksman, and an intelli- 

 gent private does not need an officer at his elbow to tell 

 him how to practice. 



That rifle practice has come to stay ; that it is to become 

 more and more a feature of regular as well as militia 

 military life, can hardly be disputed. The competitions 

 now in progress between members and teams of the vari- 

 ous army departments and divisions are really of far 

 more national importance than many other subjects 

 given more notice in the public eye, and many a man in 

 blue is glad of the break in the monotony of his enlisted 

 life which comes through rifle practice. Enough States 

 have taken up rifle practice to show that it can be car- 



ried out with the most satisfactory results, and at a mini- 

 mum of cost. In those States where as yet nothing has 

 been done, the neglect can only be explained on the 

 ground that the official heads are either negligent or in- 

 capable. It is easy now to study what the pioneer States 

 have done, what they have learned by experience to 

 leave undone, and so devise a system of practice which 

 Bhall at once produce the best results. 



On the whole, the records are satisfactory. Massa- 

 chusetts has spoken for herself in magnificent fashion on 

 several English ranges, as she had previously ruled the 

 roost on this side. Of the other States, each shows that 

 there are good shots wearing the State uniform, and 

 no longer can be truthfully uttered the taunt flung at 

 our soldiers scarce a decade ago, "You are very pretty, 

 but you can't shoot." 



A THIRD CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 



TF it were possible to collect data for a comprehensive 

 study of shooting accidents, it would be found that 

 most casualties of this nature would naturally fall into 

 groups, each group having a distinct classification. Thus 

 two weeks ago we made note of numerous instances 

 where human beings had been mistaken for various 

 species of game and deliberately shot at by hunters; and 

 last week we spoke of the fatalities caused by stray bul- 

 lets and the recklessness of shooters who do not stop to 

 discover if there are human beings in range of their shots. 

 A third class is of the purely accidental ones which result 

 from the carelessness or clumsiness of shooting compan- 

 ions. 



This is the season of the year when the accident insur- 

 ance companies expect to be called on to pay insurance 

 on men who have been maimed or killed by their field 

 comrades. Last week a member of a deer-hunting party 

 in Sullivan county, in this State, was killed by the acci- 

 dental discharge of a companion's gun; the men were 

 walking in single file, the one ahead carrying his gun on 

 his shoulder pointing downward at the stomach of the 

 man behind; a twig caught the trigger, the gun went off 

 and the man behind died within an hour. Only a week 

 before this came the report of the accidental killing of a 

 prominent Iowa banker by his son while they were out 

 hunting. These instances are multiplied again and 

 again, and they constitute a distinct class of shooting 

 accidents. 



A judicious person will hesitate before venturing into 

 the field with one whose shooting habits are unknown to 

 him; and the older a person grows and the more he sees 

 of field shooting and field shots the less inclined is he to 

 risk his person and life with careless gunners. Few of 

 us would be persuaded by the assurance of the German 

 baron who invited an English guest to shoot with him on 

 his preserve. "I have shot tiger in India,"' said the 

 Englishman, by way of excuse, "and your German hunt- 

 ing is not exciting enough, don't you know?" "Ah!" 

 returned the baron, "you love dancher, do you? Den 

 you should go shoot mit me. Only an fordnght ago I 

 shooted mine bruder-in-law right through de shtomach." 

 No less reassuring was that reply of the keeper of an 

 English estate, when a guest who had heard of his host's 

 carelessness in the field, asked just as they were starting 



out, "Has Mr. ever wounded anybody?" "Oh yes," 



replied the keeper solemnly and in a whisper, "Mr. 



shoots a man every year." Such men have not learned 

 the first principle of sportsmanship, for no man has a 

 right to count himself a fellow of the craft until he has 

 learned above all things caution in handling his weapon. 



The simple rale never to point a gun at the person 

 of a human being is the only safe maxim; nine of every 

 ten accidents in the field are caused by a violation of it. 

 The Utica, N. Y., young man who when trying to remove 

 a cap from his gun, blew off the head of a boy standing 

 by; the Milltown, Me., hunter, whowhenabout to aim at 

 a target, accidentally pressed the trigger of his rifle and 

 put a bullet through the thigh of his friend with fatal 

 results; the Kenosha, Wis., gunner, who when bringing 

 down the barrels of his gun after loading it, discharged 

 it and shot three children; the Leavenworth, Kan., man, 

 and the Newport, R. I. , gunner, who caused their friends to 

 perish by similar premature gun discharges; all these and 

 scores of others would not have been " prostrated with 

 grief," " crazed " and otherwise made to suffer the tortures 

 of self-reproach and condemnation, had they but observed 

 this simple and with the exercise of only a slight degree 

 of thoughtfulness entirely practicable rule. A gun is a 



deadly weapon; death is the purpose of its use; and there 

 is no excuse for those who, forgetting or disregarding 

 this, bring death to their fellows. 



There are other accidents which are due to pure awk- 

 wardness and want of skill on the part of the shooter. 

 From such wounding one is not safe in the city streets. 

 It is notorious that when a policeman discharges his re- 

 volver at a fugitive, it is not the fugitive but the man 

 on the other side of the street, or the child in the fifth 

 story window who most often suffers. A policeman in 

 New York the other day tried to shoot an alleged mad 

 dog; the dog escaped, but a thirteen year old boy lost an 

 eye. A compact item in a Jacksonville, Fla., paper, 

 from an Ocala correspondent told a similar story in a nut- 

 shell: "Sunday as our meat man, H. M, Fowler, was at- 

 tempting to slaughter a beef at his slaughter house, he 

 accidentally shot his man Ben in the arm." 



This proclivity of bullets aimed at one object to strike 

 another has long been recognized, as appears from an old 

 advertisement wherein it was ingeniously turned to 

 accotmt by an aggrieved owner of an ass thus, "Whereas, 

 several idle and disorderly persons have lately made a 



practice of riding on an ass belonging to Mr. , now, 



lest any accident should happen, he takes this method of 

 informing the public that he has determined to shoot the 

 said ass, and cautions any person that may be riding on 

 it at the same time to take care of himself, lest by some 

 unfortunate mistake he should shoot the wrong one." 



The paragraphers find frequent subjects for jest in the 

 doings of careless gunners. When the Emperor of Ger- 

 many while shooting at Bucko w accidentally wounded a 

 citizen of Berlin, who was looking on, this incident, com- 

 ing after the peppering of three Scotch game keepers by 

 Prince Henry of Battenberg, prompted the New T York 

 World to suggest, "If active hostilities of this kind con- 

 tinue in Europe the Universal Peace Society will have to 

 interfere. No reasonable person insists that the aim of 

 royalty should be high, but it ought at least to be accu- 

 rate." A Bridgeport, Conn., man was shot through the 

 foot by the discharge of a friend's gun; the Standard of 

 that city reported that the charge "tore a hole in the foot 

 six inches in diameter," whereupon the Danbury Neivs 

 commented, "This will give the reader an idea of the 

 tonnage of the Bridgeport foot." 



It must be confessed that this is unseemly joking on a 

 serious subject, which has in it less of humor than of 

 pathos. The lapse of twenty-five centuries has not dead- 

 ened the touching appeal to sympathy in that story of 

 Adrastus, the son of Georgias, the son of Midas, who in 

 the year 550 B. C, having first killed his own brother by 

 accident at home, and then with a javelin aimed at a 

 wild boar having slain the son of his patron Croesus, 

 waited in silence and solitude until after the funeral, and 

 then, "knowing within himself that of all men he ever 

 heard of he was the most burdened with calamities, slew 

 himself upon the tomb." 



SNAP SHOTS. 



BY the death of Hon. S. S. Cox, in this city last Tues- 

 day, the friends of the National Park have lost a 

 powerful, consistent and valued ally. Mr. Cox had an 

 intelligent interest in the Park, and what was in the 

 highest degree a patriotic concern for its conservation as 

 a possession for the people for all time. In its defense 

 against the plottings of railroad schemers Mr. Cox took an 

 active part on the floor of the House, and it was in large 

 measure due to his exertions that the purposes of the 

 grabbers were balked. By his services in this course he 

 made himself worthy of grateful remembrance. His 

 voice and his influence will be missed in future legisla- 

 tion respecting the Park. 



The complaint by our correspondent "Podgers" has a 

 substantial basis. He went fishing and has returned not 

 full of elation over the big string of fish captured, but 

 cast down by the cruel treatment endured at the hands 

 of the swindlers who prey on his kind. It is a com- 

 plaint, too, that will find an echo in the hearts of numer- 

 ous others who have fared in the same way. It is within 

 the experience of most men who go from home on shoot- 

 ing or fishing excursions that the expenses of such out- 

 ings are constantly growing, and this is not because more 

 services are demanded, but because the demands for ser- 

 vices rendered are becoming exorbitant, 



Ira Paine, the famous pistol shot, died in Paris last 

 Tuesday, 



