Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, 84 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copt. I 

 Six Months, $2. ( 



NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 17, 1891. 



j VOL. XXXYII.-No. 9. 



i No. 818 Broadway, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



September Da5"s. 



Foolish Hotel Men. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



No-Man's Land and Beyond. 

 Nattiral History. 



The Beaver's Woodpile. 

 Game Bag and Gun, 



Not Till Then. 



The Saginaw Crowd. 



Texas Game Galore. 



Ways of the RufCed Grouse. 



The Hunter's Badge. 



Game Warden Darling. 



Nova Scotia Licences. 



Chicago and the West. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Black- Bass in White Oak. 



Fishing in tbe St. Lawrence. 



Fishing on the Broad Ripple. 



Illinois Ri\^er Work. 



Gallatin River Grayling. 



South Jersey Sea Fishing. 



Chicago and the West. 



A Morning on the Oascapedia. 



Our Trip to the Little Jo Mary. 



FiSHCUI/rURB. 



Mysterious Stocking. 



The Kennel. 

 The Hamilton Show. 

 Toronto Dog Show. 

 U. S. Field Trial Club Entries. 

 Irish Setter Club. 

 Dog Chat. 

 Kennel Notes. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallerv. 



Brooklyn vs. Washington. 



Rensselaerwyok. 



The Trap. 



Central Illinois. 



Atlantic City Tournament. 



Detroit International Tourna- 

 ment. 



Harris hurg Opening. 

 Yachting. 



The Future of Yacht Racing. 



British Competition in Yacht 

 Building. 



Eastern Y. C. Fall Regatta. 



Corinthian Y. C. 52d Regatta. 



The Right of Way at a Mark. 



Yachting Notes. 

 Canoeing. 



Passaic River Regatta. 

 Answers to Correspondents- 



SEPTEMBER DAYS. 



SEPTEMBER days have the warmth of summer in 

 their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings 

 a prophetic breath of autumn. 



The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of 

 what remains of his brief life; the bumblebee is busy 

 among the clover blossoms of the aftermath; and their 

 shrill cry and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world 

 above the voices of the song birds, now silent or de- 

 parted. 



What a little while ago they were our familiars — not 

 in more than occasional song, but noted all about us in 

 their accustomed haunts — sparrow, robin and oriole, each 

 trying now and then, as if to keep it in memory, a strain 

 of his springtime love song; and the cuckoo fluted a fare- 

 well prophecy of rain. The bobolinks, in sober same- 

 ness of traveling gear, still held the meadowside thickets 

 of weeds; and the swallows sat in sedate conclave on the 

 barn ridge. Then, looking and listening for them, we 

 suddenly become aware they are gone; the adobe city of 

 the eave-dwellers silent and deserted ; the whilom chor- 

 isters of the sunny summer meadows departed to a less 

 inhospitable welcome in more genial climes. How unob- 

 trusive was their exodus. We awake and miss them, or 

 we think of them and see them not, and then we realize 

 that with them, too, summer has gone. 



This also the wafted thistledown and the blooming 

 asters tell us, and though the woods are dark with their 

 latest greenness, in the lowlands the gaudy standard of 

 autumn is already displayed. In its shadow the muskrat 

 is thatching his winter home, and on his new-shorn 

 watery lawn the full-fledged wild duck broods disport in 

 fullness of feather and strength of pinion. Evil days are 

 these of September that now befaU them. Alack, for the 

 caUow days of peaceful summer, when no honest gunner 

 was abroad and the law held the murderous gun in abey- 

 ance, and only the keel of the unarmed angler rippled 

 the still channel. Continual unrest and abiding fear are 



now their lot, and henceforth till spring brings the truce 

 of close time to their persecuted race. 



More silently than the fisher's craft the skiff of the 

 sportsman now invades the rush-paled thoroughfares. 

 Noiseless as ghosts paddler and shooter glide along the 

 even path, till alarmed by some keener sense than is given 

 us, up rise wood duck, dusky duck and teal from their 

 reedy cover. Then the ready gun belches its thunder, 

 and suddenly consternation pervades the marshes. All 

 the world has burst forth in a burning of powder. From 

 end to end, from border to border, the fenny expanse 

 roars with discharge and echo, and nowhere within it is 

 there peace or rest for the sole of a webbed foot. Even 

 the poor bittern and herons, harmless and worthless, flap 

 to and fro from one to another now unsafe retreat, in 

 constant danger of death from every booby gunner who 

 can cover their slow flight. 



The upland woods, too, are awakened from the slumber 

 of their late summer days. How silent they had grown 

 when their songsters had departed, rarely stirred but by 

 the woodpecker's busy hammer, the chatter and bark of 

 squirrels and the crows making vociferous proclamation 

 against some winged or furred enemy. The grouse have 

 waxed fat among the border patches of berry bushes, 

 rarely disturbed in the seclusion of the thickets but by the 

 soft foot-fall of the fox, the fleeting shadow of a cruising 

 hawk and the halloo of the cowboy driving home his 

 herd from the hillside pasture. But now come enemies 

 more relentless than beast or bird of prey, a sound more 

 alarming than the cowboys distant call — man and his 

 companion the dog, the terrible thunder of the gun. 

 A new terror is revealed to the young birds, a half-for- 

 gotten one brought afresh to the old. The crows have 

 found fresh cause for clamor, and the squirrels lapse into 

 a silence of fear. 



Peace and the quietness of peace have departed from 

 the realm of the woods, and henceforth while the green 

 leaves grow bright as blossoms with the touch of frost, 

 then brown and sere, and till long after they lie under 

 the white shroud of winter, its wild denizens shall abide 

 in constant fear and unrest. 



So fare with the wood-folk, these days of September, 

 wherein the sportsman rejoiceth with exceeding gladness. 



FOOLISH HOTEL MEN. 

 npO observe that proprietors of sportsmen's resorts are 

 extremely foolish, who encourage or permit their 

 guides and other employees to kill fish and game for 

 market, would be perhaps only stating an axiomatic 

 platitude. And yet it is a curious fact that scores of these 

 proprietors have not found out their folly until too late 

 to repair it. We can name more than one water and 

 more than one game district where the landlord's patron- 

 age has fallen away for no other reason in the world than 

 that his boatmen have caught for market more bass than 

 his guests have caught for fun, and his g-uides have killed 

 deer for themselves and for greenhorns, until decent 

 sportsmen have left in disgust. 



It might be thought that when a hotel keeper builds a 

 house on the shore of a lake noted for its black bass, and 

 derives a generous revenue from the fishermen who 

 register with him, drawn thither solely by the fishing, he 

 would observe carefully every precaution to keep up the 

 supply of fish, to curb the silly greed of the count-fisher, 

 and to forbid entirely the shipping of fish caught by his 

 boatmen to market. And yet, in spite of the certainty 

 that with the ruin of good fishing must come empty hotel 

 rooms and lessened receipts, we often see that landlord 

 bathing his hands in imaginary water and smiling blandly 

 over the competitive fishing of his guests, and fatuously 

 sharing the paltry profits of the fish his servants catch 

 and send to market. By and by the report goes abroad 

 that the famous bass fishing at his house has "played 

 out," and his former patrons study up other routes, and 

 their money finds its way into other tiUs. 



The governments of the world have been actively com- 

 peting in the invention and development of smokeless 

 powders; and now a report comes from Washington 

 that the naval officers of the torpedo station at Newport, 

 who have been conducting a series of experiments upon 

 various formulas, have found an ideal powder for small- 

 arms. The new composition is declared to be safe, con- 

 venient and cheap, and it has given a rifle ball a velocity 

 of 3,180ft, per second, with a low pressure in the powder 

 chamber. Gun-cotton is said to be the base. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 TT is reported, but we hope without authority, that the 

 -■- Codification Commission appointed to revise the 

 New York game law will submit to the next Legislature 

 precisely the same bill that was rejected last winter. To 

 do this would be to court for it a similar fate. The game 

 and fish interests of this State are far too important to be 

 made a vehicle of personal interest by those charged with 

 the duty of law amendment. The obnoxious provisions 

 should be stricken from the bill. 



In these days returning tourists bring out of the North 

 Woods heads and antlers of deer and regale their friends 

 with long stories of skill and luck in the chase. The 

 average deer slayer is not averse to dilating on the sport; 

 but now and then a man who kills a deer not only makes 

 no show of trophies, but maintains a gloomy silence about 

 the entire proceeding. Blank was out on an Adiron- 

 dack lake and the "guide" was rowing him with stout 

 strokes in pursuit of a deer which had been driven into 

 the water by the hounds. "Now you're near enough; 

 shoot!" exhorted the guide. Blank was near-sighted; he 

 had never seen a live deer outside of a menagerie, and to 

 him the object appeared very dim and very small. But 

 the guide insisted that it was a tremendous buck with 

 phenomenal horns, and Blank blazed away, the first shot 

 of his life. The guide pulled the game out of the water, 

 a tiny fawn, as yet unweaned; and then Blank and the 

 guide went ashore and buried the carcass in the woods, 

 and went back to the hotel and Blank added any another 

 "hunter's yarn" to the thousands that have been told, but 

 his story was not an exaggeration like the rest, for he 

 protested that he had kUled no deer at all. 



The Bangor News prints a letter from Edgar E, Har- 

 low, of Greenville, Moosehead Lake,^nd the News appears 

 to think the statements in the letter worthy of credence. ' 

 It recounts the following list of game animals recently 

 discovered by Kineo guides, and says that not a single 

 offender has yet been brought to justice: "One dead 

 cow moose at Thoroughfare Brook, Eagle Lake; one dead 

 moose on Russell Stream; one dead caribou on Russell 

 Stream; one dead deer on Russell Stream; one dead moose 

 at Duck Pond; one dead moose at Eagle Lake camp 

 ground; one dead moose at Caticomgomoc Lake; one 

 dead caribou at Black Pond; one dead deer at Horse 

 Race, Caucomgomoc Stream; one dead moose at Spencer 

 Pond; three dead deer at Spencer Pond; two dead moose 

 at Soper Brook, Eagle Lake." 



We^would be glad to learn that this report is an exag- 

 geration, for if the facts are actually as given they indi- 

 cate in the Moosehead region a demoralization worse 

 than that already described in the Forest and Stream as 

 existing in other sections. It must be remembered that 

 the open season for moose, deer and caribou will not be- 

 gin before the first of next month. 



Here is an incident of bird life that may afford an in- 

 teresting theme of speculation. Mr. E. R, Wilbur brings 

 us from Sayville, L. I. , a robin's nest containing two 

 eggs, which was abandoned so late as Sept. 1, Did the 

 belated mother bird's robin wisdom tell her that it was too 

 late in the season to bring her fledglings into the world, or 

 did the spirit of wildness, which takes possession of the 

 robin tribe, triumph over the maternal instinct and com- 

 pel her abandoning the nest in the grape arbor to join 

 her squawking mates in the woods? 



The conventional Indian orator declaims with many a 

 fervid figure of speech against the white man who has 

 usurped his ancient hunting grounds; but here comes the 

 Sioux with figures of another style altogether. Young- 

 Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses and 793 others have sent to 

 Washington a claim against the Government of $10,000,000 

 for the destruction of the large game that abounded in 

 the West and furnished their subsistence. 



Colorado's bounty on bears and mountain lions is said 

 to be working most disastrously to her supply of elk and 

 deer, large numbers of which have been killed for use as 

 bait in the bear traps. 



Dr. J. A. Henshall is now in this city in the interest of 

 the Angling Exhibit at the World's Fair, which he reports 

 to be in capital condition. 



