Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Ykar. 10 Crs. A Copy. I 

 Six Months, ^. j 



NEW YORK, JULY 8, 1893. 



( VOL. XLI.— No. 1. 



I No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



No Latitude Nor Longitude. 

 Twentj^ Years of Big-Game 

 Shootiug. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



Danvis Folks.— vin. 



Camps on the Manitowish.— i. 



Natural History. 



Spitting Snakes. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Our North Carolina Trip. 

 Michigan My Michigan. 

 Chicago and the West. 

 Forest and Stream at the 

 World's Fair. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Adirondack Notes. 

 New Hampshire Waters. 

 Salmon of the Merrimac. 

 Trout in Quebec Wilds. 

 Chicago and the AVest. 

 On Edgemere Point. 



Fishculture. 



Review of Fishculture in Europe 

 and America. 



The Kennel. 



The Type of Great Danes.— ii. 



The Kennel. 



American P. T. Club's Derby 

 Entries. 



Northwestern F. T. Club's Derby 



Entries. 

 A Fair Offer. 

 Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Yachting. 



The New British Yachts, 

 N. Y. Y. R. A Cruise, 

 .luly Regattas. 

 News Notes. 



Canoeing. 



A Canoe Ti-ip Through Iowa. 

 JIarine and Field Club Regatta. 

 Eastern Division Meet. 

 Racing Courses for Sailing 



Canoes. 

 News Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



Give Us a New Target. 



Zettler Club Bi-Monthly Meetmg. 



Rifle Notes. 

 Trap Shooting. 



Shooting in the Coal Region. 



Mendon Tournament. 



Drivers and Twisters. 

 Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page 21. 



NO LATITUDE NOR LONGITUDE. 



The Forest and Stream to-day enters upon the twenty- 

 first year of publication, and the forty-first volume. 

 With the new volume we make a change in the day of 

 publication. Hereafter the paper will be put to press on 

 Tuesday of each week instead of on Wednesday, as here- 

 tofore. The change, which has been prompted by the 

 growth of our support in the West and South, is intended 

 to give a larger circle of readers the advantage of receiv- 

 ing the paper in the week of publication, and may be 

 taken as a further step in our aim to make the journal 

 more fully than ever before national in scope, character, 

 interest and influence. 



From the beginning we have not asked nor claimed 

 subscribers for the Forest and Stream as representing 

 any one particular section or division of the country. 

 We have never appealed to sectional pride nor sought to 

 batten on sectional prejudices. In our discussion of the 

 topics of the time, in our attitude toward the questions of 

 the day, we have never been influenced by considerations 

 of the points of the compass, nor of latitude or longitude. 

 Our sympathies have been coniinent-wide. Our ambi- 

 tion has been to make this in the widest, truest, most 

 liberal sense, an American journal for American readers. 

 The ambition has in a gratifying degree been fulfilled. 



If any justification or demonstration of the wisdom 

 of this broad editorial policy were required, it would 

 be found in the measure of the paper's standing in those 

 sections which have had their own particular, self- 

 constituted, no-trespass-here organs. For instance, For- 

 est AND Stream has a larger circulation, a more appre- 

 ciative reading, a livelier iaterest, a more genuine respect 

 and a more powerful influence in Chicago and the 

 West, than may be credited to any other journal of its 

 • class. 



In this year of celebrations of discovery and adventure 

 and conquest, Columbus-wise we have set our caravels to 

 the Westward. There is no near-by point nor corner most 

 remote where the Forest and Stream is not read. There 

 is no section set off by circles and parallels where it is not 

 destined to become still more widely known in 189ii. 



If all the big beai-s and big snakes and big iish reported 

 by the papers to have been started for the World's Fair 

 have reached their destination, the nations of the earth 

 will have a chance to see what we can do in the way of 

 bigness in fur and feathers and fish scales. The Forest 

 AND Stream's exhibit shows Mrs. Stagg's record-smaslaing 

 tarpon, and if it had been practicable to secure the space 

 required we should have shown "the big fish that got 

 away," the most interesting exhibit, it is needless to re- 

 mark, of the Angling Pavilion. 



TWENTY YEARS OF BIG-GAME HUNTING. 



The history of big game hunting in the West for the 

 past twenty years shows a constant decrease in the 

 amount of game and a constant diminution of the area 

 occupied by wild animals. The hammer blows that drove 

 the spikes in the first railway across the continent knelled 

 the extermination of wild game and wild Indians alike. 

 This first railroad furnished a market for the flesh and 

 hides of the game of the region which it traversed, 

 brought in a horde of hunters, made the country possible 

 for settlement. Great quantities of game were slaugh- 

 tered for gain and from lust of blood ; vast areas that had 

 been game range became farm land. The wild beasts 

 that were not killed were crowded out from their ancient 

 feeding grounds. 



Twenty years ago the extermination of the southern 

 herd of buffalo had been going on for two or three years, 

 and was well on its way toward completion, yet even at 

 that time these animals were still often to be seen in the 

 valley of the Platte Eiver in Nebraska, and were abun- 

 dant on the Republican in Kansas, and over much of the 

 Indian Territory. North of the Platte they were yet 

 found in the Loups, and from those streams north, to far 

 beyond the British line. In that year they occurred as 

 far east in Nebraska as the mouth of the Cedar River. 



Twenty years ago elk were still to be found in Iowa 

 though they were not very plenty there even then. But 

 all through Dakota and Nebraska they were very abun- 

 dant. In August, 1878, there were hundreds of them near 

 the mouth of the Cedar River, a tributary of the Loup, 

 where deer of both species were very abundant. This 

 region has long been settled, is traversed by railroads and 

 is a iirosperous farming country. There is probably not a 

 wild deer within one hundred miles of the place to-day, 

 nor a wild elk within four hundred. In June, 1874, the 

 command of Gen. G. A. Custer set out for the then un- 

 known Black Hills of Dakota. During the expedition the 

 only human beings seen that did not belong to the com- 

 mand were hostile Sioux Indians. In the Black Hills 

 deer were most abundant. Every little open park that one 

 entered contained a few, and they were constantly seen 

 in the timber. It was estimated that in a single day the 

 command killed 100 deer. On the plains from Fort 

 Lincoln west, antelope were always in sight. On several 

 occasions bands of them which tried to cross from one 

 side of the command to the other ran through the march- 

 ing column. When the Little Missouri was crossed many 

 mountain sheep were seen in the Bad Lands. Elk were 

 killed in the hills. The Black Hills is now a country of 

 miaes and farms. 



Twenty years ago mountain sheep abounded on most of 

 the rough peaks in the Western mountains, as well as 

 on the rugged buttes and Bad Lands far out on the 

 plains. The range of the species extended from moun- 

 tains whose bases were washed by the Pacific Ocean, 

 east through the mountain country to the plaras. Out- 

 lying spurs of the Continental Divide, like the Sweet- 

 grass Hills, Bear Paw, Little Rocky, Judith and other 

 mountains were their favorite haunts, but perhaps no- 

 where were they more abundant than in the wonderful 

 Bad Lands of the Missouri River and along the pine-clad 

 buttes of the Yellowstone. Naturalists and hunters who 

 were with General Sturgis's expedition of 1873, or who 

 journeyed among the Bad Lands of the Missouri and the 

 Little Missouri in that and subsequent years well remem- 

 ber their abundance and the noble pictures they presented 

 as they watched the passing batteaux or steamboats from 

 their lofty perches on the bluffs. To-day a man has to go 

 far and climb high to secure a shot at a mountain sheep. 

 It is probable that in the United States moose, caribou 

 and white goats are nearly as abundant now as they were 

 twenty years ago. What has been lost for the first two 

 species in the West has been gained in the East — in Maine. 

 Only within the last ten years have white goats begun to 

 be hunted, and the labor attending their pursuit is so very 

 arduous that their extermination wiU not be speedily ac- 

 complished. 



Twenty years ago the good hunting groimds of the West 

 extended from the Missouri Eiver to the Pacific Ocean. 

 Of course game was not to be found at any time all over 

 the region, but it would be foimd at some time of the year 

 almost anywhere. Even then there were a few places 

 where it no longer ranged. In the few settlements then 

 existing it did not occur. One did not expect to find 

 mountain sheep or elk in the streets of Salt Lake or Den- 

 ver. And there was often a belt of gameless country a 



few mUes back from the railroad. Yet we have seen an- 

 telope race through the streets of Cheyenne, have killed 

 elk within half a dozen miles of Bozeman, and have had 

 the railway train on which we were riding stopped to let 

 the buffalo herds cross the track. 



To-day the hunting grounds for big game in the West 

 are scarcely found on the Atlantic watershed, except in 

 the immediate vicinity of the National Park. In Montana 

 there are a few sheep, deer and goats. In Wyoming and 

 in Colorado some elk, sheep and deer. In the year 1877, 

 in the bend of the North Platte River, in the Shirley Basin, 

 Wyoming, elk were still as abundant as perhaps they 

 have been anywhere during the last forty years. During 

 a long day's travel on foot we have passed through con- 

 tinuous bands of feeding elk, which scarcely troubled 

 themselves to move out of the way. Deer were seen as 

 often as elk, but in smaller groups. Either species was 

 too abundant to be counted, but a fairly good shot who 

 vdshed to make a record as a butcher could easily have 

 killed in that day 100 elk. A few years later, an English 

 hunting party discovered the country and marked its 

 trail by a line of rotting carcasses of cows and calves 

 which were never touched by the knife, and served 

 merely to fatten the beai"s. Later still, the ranchmen from 

 Colorado took to coming here for their winter's meat, and 

 in the last five years there probably have not been five elk 

 killed in that country. They have been exterminated. 



North Park, Colorado, was twenty years ago another 

 ideal hunting ground, abounding in deer, elk, antelope, 

 bear, mountain sheep, beaver and bison. It was one of 

 the regions of which the old time hunters and trappers 

 always spoke with enthusiasm, and ranked with Jack- 

 son's Hole, Brown's Hole, Estes Park and a hundred other 

 secluded nooks in the mountains, which had then been 

 penetrated only by a few adventurous spirits. Now 

 cattle, mines, farms — yes even summer hotels and per- 

 haps tennis courts — occupy the ground where the ante- 

 lope fed and the beaver trapper camped. 



As the great game of the West grows more scarce the 

 rapidity of its extermination will decrease. In the rough- 

 est timbered ranges a few elk and deer will long survive. 

 There is much hope, too, in the growth of public senti- 

 ment in favor of the protection of these species, which has 

 been fostered by the teachings of Forest and Stream. 

 This sentiment was never so strong as it is to-day, and the 

 seed sown by this journal has yielded an abundant harvest. • 

 To-day the land is full of men earnest for game protection, 

 each one of whom is doing his share to influence public 

 sentiment. True it is that the heathen are still many 

 when compared with the elect, yet there is a generous 

 leaven of worthy sentiment which is constantly growing. 

 Of all the signs of the times perhaps the most hopeful that 

 we see is the setting apart by the Government of gener- 

 ous forest reservations in different parts of the West. The 

 Yellowstone Park we have always with us, and the vast 

 increase of game within its borders in the last twenty 

 years shows plainly enough to any comprehension 

 what protection will do for a limited area. If the forest 

 preserves which have been set apart within the last two or 

 three years shall be guarded as efficiently as the National 

 Park has been, there is no reason why any important 

 species of America's great game should ever be absolutely 

 exterminated. Such protection will render each one of 

 these reservations a preserve abounding in game, whose 

 overflow, passing beyond reservation boundaries into the 

 adjacent country, wiU furnish splendid hunting for gen- 

 erations of rifle-bearing Americans. AU that is required 

 to bring this about is systematic and thorough protection 

 of these forest reserves. There have been times within 

 the past ten years when it has seemed as if the next gener- 

 ation could use the rifle only at the target, but the events 

 of the last few years seem to promise better things, and it 

 may be that the American of the future may yet be able 

 to follow through forest and over mountain the track of 

 the big game, and may bring it to bag with the weapon 

 used by the pioneers of his race. 



Mr. Louis Bagger, the well-known rifleman and some- 

 time contributor to this journal, has been elevated to the 

 Knighthood of his native countiy, Denmark, by King 

 Christian the Ninth, who has confeiTed upon him the 

 royal Order of Dannebrog, one of the oldest and most 

 highly-prized orders in the world. Mr. Bagger, who has 

 for many years represented the Kingdom of Denmark as 

 Consul at Washington, is an ardent sportsman, an expert 

 in firearms, and the owner of one of the largest and finest 

 private collections of guns in this coimtry. 



