Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Ybab. 10 Qi's. a Copy. ( 

 Six Months, 82. | 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1893. 



J VOL. XLI.-N0, 18. 



I No. 318 Broadway, Nkw Yoke. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Good Literature. 

 I iPortraits in Ink— IL The Trap- 



per. 

 1 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



The Saginaw Crowd.— iv. 

 Natural History, 



Hawks and Owls of the U. S. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



A Still Day. 



The West of Long Ago. 

 Squirrels and Bass in Texas. 

 Boston Guns. 



Duck Shooting near Montreal. 

 Chicago and the West. 

 More about the .22. 

 Big Game in Maine. 

 "Lots of Birds." 



Forest and Stream in the 



World's Fair. 

 A Staff Story of the Midway. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Pollock with a Trout Rod. 

 Bass in the Conestoga. 

 Angling Notes. 

 The Kennel. 

 Points and Flushes. 

 Eastern Field Trials. All- Age En- 

 tries. 



The KenneL 

 American KennelClub. 

 Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



Hunting- and Coursing. 



Coursing at Goodland. 

 National Beagle Club Trials. 

 Brunswick Fur Club Field Trials. 

 Hunting and Coursing Notes. 



Yachting. 



Vigilant and Valkyrie. 

 Yacht Captains as Hosts. 

 The "Double Catboat" Squinx. 

 A Cruising Sloop. 

 More About che Centerboard. 

 Sailing in Home and Foreign 



Waters. 

 News Notes. 



Canoeing. 



Canoe Notes. 

 Rifle Range and Gallery, 



Hudson Rifle Club. 

 Rifle Club Doings. 

 Rifle Notes. 



Trap Shooting. 



Lynn Tournament. 

 Elliott and Class Shoot a Tie. 

 Big Shoot at Reading. 

 Drivers and Twisters. 

 Answers to Queries. 



do this not only by his precept and his example, but also 

 by informing others of less experience where informa- 

 tion on these points may best be obtained. 



F(?r Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page viii. 



Because of Election the next issue of 

 " Forest and Streannt" will go to press on 

 Monday, Nov. 6. Advertising copy should 

 be in ha,nd by Saturday, Nov. 4. 



QOOB LITERATUBE. 

 Notwithstanding the hard times which have pre- 

 vailed during the past fonr months, the Forest and 

 Stream has sold dm-ing that time more books than ever 

 before in a like period. This increase in its book sales is 

 no doubt due in part to its exhibit at the World's Fair at 

 Chicago, which enabled a vast number of people to make 

 personal examination of volumes which up to that time 

 they had never seen and knew only by name. 



There can be no doubt that this wider dilfusion of 

 sportsman's literature is a good thing, nor that it has a 

 tendency to elevate the standard of sportsmanship through- 

 out the country. While all books are not equally good, 

 it is yet true that in each one of the publications issued 

 by a reputable house there is to be found a certain amount 

 of good either in the way of positive additions to. our 

 knowledge or in a general elevation of tone. This is an 

 age of progress, of development, and this development, on 

 the whole, is in the right direction. Examples of this are 

 seen on every hand, and one of the most striking of these, 

 in the line of sportsmen's books, is to be foimd in "Ameri- 

 can Big-Game Hunting," the recently published book of 

 the Boone and Crockett Club. We venture to say that 

 there has never been published a volume on big-game 

 hunting which dealt so little with the coarser aspect of 

 this sport, the mere butchery of game, and whose tone as 

 a whole was so decidedly in favor of the rights of others. 

 For this, after all, is what game protection means; a httle 

 putting aside of self, a keeping in mind that there are 

 other people in the world besides om-selves who will want 

 to slioot and fish, a recollection that there are othere to 

 come after us. 



The Forest and Stream, as is well known, is the largest 

 publisher and importer in this country of books on the 

 outdoor sports with which it concerns itself, and while, as 

 a business concern, it conducts its book business on busi- 

 ness principles, it is a well recognized fact that the ten- 

 dency of the publications issued from its press is good, 

 and that a wider distribution of this Hteratiure not only 

 gives pleasure to those into whose hands it comes, but also 

 teaches the gospel of game protection to those who stand 

 in need of such teachings, and encourages and strengthens 

 those who ai-e already workers in this cause. 



As the interest in outdoor sports increases, the import- 

 ance of such work is constantly becoming more fully re- 

 cognized by the public, but this recognition does not 

 keep pace with the additions to the ranks of the anglers 

 and gunners; and as novices in sport — like all new con- 

 verts — are full of enthusiasm, they are likely, from their 

 very ignorance on many points, to prove far more de- 

 structive to fish and game than men of more experience, 

 even though the skill of the latter may be much greater. 



It is worth the while of every man who takes a sincere 

 interest in the better forms of sport to do what he can to 

 inculcate in others just ideas on these topics. He should 



PORTRAITS IN INK. 

 n. — the trapper. 

 Bill, the trapper, is a figure so out of place in the midst 

 of the civilization that has swept away forests and game, 

 that you almost wonder if he is not an Indian who hap- 

 pened to be born with a white skin, fair hair and blue 

 eyes, or a pioneer hunter who drank at the fountain of 

 youth in middle age and so has been preserved smce the 

 old wild days when the unmeasured wildness stretched 

 out into unknown lands and sheltered countless game. 

 He has many of their traits, many of the qualifica- 

 tions that would fit him to live their lives amid their be- 

 fitting surroundings; and is as out of place as they would 

 be in this latter day tameness of men and nature. 



His tall, spare form, full of inert vigor and strength, 

 clad in garments that befit his calling and that bear 

 odorous witness of it, shacking leisurely among restless, 

 busy men, on whose incessant bustle he casts wondering 

 eyes alert through all their dreaminess, is as incongrous 

 here as would be a betailored, becurled dandy in the 

 heart of the wilderness. 



He has that instinct, or sixth sense, possessed by few 

 except Indians aud dumb animals, which enables him to 

 make his way to any desired point without any apparent 

 guidance, though, save of dark night, he has little use for 

 it in these narrow and many pathed woodlands. 



He treads their rustlmg carpet as silently as a panther, 

 the sere leaves do not stir, nor the dry twigs snap beneath 

 his feet, the bent boughs sway to their places behind 

 him without a sound. You are not aware of his coming 

 till he appears before you like an apparition, nor of his 

 going but as you watch him like one dissolving in the 

 shadows of the woods. 



His casual glances discover things which are not re- 

 vealed to directed gaze, and he translates records that you 

 cannot read. 



Where you see only a knot or wisp of brown leaves, he 

 discovers the bird under the grouse's disguise of moveless- 

 ness; on what is to you only a blank page, he reads the 

 story of some remote or recent presence or passage. 



He knows every kind of tree and its varieties, all the 

 medicinal and poisonous plants by odd and homely names 

 that often have a tang of folk lore or hint of forgotten 

 use; and it is as instructive as a professor's discourse on 

 natural history to hear him talk of the habits of wild 

 things, for all his quaint superstitions concern some of 

 them. 



You could find no arguments to shake his firm belief 

 that eels are generated in mussels or that skunks have 

 power to absorb their own spent effluence, nor do you 

 care to. 



He would not kill a nesting partridge or trap an unprime 

 fur-bearer, yet he holds all legislative protection of game 

 and fish to be an infringement on his rights, and is as 

 cunning as a fox in persistent violation of all such 

 statutes. All wild things are his by natm-al inheritance, 

 and what does a week or month matter, and whose 

 affair is it if he desires fish, flesh or fowl to-day? 



He is somewhat conceited and boastful and envious of 

 another's renown in his craft, to be foremost in which is 

 his highest ambition. 



You confess it is a poor ambition to be most skillful in a 

 trade that is obsolets and unrequited. With a slightly 

 different bent, with one omitted trait, he would have had 

 a higher aim and have been an Audubon or Thoreau, per- 

 forming viseful if iU-paid labor work, making a name 

 honorably remembered. 



But as he is what he is, he slouches into old age and 

 down to his last sod-roofed shanty, a shiftless, lazy, good- 

 natured, disreputable old trapper, hunter and fisherman, 

 who will be only by a few kindly and briefly remem- 

 bered. 



Yet as you see him stealing through the second growth 

 woods, tame and ptmy successors of the wild, majestic 

 forests, or plying the noiseless paddle of his skiff in the 

 nakedness of a shrunken stream, he is so like a lingering 

 spirit of the old days, that you are thankful for the pic- 

 turesque figure which gives one touch of remote half 

 savage past to the commonplace present. 



SNAR SHOTS. 

 For the past week the Forest and Stream has been 

 receiving from many points in foreign countries com- 

 plaints that its subscribers were not receiving their 

 copies of the paper on time. An investigation showed 

 that our foreign mail was being tampered with, and 

 we have reason to believe that a portion of it failed 

 to reach the post-office for some weeks. Steps have been 

 taken to remedy this irregularity, which occurs now for 

 the first time in the paper's history. We have also dupli- 

 cated their copies to all those who may have failed to 

 receive Forest and Stream in the regular mail and at 

 the usual time. We greatly regret the inconvenience 

 that has been caused to our foreign readers through these 

 irregularities. 



Too late for its place in another page comes this timely 

 message from our Chicago staff correspondent, written 

 Oct, 29: "The last words for the Fair are still to be said, 

 and are not out of place even in these columns. Last 

 night Carter H. Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, was shot 

 and killed in his own home by a crazy assassin. This 

 closes the career of one of the most prominent figures 

 before the Western public. The Harrisons were vigorous 

 men always and sportsmen, the family being especially 

 well known in this capacity among the gentlemen of 

 Louisiana and the South," 



The World's Fair is over. Our corner in the Angling 

 Pavilion has been dismantled. The Pavihon itself will 

 soon be a memory. But the satisfaction of the Forest 

 and Stream over its part in the Exposition will be last- 

 ing. Among all the exhibitors at the Fair, we verfly 

 believe, this journal has held a place altogether unique; 

 for its representation in the Fisheries Building has been 

 taken advantage of by thousands of friends old and new 

 to put themselves into closer touch with their favorite 

 paper. May the pleasant relations thus manifested never 

 be broken. 



Our pages this week admirably illustrate the success- 

 ful use of the camera in the woods. To have secured 

 such admirable pictures of one's moose, as those which 

 accompany the story of "L, C, I.," affords satisfaction 

 second only to that which attends the final cap- 

 ture of the game sought for so many seasons. One 

 of these days some enterprising amateur photographer 

 will go into the moose bogs with a birch-bark call, a 

 camera and a flash-light outfit, call up his moose and taice 

 a snap shot which will astonish the world. 



The fact is that no one can ever tell just when a sports 

 man's outing really begins, nor when it really ends. He 

 would show himself an ahen to the craft, who should 

 reckon only from time of start to time of return. For 

 the beginning may have been weeks and months before 

 the actual going; and as for the ending— does not the 

 vision of the camp present itself so vividly atriid the 

 pauses of every- day humdrum and prosaic routine, for 

 weeks and months afterward, that one actually lives his 

 woods life anew? 



The day of profitable trapping has not gone by, par- 

 ticularly in parts where tending traps may be combined 

 with killing game for market. A Cascade Mountains 

 skin and meat hunter is said to have taken in about $3,000 

 for his last season's work of trapping mink, otter, sable 

 and gray fox, and killing elk and deer for market. 



A glowing grate fire, a fire engine and a shotgun are 

 all excellent in their way these frosty autumn days. But 

 the fool who pokes his hand into the fire wiU get burnt, 

 the fool who stands .in range of the hose nozzle will get 

 drenched, and the fool who draws his gun muzzle fore- 

 most will get shot. 



The "Saginaw Crowd" have returned from their 1893 

 outing, and Mr, Mershon promises to teU us of it. 



An item is going about the press that two sons of 

 Andrew Carnegie have been hunting in Wyoming and 

 report game plenty. What about that Wyoming law 

 which prohibits the killing of game by non-residents? 

 Does it amount to anything? 



It strikes us that the name of Mr, Charles Piscator who 

 runs a gunsmith shop in this town is a misfit. If Mr, 

 Piscator dealt in sandworms for bait or in fishing rods or 

 other piscatorial supplies, the appropriateness of his patro- 

 nymic would be more pertinent to his occupation. 



