Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1893. 



The Forest and Stream is put to press 

 on Tuesdays. Correspondence intended for 

 publication should reach us by Mondays and 

 as much earlier as may be practicable. 



Plliw WE KNOW IT for we have much of 

 the material already in hand and you believe it 

 for you reason from the past, that the "Forest 

 and Stream" this winter will be richly freighted 

 with good things to read. But that friend of 

 yours, with tastes like your own, does not real= 

 ize what he is losing when he misses the paper. 

 Give us his address and we will send him a 

 complimentary copy. It will open his eyes.^ 



Ou7' harvest being gotten m, our governour sent four 

 men on fowlmg, that so we might after a more special 

 manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit 

 of our labours; they four in one day killed as much 

 fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company 

 almost a week, at which tifne amongst other recreations, 

 7Cie exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming 

 amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king 

 Massasoyt, with some ninety men, whom for three days 

 we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed 

 five deer, which they brought to the plantation and 

 bestowed on our governour and upon the captain and 

 others. — Letter of Euward Winslow, 1611. 



THE PILGRIMS' THANKSGIVING TURKEY. 



The observance of a day of thanksgiving had its origin 

 very early in the beginning of New England. Barely a 

 year had elapsed after the landing at Plymouth Rock, 

 when Governor Bradford issued the iirst proclamation 

 for the setting apart of such a day. The Indians had 

 shown the new-comers how to manure their lands "with 

 herrings or rather shads, which we have in great abun- 

 dance, and take with great ease at our doors," and plenti- 

 ful crops had been gathered. In November the ship 

 Fortune arrived with a reinforcement of thirty-five 

 colonists. There was abundant reason for the Governor's 

 command. The 13th of December, 1631, was made a day 

 of rejoicing; and the delectable custom of feasting on 

 Thanksgiving turkey was instituted there and then. 



The Pilgrim Fathers were sportsmen — not, perhaps, 

 "ti-ue sportsmen" according to the highly artificial code 

 we have developed, but sportsmen according to their lights 

 in that day and generation. "Let your shot be most for 

 big fowls, and bring store of powder and shot," wrote 

 Edward "Winslow to his friends in England in 1621. 

 "Bring every man a musket or fowling-piece; let your 

 piece be long in the barrel and fear not the weight of it, 

 for most of our shooting is from stands." No shooting- 

 flying nonsense there we may well believe. It was meat 

 the Pilgrim Father was after when he rested his piece, 

 braced himself for the shock of the recoil, then pulled 

 h'ficnself together and chuckled as he saw the devastation 

 wrought by the swan-shot. Amid the hardships and dire 

 privations of the planting of the colony — forty-six of the 

 one hundred and one settlers, be it remembered, died in 

 that first winter — there was no time nor thought for the 

 fine friUs of the art. He was the best sportsman who 

 could show the most for it; and one of these days it wiU 

 be m. order for some appreciative student of colonial 

 history — ^Rowland E. Robinson for example— to tell us 

 how considerable and important was the part taken by 

 these grim old Puritan sportsmen with their heavy- 

 weights long in the barrel, in the establishing of Plymouth 

 Plantation. 



There was game galore in those days. "And now," 

 writes Bradford, " begane to come in store of foule as 

 winter approached, of which the place did abound when 

 they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). 

 And besids water foule ther was great store of wild 

 turkies, of which they took many, besids venison, etc." 

 That was written in 162i, and there you have, more than two 

 hundred years ago, the noted beginning of game decrease 



in America ; a subject on which, no doubt, these first 

 comers waxed eloquent in their old age, when they took 

 to recounting old times to their grandchildren, and one 

 as well, upon which every descendant of the Pilgrims may 

 wax eloquent in our own day as he tells his grandchil- 

 dren what duck shooting was when he was young. 



The wild turkey indeed has been obliterated, not only 

 from the bounds of Plymouth Plantation, but from New 

 England. Some afiirm that still he may be found in 

 the wilder parts, the skulking sm-vival of a noble race; 

 but no Massachusetts sportsman of 1893 would dream of 

 going out to shoot a wild gobbler for his Thanksgiving 

 dinner, as did the men of Plymouth in 1631. To the 

 "great store" in those early days does a grateful nation 

 owe the blessed institution of Thanksgiving turkey. The 

 name of the sportsman who shot the game for that first 

 feast of rejoicing has been lost in the lapse of time, but if 

 ever turkey hunter hunted better than he knew it vras 

 this man whose hunting and whose home-bringing set 

 the pattern for the Thanksgiving feasting of lo! those 

 hundreds of years. The wild turkey of New England has 

 perished from the face of the earth, but he has left an in- 

 delible impress upon the Thanksgiving platters of a 

 nation, and for this achievement the bronze plumage of 

 the Pilgrim bred will shine for all time gloi'ified as with 

 the sheen of pu re gold. 



THE COAST FISHERY CONFERENCE. 

 ' What are the causes of the prevailing scarcity of food 

 fishes in Atlantic Coast waters? What can be done to 

 remove the destructive agencies and to restore the fish- 

 eries? These are questions which have been forcing 

 themselves with growing insistence upon the attention of 

 fishermen for months past. TJiat the time is jrjpe for 

 their consideration is demonstrated by the commimica- 

 tions which are pouring in upon the New York Fish Com- 

 mission in response to their circular published in our 

 columns last week calling for a conference on the subject. 



The meeting will be held in this city on Dec. 13. It 

 will be attended by representatives of the United States 

 Fish Commission, the Fish Commissioners of Maine, 

 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 

 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Vir- 

 ginia and North Carolina, the last two States having 

 been included on the suggestion of United States Com- 

 missioner MacDonald. Fish protective societies, angling 

 clubs and individuals will be represented. It is but fair 

 to assume that the menhaden fishermen and the pound 

 men will be there and give their side of the case. 



The investigation is one which cannot be completed 

 in a day; this conference of Dec. 13, let us hope, will 

 only mark the beginning of a movement which shall 

 not be abandoned until the important purpose declared 

 by the projectors shaU have been secured. 



AN IMPORTANT POWDER TEST. 



"We print to-day the first portion of the report by Mr. 

 Armin Tenner on the gunpowder tests recently conducted 

 by him. The introductory paper is preliminary to the 

 actual figures of the test; it deals with certain fundamen- 

 principles of the science of shooting; and like the entire 

 report it is deserving of careful study. The conclusion of 

 the report will be given in succeeding issues. 



These tests by Mr. Tenner and the experts who acted 

 with him are the most thorough, inteUigent, comprehen- 

 sive and exhaustive public trials of sporting gunpowder 

 ever made in this country. The conditions attending 

 them were such as to command confidence in their im- 

 partiality of conduct and correctness of conclusions. 

 The trials are timely and meet a recognized demand. 



Popular knowledge has by no means kept pace with the 

 introduction of new and novel explosives. Sportsmen 

 have had put into their hands compounds, of the con- 

 stituents and properties of which they know absolutely 

 nothing, beyond the bare statements of the manufacturer. 

 The ijowders have been taken on trust ; and their use has 

 of necessity been in large measm-e ex]jerimental and 

 uncontrolled by any adequate comprehension of govern- 

 ing principles. Under such circumstances, Mr. Tenner's 

 report pubUshed in the FoEEST and Stream will be wel- 

 comed by the shooting public ; and we may expect not 

 only that it will materially add to popular information 

 on the subject of explosives, but that it will lead as well to 

 a more reasonable and intelligent use of gunpowders. 



Mr. Tenner's name is not unfamiliar to the readers of 

 our shooting cplumns, to which he has been a frequent 



contributor. Born in Thuringia, Germany, Mr. Tenner 

 came to this country at the age of seventeen, enlisted in 

 the 11th Missouri Volunteers, and at the close of the war 

 took up his residence in Cincinnati, where he was con- 

 nected with the German press. He was one of the organ- 

 izers of the Cincinnati AccHmatization Society and the 

 Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, serving as secretary of 

 both these institutions and as manager of the Gardens. 

 Going abroad as manager of the International Telephone 

 Company, he secured franchises for the operation of tele- 

 phone exchanges in Russia, Italy, Switzerland and other 

 European countries. 



Always interested in guns and shooting, he indulged 

 his bent in that direction, and of late years has been 

 active in promoting the popularity of trap-shooting in 

 Germany. He was long a director in the German Shoot- 

 ing Association, and acted as manager of their tests of 

 arms and powders. Concluding at length that, as he 

 puts it, Germany was too small a country for him, Mr, 

 Tenner came back to America, bringing with him a fine 

 set of the most approved ballistic instruments of the 

 day; and as he has already stated in our gun columns, 

 he proposes to establish here a proof house for the test 

 of firearms, on the plan which has proved so popular and 

 so useful under his management abroad. 



THE RACCOON. 

 No LONG- description is needed to introduce to our read- 

 ers the raccoon, figured in our animal supplement of to- 

 day. Almost every man and boy in the country knows 

 the coon, and most of them have had the pleasure of 

 hunting it in the moonlight nights of the late autumn and 

 early winter. 



The raccoon belongs to the group of split-footed car- 

 nivores known as the Arctoidea, or bearlike animals, and 

 is in the same family with the coati-mundis of South 

 America, which are often seen in menageries, and may 

 be recognized by their peculiarly long snouts and their 

 long ringed tails. Its nearest relation in the United States 

 is the raccoon-fox or Bassaris of the Southwest. There 

 are two species of raccoons in North America and one in 

 South America. The two first are known as Procyon lotor 

 and hernandezii, and the South American form, the crab 

 eater, is Procyon eancrivorus. This is somewhat larger 

 than the common North American animal, but as its fur 

 is much shorter, it does not appear to be so large. 



The coon is distributed over the whole of the United 

 States wherever forests grow, and we have also seen its 

 track along streams on the great plains where the only 

 timber consisted of an occasional Cottonwood in the river 

 valley. It is especially abundant in the South, and in 

 that section is eagerly pursued by the negroes, who hunt 

 it with dogs, driving it into a tree from which it is then 

 shaken out, or, if the tree cannot be chmbed, shot; or the 

 tree is felled. The same method of pursuit is followed in 

 the New England and other States. 



The coon is readily tamed and becomes an amusing pet. 

 As it gains confidence, however, it is likely to be trouble- 

 some, for its caj)acity for mischief is unlimited. 



Past numbers of the Forest and Stream have had 

 numerous accounts of the pains and pleasures of coon 

 hunting, and to these the readers who are not familiar 

 with this fascinating sport are referred. 



This number contains as an illustrated supplement a 

 portrait of the Coon, drawn by Mr, Ernest E. Thompson. 

 This is the third in a series of four. Those already 

 printed are: The Moose, Oct. 14, 1893; Woodland Cari- 

 bou, Nov. 11. The last one will be of the Virginia Deer, 

 Jan. 6, 1894. The dates of the former series, of which 

 copies can be supplied, are as follows: Sept. 8, 1893, The 

 Panther, Oct. 6, The Ocelot. Nov. 3, The Canada Lynx. 

 Dec. 1, The Bay Lynx. Jan, o, 1893, Gray Wolf. Feb. 

 3, White Goat. March 3, Coyote. April 6, Antelope- 

 May 4, Fox, 



In one of our early October issues Mr, G, O, Shields, 

 writing from Pelan, Minn. , reported, "I have lately talked 

 with many settlers who live in and near the moose 

 country, and they all say that they ahaU continue to kill 

 moose and other game, the same as heretofore, law or no 

 law." Senator Henry Keller called at the office of the 

 Hallock Enterprise the other day and gave out that when 

 the Minnesota Legislature met again he would introduce 

 a bin offering a reward of $25 for the conviction of a 

 person found guilty of killing moose or elk or prairie 

 chicken out of season. We shall see what we shall see. 



