Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
^ s,s VJM™S! S ACorY t NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 21, 1894 
i 
VOL XLHI.— No. 3, 
No. 318 Broadway, New York. 
J?or Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page iv. 
CONTENTS. 
Editorial. 
Mountain Climbing. 
An Incident of Skunk River. 
Snap Shots. 
The Sportsman Tourist. 
Over the Border. 
Forest and Stream Yellowstone 
Park Game Exploration. 
Natural History. 
Size of the Bear. 
Trout and Water Snake. 
Game Bag and Gun. 
A Shot Spreader for Chokebores. 
Maine Deer, Moose and Caribou. 
Stop the Sale of Came. 
Netting Wild Pigeons. 
Sea and River Fishing. 
Concerning Izaak Walton. 
On the North Shore of Lake 
Superior. 
Angling Notes. 
Odd Days with the Trout. 
A Day with the Channel Cat. 
Was It the Fool- Killer's Chance? 
Texas Tarpon. 
Hudson River Salmon. 
Boston Fishermen. 
FIshculture. 
Set Lines in Round Lake. 
Warden Moyer Reappointed. 
The Kennel. 
Swiss St. Bernards. 
Much Ethics. 
Show Beagles as Field Dogs. 
Points and Flushes. 
Dog Chat. 
Kennel Answers. 
Yachting. 
The Clyde and Irish Races. 
The Lake Y. R. A. Meet. 
The 21-Foot Class. 
Yachting News Notes. 
Canoeing. 
Canoes and Canoe Sailing in 1894- 
Mr. Howard in England. 
Canoeing Notes. 
Rifle Range and Gallery. 
Modern American Pistols and 
Revolvers. 
The Columbia's Challenge. 
Revolver Shooting in England. 
Rifle at San Antonio. 
Club Shoots. 
Rifle Notes. 
Trap Shooting. 
Newark Gun Club Winners. 
Birds and Targets at White 
Plains. 
Drivers and Twisters. 
Answers to Queries. 
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MOUNTAIN CLIMBING. 
During the days of blazing heat that are now upon 
us, there is something peculiarly refreshing in the thought 
of snow-capped mountains. The dweller in the heated 
city streets, or he who lives in the midst of a torrid plain 
pictures to himself the huge mass whose gently rolling 
foothills rise near at hand and gradually melt into tim- 
bered slopes where the ascent is sharper. These in turn 
give place to bare walls of rock, and crowning the whole 
is the cap of white, which sends down by each ravine 
snowy fingers that clasp the mountain's crown with a 
grasp which is gentle but which never lets go. To live 
within sight of such a mountain is a privilege to be 
highly valued, but one which too often is but little appre- 
ciated. The joy of ascending such a mountain is hardly 
to be expressed in words. 
It is only within a very short time that mountain 
climbing has become recognized in this country as an 
attractive recreation, and even in Europe its delights 
are comparatively new. We know that the soldiers 
of Hannibal, and again of the Great Napoleon, scaled 
the Alps, but we cannot imagine that in those days any 
one ever climbed for pleasure. Then such work was 
merely toil and toil of a peculiarly difficult — because un- 
usual — sort. But within the past fifty years mountaineer- 
ing in Europe has become a recognized pastime, and one 
which has a very large number of enthusiastic followers. 
But there had been mountaineers long before this. 
To Bay nothing of many isolated cases during the Middle 
Ages, there was an early Swiss naturalist named Conrad 
Gesner, the author of many curious works on birds, 
mammals and plants, who had in him the true spirit of a 
mountaineer, for in 1541 he wrote to his friend Vogel: 
"I have resolved for the future, so long as God grants 
me lif e, to ascend divers mountains every year, or at least 
one, in the season when vegetation is at its height, partly 
for botanical observation, partly for the worthy exer- 
cise of the body and recreation of the mind. What must 
be the pleasure, think you, what the delight of a mind 
rightly touched to gaze upon the huge mountain masses 
for one's show, and as it were, lift one's head into the 
clouds? The soul is strangely rapt with these astonishing 
heights, and carried off to the contemplation of the one 
Supreme Architect." 
These are noble words, and had Gesner carried out his 
intentions, and written the book on mountaineering 
which he proposed, the sport which is now in such high 
favor in Europe would have had a longer history. Soon 
after this, political troubles in Switzerland interfered 
with Gesner's plans, and it was nearly three centuries 
later before mountaineering began to take rank as a 
diversion, which, if it has not now attained almost the 
standing of a science, has at least contributed much to 
scientific knowledge. 
If mountaineering — as the word is here used — if Alpine 
climbing, is young in Europe, how much younger must it 
be in the United States? Until within a very few years 
it was not practiced at all, though mountain travel has 
long been common, and now and then hunters ascended 
lofty peaks in search of the game to be found chiefly 
there. Yet within a few years at least three Alpine clubs 
have been formed in the United States, of which two 
have done remarkably good work, while the third, as yet 
only in process of formation, is too young to have accom- 
plished anything. 
The two older clubs are the Appalachian, which has its 
headquarters in Boston, and the Sierra Club of San Fran- 
cisco. The former publishes a journal, besides which its 
members have contributed many excellent articles and 
some volumes to the literature of their favorite pastime. 
The Sierra Club also issues a publication, and some pho- 
tographs taken by its members are marvels of excellence 
and genuine treasures to persons interested in mountains, 
their forms and in kindred subjects. 
In Oregon a new Alpine club has recently been formed 
under the style and title of the Mazamas. At first the 
name may appear trivial, yet after all it is very expres- 
sive. Mazama — the "white goat" — is a characteristic 
North American mammal and mountain dweller. No 
animal lives higher, and it reaches the peaks which it 
frequents by the exercise of the sturdy, persistent effort, 
which alone can bring success and triumph to the man 
who would attain similar heights. The new club has 
been formed for exploration among the superb snow 
cones which form such beautiful and striking features of 
the Cascade Range, and its members have within easy 
reach of them such peaks as Hood, Rainier, Adams, Jeffer- 
son, Baker, St. Helen, as well as many others, on whose 
summits the foot of man has not yet rested. 
It is a good sign for America when the hardy sport of 
mountain climbing for its own sake has gained a foot- 
hold here, and we may hope that year by year it will 
grow in popularity as it should. There is no sport which 
calls for better qualities both of mind and body than this, 
and none which, in its ultimate effects on him or her who 
practices it, is more ennobling. 
AN INCIDENT OF SKUNK RIVER. 
An Iowa stream, bearing the homely appellation of 
Skunk River, has just been the scene of a distressing 
occurrence, which adds another casualty to the long and 
growing list of those attending the use of dynamite for 
fishing. The hazard inseparable from the handling of 
high explosives is so real and so constant, that recourse 
to dynamite as a means of taking fish would appear to be 
the last resort of men driven to desperation by hunger; 
and it would seem altogether superfluous to enact laws 
forbidding such a dangerous mode of fishing. There are 
such laws, however, in most of the States, but in spite of 
inherent peril and of legal prohibition, the dynamite 
fisherman pursues his "sport," and in nine cases out of 
ten that come to the public attention in the newspapers, 
publicity is gained not through an enforcement of the 
law, but because of the maiming or killing of the par- 
ticipants by a premature explosion. The Skunk River 
incident belongs to this class. 
A bright young farmer named Tharp, of West Des 
Moines, repaired to the Skunk "for an afternoon's fishing 
and sport." He was accompanied by two ladies, one of 
whom he was about to marry. Young Tharp knew of a 
deep pool in the Skunk haunted by big fish, and intent 
upon their capture he equipped himself with a supply of 
dynamite cartridges. Donning a bathing costume he 
went about the "sport" in the usual style, throwing in a 
cartridge, and after its explosion swimming about the 
pool and gathering the fish which floated on the surface. 
Just how the ill-fated young dynamiter courted his death 
is not known with certainty, but the hypothesis suggested 
by the local paper is this: 
His fishing had been successful, as was shown by a number of fish 
thrown upon the bank and floating upon the water. It is thought that 
he had prepared to make another haul and had thrown another cart- 
ridge into the water. There being no explosion he threw in another, 
and there was an answer, probably the explosion of the first charge. 
Seeing a large fish come to the surface, Tharp swam in after it, and 
undoubtedly received the shock of the explosion of the second cart- 
ridge, and was thus rendered helpless. The ladies say that he turned 
toward them, commenced spitting in a violent manner, had turned 
very pale and was struggling to gain the bank. He called for help, 
and the ladies, running here and there, could find nothing but a piece 
of grape vine about eight feet in length. They waded into the water, 
but the vine was too short to reach the distressed boy. He -said a 
faint good-bye and sank, rose again, and a second time said farewell, 
and sank to rise no more. 
It is added that Tharp was a young man of exemplary 
life, honored, respected and popular in the community, 
over which his untimely death has cast a gloom. Public 
opinion in that section may differ as to the importance of 
protecting the fish of the Skunk River from dynamite 
cartridges, but there will hardly be found any one who 
will not deplore the cruel and untimely taking off of such 
a citizen by his indulgence in unlawful practices. If the 
citizens of West Des Moines will not observe the fishing 
laws of the State as being reasonable statutes for the pro- 
tection and preservation of the fish supply, they might at 
least heed them and compel obedience to them as 
merciful provisions for the protection and preservation of 
human life. 
There is not one thing to be said in defense of dynamit- 
ing fish. It kills not only the fish sought for the imme- 
diate occasion, but all other fish as well — large and small 
— within the shock of the explosion; and when it reacts 
on the fisherman, it makes no discrimination between 
the young and the old, the just and the unjust. It 
ruins beyond reparation the fish supply, and is answer- 
able for an amount of human injury and misery and for 
deaths outweighing ten thousand-fold all the benefit it 
ever has been or ever will be. It ought to be stamped out 
from Iowa and everywhere else. But it will continue, 
probably for generations, destroying the food resources of 
the waters, and adding to the hosts of the crippled, and 
swelling the death rate; and the newspapers will go on 
recording the killing by dynamite of examplary young 
men like Tharp and hoary-headed old sinners. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
We often hear of the lost chances for a shot when the 
game approaches close to the hunter who has left his gun 
behind, and such an incident usually affords an unfailing 
subject of regret on the part of the narrator who re- 
counts what a trophy he might have won. But of all 
such unimproved woods opportunities those are most to 
be regretted which fall to the lot of the camera hunter. 
The story a correspondent tells to-day of gliding in his 
canoe within twenty feet of a noble moose standing 
erect in the water thrills even in the reading. That was 
a chance to secure a picture of living game, beside 
which a like opportunity to kill the game would have 
been insignificant; it was, indeed, the chance of a life- 
time — and a chance which was lost. 
Henry Ward Beecher used to tell a story illustrating 
the abundance of wild pigeons, when he was living in 
Indianapolis in the Forties. A hunter came into town 
one day with six dozen wild pigeons, which he vainly 
endeavored to sell or to give away. At last he left them 
exposed in his cart in the public street, saying that some 
one might possibly come along and steal them; but on 
his return he found, much to his disgust, that another 
hunter had added eight dozen more to the pile. There 
are no supplies to create a glut of wild pigeons in these 
days. How the flocks have been lessened and destroyed 
by systematic, ingenious and business-like pursuit is 
hinted in the stories told by a pigeon netter in our shoot- 
ing columns last week and to-day, When express agents 
and professional hunters league themselves to follow the 
movements of a migratory and gregarious land species 
with such unrelenting thoroughness, the supply must 
give out. These tales of a pigeon netter are mainly his- 
torical; the wild pigeon is the feathered counterpart of 
the buffalo. 
