Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
\ NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1894. ] No . 
Terms, $4 * "Vtcar 10 C"ts. a Copy 
Six Months, $2. 
VOL XLIIL— No. 12. 
318 Bhoadwav, New York. 
Editorial. 
Portraits in Ink. — vi. 
Rail for Beginners. 
Snap Shots. 
CONTENTS. 
The Kennel. 
Pittsburgh Dog Show. 
Dog Chat. 
Kennel Notes. 
The Sportsman Tourist. 
Vacations — Past aiid Present. 
Trouting at Wabasis. 
Natural History. 
Flying Squirrels as Pets. 
The Character of the Robin. 
Game Bag and Gun. 
Chicago and the West. 
Maini and the East. 
Tb« P airie Cbickea War. 
A Trip for beach Birds. 
Summer Woodcock Shooting. 
Texas and the Southwest. 
Sea and River Fishing. 
Tronting in New Brunswick. 
A Starved Trout. 
Angling Notes. 
Notes from the Fishing Waters. 
The Kennel. 
Manitoba Field Trials. 
Des Moines Dog Show. 
Bingbamton Dos Show. 
Toronto Dog Show. 
Yachting. 
Vigilant's Centerboard. 
New Yachts. 
The 21-Footers. 
Current Comment. 
Fast boats in the West. 
Yachting News Notes. 
Canoeing. 
Mr. Howard's Racing. 
News Notes. 
Rifle Range and Gallery. 
Golden Gate Riflemen. 
Maine National Guard. 
Club 8cores. 
Rifle Notes. 
Trap Shooting. 
Des Moines Tournament. 
Dropping for Place Must Stop. 
Club Championship of New 
Jersey. 
Drivers and Twisters. 
Matches and Meetings. 
Answers to Queries. 
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PORTRAITS IN INK— VI. 
A POT-HDNTER, 
He is a farmer who finds his best recreation in the 
woods and waters, with gun and rod, in the few respites 
that are given him from the toil whereby he conquers a 
livelihood from the soil. 
There is a break in the dull round of labor when plant- 
ing is done and hoeing time not yet come, when he goes 
a-fishing after his own fashion, and he deems the day the 
less ill spent if he bring home a catch that serves to break 
the monotonous fare of a farmer's table. Then there are 
days in haying when he follows the time-honored advice, 
"When it rains too hard to work, go a-fishing," for he 
cannot dhoose his days, only make the most of such as 
come to him. 
The day laborers that he hires have a freer choice than 
he, between work and pastime, and while he toils in the 
sun, he sees the gentleman angler and the market-fisher- 
man plying their rods on his own stream, and hears the 
guns untimely thinning the broods of woodcock in his 
own alder copses. 
Of a summer Sunday he strolls out to the woodside 
pasture and watches a fox and her cubs at play about the 
threshold of their underground home, or if he fears the 
raid of some bounty-hunter or vengeful poultry breeder, 
he gives the vixen an unmistakable hint to move to safer 
quarters. If her Thanksgiving antedates his by two 
months or more, he overloooks the mistake in the calen- 
dar and forgives the venal sin for the sake of future sport 
and possible expiation in the days of the sere and yellow 
leaf, days that shall bring freedom to the old hound, now 
yawning and whining in the leash at home, and more to 
himself than he now enjoys. 
When haying and harvesting are over, he robs less ex- 
acting labor of an occasional day to prowl along a willowy 
stream beloved of wood duck or to crawl in the sedgy 
borders of the haunts of dusky duck and teal, or he makes 
his stealthy way in the constant shade of wood roads and 
forest by-paths and ferny margins of the woods, where 
the yet unbroken flocks of grouse are likely to be, and if 
he stalks two or three wary birds and brings them to 
pocket from tree or ground, or from the air by rare 
chance, or gets one raking shot at a logful of sleeping 
wood ducks, or into a huddle of shy duskies, or a passing 
flock of swift- winged teal, he counts it a good day's sport, 
with tangible and sufficient proof thereof. 
But if he has none of the rewards, the fatigues of the 
day are rest from toil and care, and so not unrequited. 
In the later days of the year, when woods are in the 
fading gray of autumn, or winter has overlaid the russet 
with white, he ranges upland and lowland with hound 
and gun, hunting foxes, matching his knowledge against 
their cunning, and he is thankful to be the winner, but 
not cast down if he is the loser in the game. 
If he kills the fox, he thriftily saves the skin, and 
prizes it the more if it is prime and marketable. 
He is a close and intelligent observer of nature, and 
freely imparts to congenial listeners what he learns of her 
secrets; but concerning his love of her he is as reticent as 
of the love of his sweetheart. 
For all expression in words, you would imagine that 
her infinitude of beauties are displayed in vain to him in 
all moods and seasons, yet his tell-tale face informs you 
how they satisfy his soul and fill his heart with unwritten, 
wordless poetry. 
He is friendly and generous to sportsmen who meet 
him in a like spirit, but not over-hospitable to such as 
only make a convenience of him, his home and hunting 
grounds. 
The first sportsman in the land does not observe close 
seasons more religiously than this jealous guardian of 
nesting and immature birds, of fox cubs and all young 
fur-bearers, yet he will not be converted to the belief 
that it is unsportsmanlike or unfair, in proper season, to 
shoot a fox before hounds, or stalk a sitting grouse, or 
catch a trout with a worm, all of which he does not 
only without compunction but with absolute satisfaction, 
and therefor he is arraigned as a pot-hunter. What say 
you, gentlemen of the jury, guilty or not guilty? 
RAIL FOR BEGINNERS.', 
The days are still hot, but the nights are growing cool. 
Sap is flowing very slowly through twigs and branches, 
stems of weeds and grasses are bard and woody, and 
fields are browning to their winter tint. The leaves of 
the trees, yellow with ripeness, or black and burned at 
their edges from the long drought, loose themselves from 
the twigs and one by one twirl slowly to earth. The full 
round September moon shilling all through the night 
gives fight to many migrating birds, and he who is 
abroad after dark may hear their voices, some familiar 
and some strange, but all falling from the passing hosts 
on high. He listens unperceived to scraps of the talk of 
an unseen multitude, and might surprise many secrets, 
could he but taste of that food told of by magicians of 
the East which enables the partaker to comprehend the 
language of birds and beasts. 
The hosts which pass above us are vast in number, but 
they are invisible, and not many men have looked upon 
any portion of the migrating army in its passage. Yet a 
few earnest naturalists have spent nights in lighthouses 
and have seen and recognized some members of the pass- 
ing throng as they flew within the circle of the Light, or 
bewildered, strove to pass to it through the protecting 
glass; and often one may find in the morning, after a 
foggy night, at the foot of a lighthouse tower or on the 
deck of steamer which plies on some large sheet of water 
the bodies of those who have perished on their travels 
and who will never see the south land, toward which their 
tireless wingbeats were swiftly carrying them. 
Eagerly looked for among the feathered army is the 
little sora, or rail, about which long clustered many a 
myth, for it was hard for our forefathers to believe that 
his feeble flight could carry him over long journeys, 
and it was easier to imagine that he changed his shape, 
and was to-day a bird of the upper air and to-morrow a 
frog living in the mud of the stream's bed. Although the 
rail is reared in all our fresh-water marshes, his range 
extends far to the north as well, and when the nights 
grow cooler he moves southward, flying by night and 
dropping into the wild rice meadows that he knows so 
well at the approach of day, and there rests and feeds till 
moonrise next night, when be sets off again. 
He is a simple little bird of deliberate flight and easily 
killed. Now and then if you are shooting on the edge of 
the marsh there is an opportunity for a quick shot as a 
rail shows itself above the grass for a couple of feet only 
before it reaches the shelter of cat tails or weeds where 
the boat cannot go, or if a gale is blowing, the rising bird 
is swept away and a good allowance must be made for 
him. But ordinarily, in fair weather and on the wide 
marshes, he is a poor marksman or woefully out of .prac- 
tice who fails to knock down nine out of ten of the rail 
which rise before him. To knock down, however, is not 
always to boat, for the crippled rail is skillful in hiding 
himself in the grass or weeds. Of course misses are made 
by all of us, because we are human, but for most of those 
made at rail there is no legitimate excuse. 
No sport is more pleasant and easy than rail shooting. 
In fact, it is luxurious, and we are disposed to think too 
much so for adult and skilled sportsmen. 
No bird serves better as a practice mark for the begin- 
ner, and we incline to the belief that some day when we 
are all more advanced and more generous, this one will be 
reserved solely for those who are learning to shoot. There 
is something rather unsatisfactory in the destruction by a 
good shot of these slow, awkward little birds, and they 
should be reserved to be shot only by women and chil- 
dren and othek beginners. A provision might be inserted 
in the game law of each State like this: "No male person 
above the age of fourteen years shall at any time pursue, 
capture, shoot, shoot at or kill any rail, rail bird, sora or 
ortolan, or any wading bird of the family Rallidce." 
Such a law would seem rather hard to many men who 
each year look forward to the rail shooting as a sort of 
practice to get them in shape for the fall shooting; and it 
would be a distinct hardship to the gourmands who long- 
ingly anticipate the season when this most toothsome 
bird shall appear on the table. Yet there are many who 
will hold that the man who can turn over the buzzing 
quail in the brush or stop the hurtling grouse as he darts 
through the forest has no business to shoot rail. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
As BEARING on the remarks on the range of the sharp- 
tailed grouse printed in Forkst and Stream a few weeks 
ago, our recent information from the Northwest on this 
species is interesting. The unexampled dryness of the 
past summer, while it has wrought havoc among the far- 
mers' crops, has resulted in the hatching and rearing of 
large broods of birds, and over a great portion of Minne- 
sota, both the Dakotas and„Manitoba, prairie chickens are 
more abundant than for several years. In certain sec- 
tions there has been a good deal of illegal shooting, but 
there has not been enough to make very much impression 
on the number of birds over the whole area. Moreover, 
to the west of the country named, in Montana, Assinaboia 
and Alberta, as far west as the Uocky Mountains, grouse 
are very abundant, and the settlements in much of that 
region are so widely separated that good shooting can be 
had at almost any point. In the neighborhood of Winne- 
peg considerable activity has been shown by the game 
wardens this season, and they have made a number of 
arrests for illegal destruction of grouse. In fact it seems 
as if a better sentiment was growing up all through the 
Northwest on this subject. We have a recent note from 
Gait, Ontario, which speaks of a large covey of young 
prairie chickens having been seen there. These were 
probably sharptailed grouse, although there is no means 
of positively identifying them. 
The arguments advanced against summer woodcock by 
a Wilkesbarre correspondent, in another column, are not 
new, but they have the great merit of being facts, and are 
put by our correspondent in a very terse and forcible way. 
Especially to the point is his statement that one reason for 
a scarcity of woodcock during the autumn flight is the 
destruction of young birds in summer. Summer shooting 
like spring shooting should be done away with every- 
where, but it is curious to see with what persistency the 
old idea that July 4 is the proper date to begin shooting 
woodcock holds on. It might be supposed that the State 
of Pennsylvania with its great wealth and intelligence 
would be quick to take any advanced position on all mat- 
ters of game protection, but as we all know, legislators 
are proverbially uncertain. 
