Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
T..M,, $4 » v.„^^ «^c,s. A corv. j NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1898. ]no. 8«™o;™rv^N.wv<,.K. 
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WEAPONS OLD AND NEW. 
In illustration of the isolation and antiquated ways of 
some of the mountain dwellers of Kentucky, it is said 
that not long since it was discovered that the cross-bow 
was still employed by them for hunting. If there actu- 
alh' exist Americans who hunt with cross-bows, may 
their tribe increase. Surely they come nearer than the 
user of magazine rifle or "pump-gun" to exhibiting that 
phase of sportsmanship which insists on "pitting one's 
sldll against the cunning of the game." The ruder, 
cruder, less efficient the weapon, the greater the skill 
called into play to do execution with it; and the more 
real the "pitting." 
As a matter of fact, in a large proportion of the hunt- 
ing of the day, the "pitting of skill" is altogether imagi- 
nary, fanciful, assumed, and conceded by courtesy. We 
are forever prating about giving the game a fair chance, 
and yet all the while seeking weapons that will shoot 
further and more rapidly and more fatally. The pride 
of a sportsman is to have the very latest armament, 
which means the most accurate, certain and deadly 
equipment to be bought for money. Every step in per- 
fection of shotgun and rifle, powder and shot, bullet, 
shell, and cartridge, means added facility of game kill- 
ing, and just so much increased disparity between the 
shooter and the game at which he shoots. Our discus- 
sion of guns and rifles is always as to which is the better 
of two bores or calibers, and which is the best of all, 
which means the furthest shooting, the hardest hitting, 
the most certain to bring- from air to ground the most 
birds in the shortest time, or to "down" the biggest 
game in its tracks. This is as it must be, in the nature 
of things, in keeping with the laws of progress. We 
would be less or more than human if we failed to demand 
the latest, best and most perfectly adapted to its purpose 
in our firearms, precisely as in all other equipments of 
modern life. 
But though supplied with weapons a thousandfold 
more powerful and certain than the antiquated cross-bow, 
is the shooter of these last years of the century after all 
so much of a craftsman as his rudely armed fellow of 
the Kentucky nibuntains? Is he so close to nature? 
Does he know the woods and the game so well? Which 
of the two pits his skill against the cunning of the 
game? To suggest such speculations is to answer them. 
If the Kentucky hunter should make a proselyting 
tour, to convert shooting men to his faith in the anti- 
quated arm as a suitable hunting weapon, his unan- 
swerable contention might be that a general substitu- 
tion of cross-bows for repeating arms would tend power- 
fully to the nurture of the game supply. And once rid 
of the now all prevailing notion that one's arm must 
be the most killing engine that the ingenuity of man 
can produce, the new devotee of the weapon of Robin 
Hood would find in its use many of those delights of 
woodcraft to which many a cartridge-belted knight is 
and ever must be. a stranger. 
We commend the cross-bow to those dissatisfied mor- 
tals whose lot is cast in barren hunting grounds; they 
can get more hunting out of a small store of game with 
the ancient weapon than with the newest fangled gun of 
the day. A single solitary old bird, like Mr. Ham- 
mond's "One-Eyed Grouse of Maple Run," if hunted 
with cross-bow and bolt, will last for many seasons, 
whereas a pump-gun belching factory-loaded ammuni- 
tion would close the campaign in a day or an hour. 
Podgers, in another column, professes to have reverted 
to muzzle-loader ways with great delectation; now let 
some other devotee out-Podger Pod^gers by making ven- 
ture of the cross-bow. 
THE BIRDS OF GLOUCESTER. 
The great wrong and injustice unwittingly wrought 
by the Massachusetts Legislature, through the act gov- 
erning shooting on Cape Ann, should have the earliest 
practicable reparation. The circumstances were related by 
our cot respondent Hermit in our issue of last week. 
The Massachusetts game law was so amended last 
March that it forbade shooting land birds on Cape Ann 
within certain limits, including Rockport and seven 
wards of the city of Gloucester, but not covering Ward 
Eight of that city. The effect of this, as demonstrated 
..last season, was to close a tract of twenty-five square 
miles of shrub land and forest; to shut out from this 
territory the army which had been wont to shoot over 
it, and to turn en masse upon Ward Eight- the entire 
shooting contingent of a population of 35,000. The re- 
sult, disastrous and pitiful, was told by Hermit last 
week, and the picture is worth repeating: 
Any one with brains enough to think knows the resuH!, namely: 
Woods and shrub lands alive with gunners; reckless shooting 
at every moving thing; human life endangered; game and song 
birds exterminated; Sunday law violated, and people who take 
the day for a pleasure stroll in the woods are forced to retreat 
under fire, menaced hy the hurtling shot or the spiteful zip of 
the small rifle bullet. 
The gunners that crowd Ward Eight are not sportsmen as a 
body. A few sportsmen follow the hounds, and a very few tramp 
the woods for game; these men do not shoot song birds, but the 
average gunner shoots everything in fur or feathers. 
Bond's Hill is a great resort for robins in migration. Food is 
plentiful, such as black cherries, choke and poke berries. Last 
fall there was a constant roar of guns on the hill, and later not 
a robin was left where there should have been hundreds. 
It is well known to the readers of Forest and Stream that 
I feed the song birds that come to my cabin dooryard. In mi- 
gration large flocks of white-throated sparrows, fox sparrows, 
tree sparrows and black snow birds favor me with visits. Early 
last fall the flocks were destroyed or frightened away. The tree spar- 
rows and black snow birds winter with me. Not a tree sparrow 
is left, and fifty or more black snow birds are reduced to a 
remnant of six. My flock of chickadees was reduced one-half. 
The tame ones that would eat, from my hand were killed— all 
Init one. 
The slaughter was fast and furious when the season opened. 
Now one may walk the woods for days and not see so much 
as a squirrel. ] appeal to the friends of song birds! 
Surely no such efifect of the Cape Ann prohibition was 
contemplated or anticipated by the Legislature; and 
now that the practical working of the law is shown to 
be so pernicious, no time should be lost in providing 
the simple remedy of including Ward Eight in the pro- 
tected area. A petition to" this end was recently sub- 
mitted to the Committee on Game, and refused. It can- 
not be possible that the true condition of affairs was 
adequately set forth to them. 
GAME PROTECTION IS A PUBLIC TRUST. 
At the recent meeting of the Illinois Sportsmen's As- 
sociation the plan of exacting a license fee from shooters 
for the privilege of shooting was suggested as offering 
a means of providing funds for the maintenance of a 
game warden force. The State, it was said, had stead- 
fastly opposed appropriations for the purpose, and the 
money must be supplied then by the class directly in- 
terested in game protection. If shooters want some- 
thing to shoot, the argument ran, let them pay the ex- 
penses of providing it; if they want game protected, let 
them protect it; the matter concerns them; it does not 
concern the community at large. 
But the matter does concern the community, and the 
whole community— both that part of it which goes afield 
,and that part which remains at home. Altogether aside 
from any consideration of the game supply as a food 
resource is the influence it has upon the health and 
stamina of the race, as an agency promoting physical 
development and well being. This is not in any degree 
a fanciful consideration of the game supply as a public 
benefit and game protection as a public charge; it has 
on the contrary had recognition from early days, and. 
has furnished reason for the enactment and enforcement 
of game laws. It was true in the days of George Wash- 
ington, who was an illustrious example of the sportsman 
who was a more useful citizen because of his sportsman- 
ship, and it is true to-day when we have at the head of 
the Navy Department a Secretary who has himself more 
than once in eloquent public speech borne personal tes- 
timony to the strengthening and upbuilding influences of 
the Maine forests. The whole country reaps the ad- 
vantage when its public men seek the woods for their 
chosen recreations; the individual community shares the 
good which its citizens find ' in camp and field. The 
game which prompts to woodland excursions and re- 
wards wilderness outings, it is the right and duty of the 
State to maintain. Game is public property; those ap- 
pointed, to protect it are the trustees of the public; game 
protection is a public trust. 
PETARDS AND BEAR TRAPS. 
Tiiic fatalities self-inflicted by contrivers of deadly en- 
gines contributed to the language centuries ago the col- 
loquial phrase "hoist by his own petard," and the expres- 
sion is still used to-day, when we know nothing of pe- 
tards. By some malign fatality, spring-guns and set-guns, 
when arranged for execution upon human beings, are 
more frequently a menace to the people who set them 
than to those for whom they are intended. The spring- 
gun item is encountered month after month in the press 
dispatches, but it is almost invariably the man who sets 
it who suffers from it. The set-gun is forbidden by the 
statutes, but gardeners with melon patches to protect 
and country storekeepers intent on dealing summary 
justice persist in setting the deadly contrivances 
and then walking into them themselves. So universal 
is the principle that the prohibition against setting 
spring-guns might fairly be classed as legislation mak- 
ing attempts at suicide a crime. 
In one form and another the set-gun is widely dis- 
tributed over the earth. In his description of Tartary, 
Hue relates that deceased Tartar sovereigns having been 
interred with great stores of treasures, the tombs were 
protected by a kind of bow, or series of bows, so in- 
geniously contrived as to discharge a number of ar- 
rows one after the other. The act of opening the vault 
door would discharge the first arrow, that one the sec- 
ond, and so on to the last. 
Traps set for animals also claim their quota of human 
victims, who unwittingly walk into bear traps and dead- 
falls. In Maine log traps or deadfalls for bears are 
often made; and sometimes the contrivance is a minia- 
ture log cabin, haying in the front a lift-up door, and a 
spindle in the back of the house to hold the bait; when 
the bear enters and touches the bait, the door falls be- 
hind him and he is captured alive. .The late J. G. Rich, 
of Maine, used to tell of a trapper who, having con- 
structed such a trap, accidentally sprung the door and 
was imprisoned, and sustaining life on the bait intended 
for the game, barely lived until rescued by a search 
party. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Grand Rapids, Mich., announces a fly-casting tourna- 
ment next June for "the world's championship." There 
is nothing in the Decalogue nor in the Bill of Rights of 
the State of Michigan to forbid the anglers of that enter- 
prising town bestowing a "world's championship" medal 
and title on the winner of their tournament if they are 
amiably disposed to do so. On the other hand, there is 
nothing in international law to compel foreign anglers 
to recognize the earth-embracing championship preten- 
sions; and it is just possible that in their designation 
of the character of the event the ambitious projectors 
have gotten out more line than they can retrieve. 
The New England Sportsmen's Association is to be 
most warmly congratulated upon the realization of its 
plans in the magnificent exposition which is now delight- 
ing Boston. 
Senator Hoar, who has an unflagging interest in the 
protection of song birds, on Monday of this week in- 
troduced a measure forbidding the importation into the 
United States of birds or their feathers for ornamental 
purposes, and imposing a fine of $50 for each offense. 
The ready, speedy, effective and sensible solution of 
the problem of an over supply of deer on Long Island 
would be found in the adoption of the suggestion made 
in these columns some months ago, to establish an in- 
closed deer park by the State Game Commission, within 
the confines of Avhich the deer stock might be perpetu- 
ated, and the surplus distributed to Ulster, Greene, Sul- 
livan and other counties whose native deer stock has 
been depleted. Such a Long Island deer park would 
be a permanent nursery, constantly growing in value 
and imp^ortance as a factor in the game supply. 
