Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
BMS ' $ VxMr T H5? S ACoPY , f NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1808. f Nu . m ™t™k7X^*«- 
Cbe forest and Stream Platform Plank. 
"T/ie sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons." 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
The Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
for amateur photographs is given elsewhere. 
There should be nothing; so much a man's busi- 
ness as his amusements. 
Stevenson's Inland Voyage. 
THE FLINT-LOCK. 
A few years ago there was printed in the Forest and 
Stream a note of the gumflint making industry, conducted 
on a large scale in European factories, to supply the trade 
of Africa and Asia. Mr. Belknap's inquiry for a flint 
to complete the mechanism of his Hud-son's Bay relic has 
again brought out the fact that flint making is by no 
means a lost art. As is told in another column, there 
is still a market for gun-flints, and the supply is equal to 
the demand. As for the African and Asian trade, that is 
'readily understood. Hunters who live a primitive life 
must have primitive weapons. With them the gun must be 
preserved in its simplest form. For the flint-lock only 
powder and ball are required, and these are standard com- 
modities throughout vast regions where it would be diffi- 
cult if not impossible to distribute cartridges and primers. 
In some regions, too, the flint-lock is not only all suffi- 
cient for its purpose, but to its continued use, in place of 
more perfected weapons of the chase, is due in large 
measure the permanence of the game supply. If the re- 
peating rifle and the double-barreled shotgun are mar- 
vels of convenience and accuracy and effectiveness, this is 
only another way of saying that they are tremendously 
destructive agencies of game depletion. Consider what 
would have been the hunting conditions of our own country 
if the generations which have had part in the shooting had 
been confined to the use of the flint-lock; and then re- 
flect that over vast stretches of territory in foreign lands 
this is the very condition which has prevailed. The flint- 
lock may be out of date and the hunter who uses it may be 
behind the times; but in his own land, because of game 
more abundant in supply and less wary because less merci- 
lessly pursued, he may yet be on a level with his more 
perfectly equipped brother. 
We look upon the flint-lock as so antiquated and so 
crude at the best, in comparison with our own guns, that 
we are apt to take for granted that when the percussion 
lock came along it was accepted without hesitation and 
with eagerness by the progressive sportsmen of the day. 
But the fact is that the gunner has always shown himself 
to be a conservative, wedded to the old ways, and reluctant 
to abandon the tried and the trusted for the new and un- 
proved. 
Every radical improvement in firearms has been forced 
to make its way in the face of distrust and opposition, and 
with hard won and grudging approval on the part of the 
veterans. The first volumes of the Forest and Stream 
show communications from many a dubious convert to 
the new order of breechloaders which were then supplant- 
ing the muzzleloader. In the early years of the century, 
when the percussion lock came in, there were sportsmen 
and good sportsmen too, even the best, who made sturdy 
defense of the flint-lock, and surrendered to the new- 
fangled arms with reluctance and distrust. Col. Peter 
Hawker was one of the accepted authorities on shooting 
in those times; in 1816 he published a volume of "Instruc- 
tions to Young Shooters," which was so popular as a text- 
book that it went to an eighth edition by 1838. This was 
three years after the death of Joseph Manton, the most 
celebrated maker of flint-lock guns that ever lived. A 
"Joe Manton" was regarded as the perfection of sport- 
ing arms; and he is to be envied even at this day who 
possesses one as a relic. The period from 1816 to 1838 
elapsing between these editions of Hawker's book were 
times of transition from flint to fulminate; and although 
long before his eighth edition the Colonel capitulated to 
the detonators, as the percussion arms were called, he did 
so not without a mental reservation in favor of the old 
gun. "Though, like the rest of the sporting world, I have 
long been kidnapped," he wrote, "into the constant use 
Of detonators, still I have no reason to alter the opinion 
I gave in 1822 ; and were my time to come over again, 1 
might probably be content with the flint ; though I have, 
of course, as every one does, shot more accurately and 
missed fewer quick shots with the detonator," 
Within a short period prior to 1838 the detonators had 
been improved by being bored to detain the shot longer 
in the barrel, in order that the powder "might have time 
to kindle" ; but this increased the recoil and produced 
leading; and despite the many wadding devices resorted 
to for overcoming this fault, no detonator of equal weight 
could be made to "shoot quite so strong and regular as a 
flint gun." The stronger shooting of the flint Colonel 
Hawker insisted upon, as, after an experience of eighteen 
years with both arms, "the more shots I fire," he writes, 
"the more I am persuaded that the flint gun shoots the 
strongest into the bird, and by far the easiest against the 
shoulder." And the Colonel was sportsman enough tp 
back up his convictions when it came to a bet, which ap- 
pears to have been in his day as it is in ours the one 
incontrovertible argument to prove a point and vanquish 
an apponent. On a certain occasion in the establishment 
of a gun-maker, a well-known sportsman being present, 
the maker offered to bet the Colonel fifty guineas that a 
detonator of equal size would beat a flint gun. "I imme- 
diately took up the bet," the Colonel records, "and told 
the clerk to book it,, and offered to double it if he lost. He 
then fought off and would not stand to what he had pro- 
posed." Subsequently it was developed that the gun- 
maker had only been bluffing for the purpose of getting 
from the well-known sportsman, who was a listener to 
the colloquy, an order for a brace of detonating guns. 
The formal dictum of this old-time shooting authority, 
as given to Joseph Manton, was that "for neat shooting m 
the field or covert, and also for killing single shots at 
wildfowl rapidly flying, there is not a question in favor 
of the detonator, as its trifling inferiority to the flint is 
tenfold repaid by the wonderful accuracy it gives in so 
readily obeying the eye. But in firing a heavy charge 
among a large flock of birds, the flint has the decided ad- 
vantage." 1 
There was one quality of the old-style gun which we 
are persuaded does not attach in such degree to the new, 
in the affection its youthful possessor entertained for it. 
In these days of beautiful arms, so numerous and so cheap, 
is it possible that the ownership of a gun can mean so 
much as it did to those boys who are now old men, looking 
back to their first gun through the haze of the years? 
SNAP SHOTS. 
It is to be hoped that something may come of the action 
of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Associa- 
tion in its invitation to the farmers' clubs to co-operate in 
the care of the game interests of the Commonwealth. 
That the Boston market should be open the year around 
for the reception of illicit game from Maine and from 
the West is nothing short of a national disgrace. If 
Massachusetts alone were concerned in this matter, the 
citizens of other States might have no just ground of com- 
plaint; but the condition now existing is one which does 
affect Maine and Vermont and Michigan and Minnesota 
and every other State to which the Boston marketman 
stands in the relation of a fence, a receiver of stolen goods. 
In maintaining an open game market the Commonwealth 
is behind the age ; not less is it strangely deficient and un- 
progressive in the requisite machinery of game protection. 
If the public resources of field and stream are worth 
preserving at all, they are worth caring for in a business- 
like and effective way. Massachusetts should have a com- 
petent and efficient game protective service, appointed to 
do actual work, and paid for doing it. Whatever is ac- 
complished now in this direction is mainly the result of 
individual or associated enterprise of private citizens. No 
enlightened State can in these days shift the responsibility 
of taking care of its resources; and only a pauper State 
should depend on the voluntary activities of its citizens to 
do for it what it should do for itself. 
We print a communication from Jackson's Hole, Wyo., 
which relates that the permanent residents and substantial 
members of the community are united in an effort to in- 
sure that the game of the country shall be given the pro- 
tection which the law contemplates for it. The game 
question held such a place in the last State election as to 
be a determining factor in the result ; and now an appeal 
will be made to the Legislature to remedy the defects 
in the statute by which constant raids on the game supply 
have been perpetrated. What is needed in Wyoming, 
however, is not so much a new law as upright, straight- 
forward and determined officials to enforce the one already 
on the books. In numerous instances talk about defec- 
tive law is talk wide of the issue. The law is all that 
could be asked if it were only enforced ; an ounce of ex- 
ecution is worth a hundredweight of amendment. The 
Jackson's Hole live elk export scandal in 1897 was pos- 
sible only because of official connivance in the violation 
and defiance of the prohibition against taking live game 
out of the State. The exportation enterprises carried, on 
this year and complained of by our correspondent have 
been possible only by deliquency of officers whose sworn 
duty it was to arrest the poachers. 
You may not believe in luck, just pure downright luck ; 
but how can you expect to dissuade from firm faith in its 
potency the moose hunter who goes into the woods season 
after season for five years and comes home empty-handed, 
only to see another man, on his first trip and on the first 
afternoon after arrival in camp, stumble upon the game, 
bring it down, and having all the law allows— not twelve 
days in camp — pack up and put for home ? 
A man in Massachusetts boards the train with ticket 
for Sauk Center, Minn. A duck leaves its home up North 
Pole way, bound for High Island, Texas. Here begins 
a chain of circumstances, acting through thousands of 
miles of space and along lines of latitude and longi- 
tude, and so ordering things to the minute, that the man 
from Boston and the duck from the British Possessions 
strike the Minnesota pass at the same moment, and the 
gunner reduces the fowl to possession. If the man had 
been a day earlier or a day later he might have got an- 
other duck, and if the duck had passed on before it might 
have fallen to some other gun further south ; but that this 
particular man should accumulate this particular duck was 
purely fortuitous, that is to say, is was luck. 
If we deny luck, we eliminate one of the most potent 
factors of hunting, that recognized element of uncer- 
tainty in the pursuit which consoles for disappointments 
and encourages and gives heart for renewed effort. There 
is marvelous mitigation of chagrin over failure in the re- 
flection "Just my luck !" and a stiffening of the backbone 
in the sanguine self-assurance of "better luck next time." 
The more experience one has to draw upon the more pur- 
suaded is he that successful shooting and fishing are not 
altogether matters of careful preparation, and the simple 
exercise of skill and perseverance. Beyond these, and 
more potent than all else, is that factor of fortune which 
we call luck. * 1 
In his report on the Yellowstone National Park, Capt. 
James P. Erwin, the acting superintendent, gives high 
praise to Lieut. Lindsley, of the Fourth Cavalry, and 
Scouts Morrison and Whittaker, who with the assistance 
of the soldiers on winter station and in garrison did 
"work which was of the highest importance to the Park- 
in the protection of its game, to a large extent prevented 
poaching, and resulted, in connection with the mild 
weather of last winter, in a large increase of game life of 
all descriptions." The buffalo in the Park are estimated 
at fifty, and Capt. Erwin expresses the opinion that they 
are not increasing; but the reports we have had qr 
calves having been seen south of the Park give ground 
for belief that the number is growing. The vermin prob 
lem in the Yellowstone, as our correspondents have more 
than once pointed out, is coming to be" a serious one; the 
bears and coyotes are multiplying at a rate which must 
some time compel the adoption of heroic measures for 
their control. 
The visitors' to the Park this year, between June 1 and 
September 30, numbered 6,538, as compared with 5,438 in 
1895, 4,659 in 1896, and 10,680 in 1897. The extraordin- 
ary showing for 1897 was due to the influx of the army of 
Christian Endeavorers, who improved the opportunity of 
their excursion to the Pacific Coast to make a side trip into 
the Park. The increased travel of 1897 indicates a grow- 
ing appreciation of this magnificent public domain; yet 
when the natural wonders and sublimities of the Yellow- 
stone are considered, the number of visitors, large as it 
is, is ridiculously out of proportion with what it should 
be. . . .„ . 
