^110 1 
[Feb. II. 1899. 
The Hip Rest and Quail Weights. 
Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 30. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
I saw a lot of stuff in the Times-Union the other day 
about quail, and among other things was this : "We of the 
South wonder why (mr tourists do not adopt the habit 
of shooting from the hip. For work with qiiail it is far 
superior, and after a little practice comes as naturally 
and far more easily than the shoulder shot." All of 
which may do for the marines; but a cart load of South- 
ern testimony could not convince me that any good shot 
ever used his gun in such an unsportsmanlike manner. 
I have shot with nearly as muny men as Fred Mather 
has fished with, and T have never met with more than one 
instance of a bird being killed in that way. When in my 
teens I was out with some other chaps, and an unfor- 
tunate woodcock got up before one of them and fright- 
ened him 50 badly that his gun "went off- half-cocked." 
and to his utter surprise the biid fell dead. His gun just 
happened to be pointed in that direction; but he did upt 
recommend the others to adopt that style.. 
Another writer. T think in Forest and Stream, says 
the Virginia quail are the largest in this country, and 
here is another case where a very large amount of very 
strong proof would be required to convince me. I have 
weighed two or three cock quail here in Florida, and 
they were exactly 50Z. I have shot a great many New 
Jersey and Long Island quail, and my belief is that they 
weigh about 8oz. I know that one of them was a break- 
fast for me, while two of them will hardly do the busi- 
ness here. 
Will some of your correspondents through the country 
be good enough to go into the quail weighing business 
and settle this matter. I can't see why the birds in Vir- 
ginia should be larger than anywhere else in the South, 
and I can't see why a man should hold his gun oh his 
hip to shoot unless he is too lazy to raise it to its proper 
place at his shoulder. Didymus. 
Proprietors of fishing and hunting resorts will find it profitable 
to advertise them in Forest and Stream. 
Ring-Necked Pheasants. 
Mr. Eugene Terry, of Tompkins county, N. Y., says 
of his experience in raising ring-necked pheasants : 
"I have raised these birds at my place for two summers. 
They will not become broody in confinement, bin are pro- 
lific layers, one of my hens during the mont'is of May, 
June and early July of last year laying more than fifty 
eggs, most of which proved fertile. I set these eggs under 
bantam hens, and the period of incubation is about twen- ' 
ty-four days. One of the peculiarities of these birds 
that while they are apparently content in captivity, yet 
turn them loose and they become wild in a single day. 
"This, however, is a feature Avbich makes them doubly 
valuable as game birds. They are never found in a heavily 
timbered country, but like a locality that is partly cleared 
and partly wooded ; .so it will be seen that the surround- 
ings here are well adapted to introduce them successfully. 
Thev never tree when being pursued, and fly very strong 
and alight with their feet moving. Thus it will be seen 
that they are abundantly able to take care of themselves 
with the pot-hunter." 
The Cumttjcfc Ducking. 
Water Lily, N. C. Feb. i.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
The shooting at Currituck this season has been better than 
for many seasons past, and to-day the Sound is filled with 
canvasbacks and redheads. The food has been abundant 
and of the right kind, owing to our having had no salt 
water running over the beach in the fall. 
There is a bill before the Legislature now for a sunrise 
law. That means that no one will be allowed to leave 
the landing until the .sun rises, nor to shoot after the sun 
goes down. With such a law 1 think we may expect 
good shooting for many years to come. We now shoot 
onlv four days in the week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 
and Friday. As a positive proof that rest days are of the 
greatest importance, on Monday and Thursday we kill 
more than twice as many fowl as on Tuesday and Friday. 
We are heartily in sympathy with the laws protecting 
song birds, and I shall do all in my power to get such a 
law for North Carolina. Quail have been unusually 
abundant along the seaboard, and even now one can make 
a very good bag. More Anon. 
Jackson's Hole Game. 
JacksoNj Wyo., Jan. 23. — Editor Forest and Strdam. 
I am pleased to report to you that 8,GOO elk and an in- 
crease in the number of deer are now wintering on Little 
Gros Santre Hills; some 400 head of mountain sheep, 
mostly ewes and lambs, are wintering on the Big Gros 
Santre. The winter is mild and open and there is no 
danger of loss to the game. 
You will note that very few elk came out of the park 
this winter. 
The people of this locality meet in mass Thursday 
next to discuss park extension. W. L. Simpson. 
Dr. S. T. D-avis, of Pennsylvania, in a trip to the Jack- 
son's Hole country of Wyoming last season, secured "four 
bull elk, one blacktail buck, one cinnamon bear, one black 
bear, two antelope, and one very large mountain lion, be- 
sides small game and fish. This was my second visit to 
the Hole, and we found game very plentiful" 
Spring Shooting — ^Sale of Game. 
Watertown, N. Y. — Editor Forest and Stream : Write 
your Assemblyman, your Senator, and the CJoverno^; 
bury them with postal cards and letters; let them know 
you want these things stopped. The other fellows are 
working the men who only see the dollar, the market 
shooter and the game dealer. Write every week during 
the session. K every sportsman in the State of New 
York will do this, our representatives in the Legislature 
will not dare refuse us. W. H. Tallett. 
The iFoRESX and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
litest by Monday and as much earlier as practicable. 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac. 
A little south of Arsenal Point, Washington, where 
the Eastern Branch joins the Potomac, and on the oppo- 
site side of the river, is the long and wide embouchure of 
Four-Mile Run. 
The outer lip on the north i§ 'Robb's Point, on the 
south, Daingerfield's, nearly two miles away, and a line 
drawn between the two marks the boundary of the Dis- 
trict waters; inside is Virginia. 
Easy of access, by boat, or steam, or electricity, and at 
high tide a beautiful sheet of water, it has been popular 
as a fishing resort at least ever since there was a Wash- 
ington ; maybe long before. As with all streams which 
empty into the Potomac, its mouth is grovving shallow, 
and at very low tide, when the grass and moss in the late 
summer are well up, it is difficult to get a boat over the 
mud out to deep water. 
Formerly, when the water was deeper, the grasses less 
rank, and the rockfish more plenty, it was a noted place 
for their capture. One of Washington's original fly fish- 
ermen, Coalgate, left frequent marginal notes in his an- 
gling books of records which he made there. To-day they 
are seldom taken, except the small ones which swarm 
with the perch at times in the shadows beneath the great 
arches of the railroad bridge, over which once towered 
the aqtxeduct of the canal to Alexandria. When the canal 
was abandoned the aqueduct was blown up with dynamite 
to make room for a double track for the railroad, which 
suffered many disastrous wrecks here in its early history. 
B.ut if the rockfish are no more, there are still planfy 
of other fish, in spite of mud and weeds and nets. Nets 
are set and dragged here almost the year round, and 
there are always two or three house-boats to be seen at 
anchor in the cove, or high and dry on the gravelly 
beach. The Virginia line runs from point to point of the 
headlands, and so the cove itself is outside the jurisdiction 
of the District. Fyke nets are set all about the cove, and 
on summer nights they arc not always confined to Vir- 
ginia waters. Seines are being dragged now, not only 
on the shores of the cove, but opposite in the mouth of 
the Eastern Branch, and it is said 2,5oolbs. of black bass, 
some above slbs., and some, alas! hardly so many oimces, 
have been sold in the markets of Washington in the past 
month. 
All through the early spring, to late summc'', ;i boat 
drags a miniature trawl net around the edges of these and 
the neighboring shores for crayfish, to be sold in the 
Washington market for 90 cents to $1.50 a hundred, to 
be used partly for soups and partly to eke out lobster 
and shrimp salads; atid there is no estimating the damage 
such a machine does in destroying the spawn beds of the 
sunfish, the bass and the 'perches. The latter we can not 
locate, but we know of whole colonies of the former, 
whose pretty bowls of washed gravel, over which they 
keep such jealous ward, were .stirred and broken by this 
engine of destruction, and which the fish deserted. They 
should be as rigorously regulated as to close season as 
any other net, if the fish are to be saved. 
The fyke nets used take mostly small fish, and in most 
of them the mesh is ridiculously close. When regulating 
legislation was first directed against the shrinking of the 
mesh, a 2in. mesh was intended to mean between the 
knots, but was speedily interpreted to signify its length 
when stretched, which brought an inch mesh within the 
license of a 2in. law. 
During a freshet last spring some of these fyke nets 
were torn loose, and three were found on a neighboring 
beach ; these the writer measured, and found the meshes 
of the pockets, and of part of the wings, only i%in. diag- 
onally across the mesh when stretched, or little more 
than ^in, square, or between the knots. This is close 
enough to hold anything above the size of a minnov;'. 
and setting one for an experiment to demonstrate what 
they would catch, several thousand yearling sunfish were 
taken at a single tide, which could be of no possible use 
save as fertilizer, and not worth the trouble of taking 
from the net for that. Ours were carefully removed and 
given a good home in a pool, which it was desired to 
stock. 
These nets are hidden under water and inspected at 
night. There seems no way to secure efiicient regulation 
save by increasing the police fund and amending the 
laws, with greater restrictions, neither of which events is 
probable. License might accomplish something. Regis- 
try and accountability will .shut out poachers, for each 
regular will then join the authorities, and none so good to 
watch a net as a netter. 
The middle ground of the bay, or swash channel, has 
many of the long-eared sunfish, but they are hard to 
locate in deep water. They affect colonies, and even 
when once found it is hard to recognize the exact spot 
again at a different stage of the tide. 
At Robb's Point, on the north side of the cove, the 
gr3,ssy spit at low tide, with northerly or westerly winds, 
is a famous spot for white perch, and 'when the May fly 
is up one may anchor in the grass, and casting out with 
a white miller, or any light fly, tied to No. 12 hook, take 
perch till nearly midnight. 
The north shore of the bay for half its length inward 
is well filled with the sunperch, and in the earlier spring, 
when the water is clear, their spawn beds may be dis- 
tinctly seen dotted all about with the parent fish, like sav- 
age little torpedo boats, hovering over, ready to ram 
any intruder, from a fly to a carp. 
They stay in the same neighborhood, apparently, 
throughout the year, and will take the fly till well after 
dark; with sunlight, scarlet ibis to a 12 hook has proved 
the best killer in our experience, though any coloi" we 
have tried will take same, if the tackle is light enough. 
With a 2>^oz. to a 4^02. rod, and hooks 12 to 14 of al- 
most any color, though blue is the worst, will get many a 
pleasant hour here in the early dusk. The Parmachenee 
Belle, or Miller, will take them a little better than even 
the Ibis as dark approaches, but as a rule they quit when' 
the black settles down, just as the perch are getting; most 
lively. Occasionally a sunfish will take a fly, and some- 
times even a minnow, as late as 11 o'clock, but any after 
dark are usually reckoned as accidental. But in the ear- 
lier part of the evening a hundred to the rod is not an 
uncommon catch for an evening, and doubles are fre- 
quently made. 
They are vicious as any game fish, both at the snap and 
after; if they were heavier and retained their character- 
istics the bass and trout would need look to their laurels 
as sport promoters. Their broad side and strong fins give 
them the effect with light tackle of weighing twice their 
ounces, and one can no more stop their first rush with a 
2j^oz. rod than he can that of a tarpon with a billiard cue. 
And when they come to be eaten, they hold their own 
with any panfish in the opinion of many ichthyophagists. 
Twenty odd years ago, Maurice Thompson, writing of 
the sport of angling for small fish, said: "The killing of 
goggle-eyes and sun-perch is an art worth some pains to 
acquire. No 'slouch' can ever succeed in bringing one 
of these little fellows to land in good style. * * * 
When once you have properly begun fishing for panfish 
you are sure to get enthusiastically fond of the sport. It 
will grow on you day by day, till every other piscatorial 
pastime is crowded out of your mind. The babble of 
perch brooks will follow you to your business and en- 
liven the tedious dryness of office labor, and the singing 
of the wind in the leaves of the great plane trees will 
stay in your ears for days and days after you have put by 
your rod for the season." 
The man who has hunted and can still hunt large game 
may affect to consider quail shooting trivial sport, yet 
it will continue to afford delight to many men who can 
get no better, and who indeed desire no better. So to 
one who is fortunate enough to be able to reach salmon, or 
tarpon, or seabass the taking of sunfish of 4 or 50Z. seems 
a puerile sport, and yet that man is to be envied who has 
learned to love the little fishes. 
The summer sun is hot. The tar is bubbling from be- 
tween the Beligan blocks and the asphalt sinks like 
warmed wax under your heel. The city walls shut out 
the feeble breeze, and even the English sparrows are 
panting in the shade of the bushes and have lost their 
pert and cheery chirp. Work is over, but there is no 
comfort inside the walls; no comfort in walking the hot 
pavements; no comfort in riding till dewfall in the 
crowded cars. 
But thirteen minutes away is a little skiff and open 
M'ater, and a good spring, and shade, if you want it, with 
real damp ground and genuine moss; and if the tempera- 
ture is not quite frigid, you can breathe, and few are the 
evenings indeed when the breezes don't blow; and the 
track of the steamers is a mile away on the Maryland 
shore, and at the most you only catch their lazy .swell 
long after they are out of sight, or hear the excursion 
bands, softened by the distance into sweetness; and you 
get the transformation scenes of gorgeous sunsets that are 
often worth the price of admission; and the moon comes 
out — sometimes — and the stars one by one. and then by 
regiments, and the man who does not love all this has no 
nuisic in his soul, and we have been told what he is fit 
for. If he wanted fish only the law would prevent his 
using dynamite. 
Rock in your little boat, fill your lungs with the air 
before it is tainted by touching the city, play with trty 
tackle and catch a basket of toy fish with the same tactics 
and skill your friend boasts he uses on his big ones, once 
a year, and when you go in "to-night and he jollies yoii 
about your catch, tell him what you saw and ask him ii 
it wasn't better than to spend the evening in the hot 
room, or hotter street, with no escape from hearing him 
tell once more about "the greatest catch I ever made." 
Henry Talbott. 
The Toufilli Clitb. 
At the tenth annual meeting of the Tourilli Fish aOd 
Game Club, of Quebec, Secretary George Van Felsou 
presented a very interesting and complete report, cov- 
ering the proceedings of the past year and giving many 
statistics of interest to the members. The club has a 
most successful year, and its financial position is exceed- 
ingly satisfactory. Its limits are more extensive than 
those controlled by any other similar club in Canada, and 
it owns real estate to the value of $16,000. During the 
year several lakes hitherto untenanted were successfully 
stocked with trout. A new species of trout has been dis- 
covered on the club waters which runs up to 4i^lbs. in 
weight and is the most beautiful and gamy of the Salmo 
family. A specimen has been sent to the Smithsonian 
Institution and has awakened a great deal of interest 
amongst scientists.. It is generally supposed to be the 
very rare and much coveted Salmo marstoni. At the 
request of the Hon. Commissioner of 'Lands and For- 
ests an oil painting of the fish and a mounted specimen 
will be forwarded to the Sportsmen's Exhibition to be 
held in New York next March. 
The election of officers resulted as follows: 
Patron— -His Excellency the Governor-General. 
President— Commodore J. U. Gregory, Quebec. 
Vice-President— Archibald Laurie, Esq., Quebec. 
Secretary and Assistant Superintendent— Capt. George 
Van Felson. ^ c^. 
Treasurer and Superintendent— E. A. Panet, Esq., St. 
Raymond. . ,r , t- 1 
Committee— Glen Ford McKmney, New York; Frank 
Cunningham, New York; Ed. Van Ingen, New York; 
G M Fairchild, Quebec; J. A. McSloy, St. Catharines, 
Ont; Graham H. Harris, Chicago, 111.; W. F. J. McCor- 
mick, Philadelphia. , x. ' 
The club's lease from the Government has been re- 
newed for another ten years, and they are applying for 
the exclusive hunting privileges on their territory. 
Springvale Fish and Game Club. 
Springvale, Me., Jan. 2,0.— Editor Forest and Stream; 
I send you copy of by-laws of Springdale Fish 
and Game Club, recently organized for the promo- 
tion of our fish and game interests. We have been try- 
ing for some years to stock lakes near by with salmon, 
and last fall, in spawning season, some large ones were 
killed; hence the organization- of this club. We mtend if 
possible to stop this slaughter of fish, especially in closed 
season. A. J. McGibeon. 
