Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1899, bv F«sbst and Stream Publishing Go. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1899, 
/ VOL. LIII.— Ntt. 13. 
t No. 346 Broadway, N^w York 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not bt re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
The gfcatest conqueror m the worldj'nevef had 
so many triumphal arches erected to him as our 
middle-sized brooks have. Landor. 
Cfte forest and Stream's Platform PlanK. 
^'■The sale of game should be prohibiied at all seasons' 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1899. 
WASHINGTON. 
Laws 1899, p. 278. -Section 3 Every person 
who shall offer for sale, or market, or sell or 
barter any moose, elk, caribou, killed In this 
State, antelope, mountain sheep or scat, deer, or 
the hide or skin of any moose, elk, deer or cari- 
bou, or any srouse, pheasant, ptarmigan, par- 
tridge, sage hen, prairie chicken or qua. I, at any 
time of the year, shall be deemed guilty of a mis- 
fjemeanor. 
THE FOOLISH MOMENT. 
' It is a peculiar phase of mental phenomena that men, 
under certain conditions of time, circumstances and oppor- 
tunity, will do recklessly foolish things.. They will, at 
such moments, elect to jeopardize life or limb — their own 
or that of their fellows — in an attempt to succeed in some 
venture, whethei: trifling or otherwise, though success may 
bring nothing material with it. This seems to be a trait 
common to all humanity. Men of all kinds and degrees, 
be they wise or simple, taught or untaught, high oi; low 
in social or business station, have their foolish moments 
when heedless recklessness takes the place of sober reason 
and common prudence. 
When time, circumstances and opportunity combine to 
afford play to the reckless proclivities of the individual, 
there are few, indeed, whose mentality has been so highly 
developed and disciplined that they are guided by reason 
rather than by impulse. 
Thus it comes that a man, perfectly trained and dis- 
ciplined in his special vocation, may go weeks and months 
in conducting it without an error. Every detail has been 
carefully thought out in advance; every rule of action 
has been carefully elaborated, and every act is conducted 
on a logical process of reasoning. Nothing then is left to 
chance or to the emotional impulse of the individual. 
No man in a responsible position in business would 
abandon the discipline and rules which wisdom and ex- 
perience had proved sound, and in their stead act on 
emotional impulses. 
Yet the methodical man of errorless proficiency in his 
regular business and social routine, habituated to act by 
rule and reason, may, in some other environment, develop 
a penchant for foolish moments filled with the taking of 
foolish chances. His surroundings are novel, the stimulus 
to action is different from that to which he is habituated, 
and he becomes largely a creature of impulse. 
Thus it comes about that the man of sound judgment 
when sitting in his office, pen in hand, may be a creature 
of reckless conduct when in the woods, rifle in hand; or 
when astride a bicycle speeding along city street or coun- 
try road; or when in a boat in dangerous waters. 
The man, rifle in hand, in the woods has an exhilarating 
stimulus in his new environment and purpose, something 
which exalts him far above his everyday temperament, 
and he is keyed up to a point of action far above the 
normal. 
However, the reckless acts of the foolist) moments 
always have in them something of a competitive nature or 
struggle for the mastery.. The novice who is a big-game 
hunter, who sees the bushes move and reddessly takes the 
chances that the concealed moving object is a deer and not 
a cow, or a horse, or a man, is a creature of impulse. He 
has not reasoned out all the associated possibilities of 
mistake and death incident to the sitiation. He has deer 
j;i hi$ mind and deer in his purpose, a nd with the stimtjliis 
of the pursuit impjslling him he follows the dictate of 
impulse and shoots. 
From the point of view of the man who reasons out the 
matter in another environment, the act was criminally 
thoughtless, and inexcusable. Yet under the same cir- 
cumstances, the critic himself might have done the same 
thing. Under certain other circumstances, which ap- 
pealed to the critic's spirit of competition or sport, he then 
might have his own foolish moment in which reason was 
abandoned and impulse made him reckless. 
However, there is no excuse whatever for a man, hab- 
ituated to the use of hunting with firearms, who shoots 
at an object whose wherabout is indicated b}'' moving 
bushes. Long habit should make his acts a matter of 
reason, not of impulse. The tyro may be excused in a 
degree for acts committed from the excitement and heat 
of the moment, birt there is no excuse for him for his 
neglect of learning all the safeguards to be observed in 
the use of a deadly weapon before he takes it in hand for 
dealy uses. 
The bicyclist displays the same reckless spirit in an- 
other form. He may be pedaling along serenely for 
hours, when a combination of circumstances impels him 
to reckless action and then he proceeds on impulse. He 
darts in and out between carriages, missing wheels and 
wagon tongues and horses' noses by a hair's breadth, 
with no greater object than to get ahead of them at all 
risks and with no material gain to himself after he has 
done so. And still he may go weeks before the foolish 
moment comes to take the reckless chances which, if suc- 
cessful, may have no importance whatever. The boat- 
man shoots rapids in a desire to accomplish where others 
have failed, and on impulse may do desperate deeds in 
the effort to succeed, and success may niean nothing more 
than the - personal gratification of going safely through 
great danger or the evanescent interest of the onlookers. 
Reason and calculation should eliminate the foolish 
moments and the reckless chances. The soldier, keyed 
up to a high tension for desperate deeds, would on im- 
pulse do all sorts of reckless things in all sorts of foolish 
moments, were it not for the disciplined mind of his 
superior, who acts according to reason. He is habituated 
from training and experience to disregard impulse even 
when the times are most exciting. Only by observing a 
similar course of study and discipline can the foolish 
moments and reckless acts so common to sport be elim- 
inated. 
THE RAIL. 
In the good old days of which the graybeards talk with 
so much regret, and about which the youngsters hear with 
envy and wonder, the opening of the rail season in- 
augurated the beginning of the fall shooting. In those 
happy days, the poorer shots often got from sixty to 
eighty birds to a boat, while the experts, when the tide 
was^right and the flight was on, sometimes secured one 
hundred and fifty or two hundred. 
For a number of years the rail shooting on many 
grounds in the Eastern States which formerly yielded 
abundant bags has been an absolute failure, so much so 
that many of its former devotees have altogether aban- 
doned it. Five, six, nine, or at most a dozen birds to a 
tide, are not worth going for. The intervals between the 
rises are too long, and the shoring becomes monotonous. 
In the old days, before the marshes had been so much run 
over, one might often find there besides the rail other 
interesting birds, which added to the pleasure of the hours 
spent in the boat; a little bunch of winged teal, an 
early migrating brood of black ducks, a king rail, a little 
white heron, or a least bittern, might rise , before the 
gun and add to the variety of the bag. But of late years 
there has been little of this. 
^ This autumn, for some unexplained reason, the rail 
shooting all along the Atlantic Coast, while not nearly up 
to its old-time standard, has yet been so much better 
than that of recent years as to cause great surprise. We 
know of grounds, for many seasons almost barren, which 
this autumn have yielded bags of thirty, forty or forty-five 
birds—an increase in abundance for which we know of no 
cause, and which is hardly likely to be repeated anotker 
season. 
There is no better school for the boy who is learning 
to shoist than rail shooting- The view is unobstructed, the 
birds fly slowly and straight; thus the beginner has 
plenty of time, and with proper tuition at once begins to 
kill birds enough tr give him a little confrderice in him- 
self. Of course, there is a slight tendency for him to 
become too deliberate, and even to potter, but signs of his 
doing this should be watched for by his instructor, and 
promptly corrected. But as the rail are among the 
easiest to kill of game birds, they are the very best for the 
novice to practice on, and we should be glad to see aU 
the rail grounds in the country absolutely reserved as a 
practice ground for the rising generation of those who 
use the shotgun. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The pathos of the letter from Harry Coons printed on 
another page is not lessened by the fact of his death in 
August last. 
Harry Coons, to call him by his English name, was a 
full-blooded IncHan of the Skidi tribe of the Pawnees. He 
received his education for the mo.st part at the reserva- 
tion school at the old agency on the Loup Fork, in Ne- 
braska, and was a grown man when his tribe was re- 
moved by the Government to its new home in the Indian 
Territory. His suggestive letter tells us something of the 
conditions of Pawnee life when the tribe resided ill Ne- 
braska, and it was at this time that we first knew him 
and other Indian boys, while traveling with the camp in 
search of buffalo. 
Subsequent to this period he served under Major North 
with the Pawnee scouts, where he was regarded as one of 
the most trustworthy and reliable men in that steadfast 
body. Of late years he had taken firm hold of civilization, 
possessed a farm, which he successfully managed, and at 
one time was stockholder and director in a local bank. 
For a number of years he had been threatened with con- 
sumption, that fell enemy of the Indian race, which claims 
for its victims one-half of those who die. His trip to the 
North, made in the summer of 1898, and of which he 
writes in this letter, was undertaken in search of health. 
Harry Coons was a man of determination, of unflinch- 
ing courage and of great singleness of purpose. If he had 
lived fifty years earlier he would have been a great chief, 
for he possessed the qualities of mind which make chiefs. 
He was also a warm friend, and his death' will be mourned 
not only in his tribe, but by more than one of his white 
friends. 
We are advised by our Chicago correspondent of 
thirty-two acceptances of the invitation to go on the 
Minnesota excursion to inspect the region of the proposed 
national park. Seventeen States are represented; and if 
the public spirited promoters of the reserve project shall 
instil something' of their own enthusiasm ijito their guests 
the result should be a powerful stimulus of general interest 
in the plan. If the people of the country realized what is 
the character of that iJlinnesOta region and had a faint 
conception of all that the park would mean to the Missis- 
sippi Valley and the entire population, there would be no 
uncertainty as to the prompt action of Congress; the 
Minnesota forest reserve would be an assured fact. 
The State of Washington has been so reckless of its 
game supply that the most stringent measures are now 
thought necessary to protect the remnant. An important 
provision in the new game code is one which embodies the 
Forest and Stream Platform Plank, and absolutely for- 
bids the sale of game. The text of the prohibition is given 
at the top of this page; and the statute contains a further 
clause forbidding the purchase of game. In this way an 
attempt is made to reach the special classes who provoke 
violations of the game law. 
It takes people of all sorts to make up the world. 
There are some who never go shooting nor fishing. 
If one is held up by a freight train wreck, how shall he 
employ himself during the detention? By writing for 
Forest and Stream, of course, as did the author of the 
black bass paper signed Wadleigh Brooke, who writes: 
"The inclosed sketch was jotted down a night or two 
since on telegraph blanks and old letters as our train lay 
back of a very mixed up freight wmJc, as a pleasant 
means of whiling aw^y the time." 
A most interesting bat of news in our fishing colunins 
to-day is the report Mr. Livingston Stone sends of the 
capture of the first California salmon taken in the St, 
Lawrence River, 
/ 
