Feb. 15, IQQ2.| 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
127 
named Newel Bear and his two sons, all now dead, had 
dressed the skins of more than one hundred moose, one 
spring about twenty years ago. Naturally, with such 
killing, they were scarce in the Little Souwest country 
for a while. But now the Indians of New Brunswick are 
nearly all dead. Here and there you come upon one of 
their ancient dead-fall traps, and the rotting nuns of their 
roofless camps; but these are the fast decaying vestiges 
of a day that will return no more. Lucky it is for the 
game that this is so, and the result in New Brunswick 
justifies the charge that the Indian is the greatest enemy 
of the moose. Although these grand animals are found 
in considerable numbers in Quebec, Ontario, and thence 
throughout the vast northwest, they suffer greatly from 
the Indians, who. kill them wastefully during the winter, 
when the snow is deep, and during the summer when the 
moose are in the water. They are undoubtedly becoming 
more numerous in some parts of Quebec. In the Lake 
Terniskamang region there are many. Where thelndmns 
have practically ceased to hunt, as around Lake Kippewa. 
there are plenty of moose. But where Indians are the 
poly inhabitants of the country, as in the neighborhood 
of the Grand Lake Victoria, and toward the head of the 
Ottawa, the moose are scarce. 
i have seen Indians kill a cow moose and her two 
calves, in spite of my protests, when they already had 
two moose hanging up; when the calves were worthies,, 
and thev could not use the meat of the cow. 
Between the Crooked Deadwater and the driving 
camp where we met Ambrose, the moose fairly got in our 
way. and we saw eleven in different places that would 
have furnished easy standing shots. It was showing, and 
the continual noise of the wind and the sifting of the 
snow from the branches, made approach easy. Not one 
of the animals was further away than fifty yards when 
we saw it. Often where two were together they would 
stand and look for as much as half a minute before turn- 
ing to go awav. It was a succession of glorious pictures, 
and it made us proud of North America that such things 
had continued down to our day and time. 
The next two days we spent in dogged plodding be- 
hind the sled, through a steady, blinding snowstorm that 
nearlv took the heart out of Colonel and Bob, the poor 
old horses. For a few miles we tried snowshoes. the 
first time on the trip, but the snow was so soft that we 
soon gave them up, and were content to put one foot 
before the other in the narrow furrow of the sled runner. 
It was an occasion of great joy when, on the second day 
about noon, we met a procession of five portage teams 
coming in, the first of the season, and for the rest of the 
way out had a fairly well-broken road. 
I cannot find it in my heart to conclude this plain 
narrative of hunting in a real game country without a 
brief and modest statement of certain pertinent facts 
which came under my notice. I have told you of the 
big bull moose shot by Charlie Small, that had the wound 
in his breast, made weeks before by a small-bore jacketed 
bullet. I have mentioned the wounded moose Dan 
Kelly saw, dragging his hip. I will tell you of another 
typical case. 
Henry, and a gentleman who was out with him in Sep- 
tember "were calling, in broad daylight, mind you. There 
is no night calling in New Brunswick. They heard 
a stick break. Then, not forty yards away they saw a 
large moose nearly facing them, a fair mark, a little 
quartering. The gentleman, whose name is a tip-top one 
in the annals of sport, fired with a high-power, small- 
bore rifle and knocked the moose down, but he got up 
and ran. They found two bunches of hair, one the long 
breast hair, the other on the further side, where the bul- 
let had gone out. They trailed the moose as far as they 
could before it was time to return to camp. All the next 
day Henry followed the track amid a maze of others, 
and finally found a place where the moose had lain and 
bled profusely. He got near enough to get one glimpse 
of the moose as he left the water after crossing a stream. 
The third day Henry and the man who shot the moose 
followed the bloody track till a tremendous rain came on, 
which obliterated every trace, and so they never got the 
moose. 
I have mentioned the case of the five moose wounded 
and lost this fall by another of Henry's parties. In re- 
capitulating the events of the season so far as we heard 
of them (and we probably did not hear one-tenth of all 
the cases), Henry and I heard of mere than twenty 
moose hit by small-bore bullets this fall and lost. If 
these moose had been openly and illegally killed, the 
Province would have been too small for the law-breakers. 
A.s it is now, they are free to go about telling of the 
wonderful range and penetration of their ineffectual 
weapons. Of course they kill sometimes. But why not 
use a weapon that will always kill. If you will read the 
Oregon Trail, the story of Francis Parkman's travels 
long ago among the Indians, you will find that before 
the days of breechloaders the eastern hunters who went 
-West believed that their small-bore rifles that had done 
service in Kentucky were good enough for buffalo and 
grizzly, and the fact that the buffalo got away- and the 
grizzly chased the hunters did not jar their gun conceit. 
In. that charming story, "The Forest Runner," just begun 
in McClure's Magazine, we are told of an Indian in 
northern Michigan who hunted deer with bird shot, and 
who never expected to kill his game at one shot, but who 
tracked it for .miles by the blood, till the animal became 
exhausted. The history of shooting in New Brunswick 
this fall sounds like. a reversion to those ancient times. 
The clajms for the small bore are its accuracy and its 
long, flat range,, its lightness and its freedom from smoke 
and recoil.. All admitted, but all immaterial, so far as 
moose hunting goes. Charlie Small and I saw. more than 
twenty moose on our trip. Not one was oyer 50 yards 
away. In still-hunting moose in those woods, one never 
gets a long shot, because he cannot see anything very 
far. The branches, and bushes are too thick. No moose 
shot with a:48b.-grain bullet, or one of greater weight, is 
likely to get away. I know the answer of the .small-bore 
advocates. They will tell us we ought to learn to shoot. 
That is all .very well,, too. I can make this modest state- 
ment of fact, that in. some dozen ol moose-hunting trips 
I have never lost one moose I fired at, not one, and gen- 
erally fired but one shot. How many .30-bore gentlemen 
can say they have; had ^ dosen straight ki\ls» of ^oose and 
t'onq •- ■ 
One hundred yards is a very liberal limit of distance 
for moose hunters. Now I am not talking about shooting 
in the Rocky Mountains— though I have shot sheep and 
goats in British Columbia at 50 yards — I am not talking 
about shooting on the plains. I am talking about moose 
hunting i» the northeastern part of North America. I leave 
it to any fair-minded man of experience if 100 yards is not a 
large limit of distance in this sort of sport in those woods? 
ft has for years been a matter of amazement to me that 
the splendid makers of shotguns in this country have not 
uirned their attention to the making of these short-range 
combined rifle-shotguns on the paradox system. You can 
gel a beautiful American sixteen-bore hammerless shot- 
gun for half what an English gun costs. There' is un- 
questionably a demand for something more effectual than 
any rifle regularly made in the United States. Many 
English rifles are sold here, not because, we want to use 
English-made guns, but because we don't like to turn 
sp.jrt into cruelty and toil by wounding an animal, follow- 
ing it for miles, and then losing it. The .50-Tio Win- 
chester, with its light 300-grain bullet, is not powerful 
enough to be certain on moose. The .50-100-450 is much 
better. Even the .45-70 is pretty sure. I have killed 
several moose with it, and generally made a clean one- 
shot job. I do not ask any man to carry a oJ/S-pound 
rifle into the woods, when so much more powerful 
weapons are made weighing very little. All the moose 
country now limits the sportsman by law to one moose a 
year. If the law limited him to firing at one moose, and 
jailed him for wounding it and letting it get away, that 
would settle, forever the question of small-bores, because 
all the small-bore men would sooner or later go to live at 
Newcastle, N. B., or other places devoted to his Majesty's 
public institutions. Of course, that is not practicable, but 
unless something is done in the education of the public 
on the matter of hitting moose and letting them get away, 
there are a lot of these animals that will need medical 
treatment for lead poisoning. Mr. Emerson Hough, who 
is a continual joy to so many of us, may continue to pooh- 
pooh the opinions of Henry Braithwaite and other ex- 
perienced moose hunters by saying that their views are 
well known ; and an army of gentlemen may rise up and 
testify to the. efficacy of their one .30-30 bullet, "placed 
where it ought to be." One of them was with Henry 
last fall, and he sa : d to Henry: "Can't you make the 
moose stand in a little more open ground?" At which 
remark the moose made for the open ground on the 
other side of the mountain The fact is, you have got 
to take the moose as you find him. and be pretty quick 
about it, too. And until gentlemen learn by slow degrees 
that the .30s arc the curse of the modern woods, this fad 
in firearms will be as great a menace to game increase as 
was the skin-hunting cruster of a day now happily gone 
by. For the smaller animals, like deer and bear, the 
small bores are doubtless efficient. The irrefragable evi- 
dence is that for moose they are very uncertain. To fire 
at a great bull moose with an ineffectual weapon is wan- 
ton ; and to let a wounded moose run away is a thing for 
a man to regret all his days. Frederic Irland. 
Damages for Reckless Shooting. 
From the London Field 
The case of Norton vs. Sparks, which, after two days' 
hearing, was concluded in the Court of King's Bench on 
Friday last week, however deplorable the facts, affords a 
lesfon which those who are fond of_ rabbit shooting would 
do well to consider. From the evidence adduced, it ap- 
peared that the parties were ferreting a hedge bank at 
Benfleet, Essex, and the plaintiff, to use his own words, 
"knelt down with his left side toward the hedge ready to 
fire." That he should depart from the customary posi- 
tion adopted in shooting seems somewhat strange on the 
part of one who averred that "he had had consider- 
able experience in rabbit shooting" ; but his statement was 
not disputed. While in that position, a rabbit bolted on 
the opposite side of the hedge, but whether it ran along 
the bank, or ditch, or entered the field in which the de- 
fendant was standing, was not made clear; at any rate 
the defendant fired at it, with the result that the shot 
passed through the hedge and struck the plaintiff. He 
received twenty-seven shots in the leg, twelve in the arm, 
one in the left shoulder, one in the back just below the 
neck, and one in the left eye. He was removed to London, 
and was attended by a well-known oculist, who did all 
that was possible for him; but he permanently lost the use 
of the eye. In his opinion the defendant was almost at 
right angles to him when he fired, and for this act of 
alleged carelessness he brought an action for damages. 
For the defense it was contended that the plaintiff was 
guilty of contributory negligence in not keeping in line 
with the defendant, who, when he fired at the rabbit as it 
ran down the hedge, understood that the plaintiff was in 
line with him. Two witnesses gave evidence to the effect 
that they had examined the hedge in question, and were 
of opinion that the shot was fired at an angle of 45 de- 
grees. Upon these facts it was for the jury to say whether 
the defendant, by firing into the hedge with a knowledge 
that the plaintiff and other persons were on the opposite 
side of it, was guilty of such carelessness, or negligence, 
as would render him liable for damages in the event of an 
injury resulting. The jury found a verdict for the plain- 
tiff, and assessed the damages at £100, notwithstanding 
that the defendant had paid the medical expenses incurred, 
including a fee of 20 guineas for the services of an expert- 
oculist. "This may appear to many, as no doubt it did so 
to the defendant, a severe penalty to pay for his care- 
lessness ; but, on the other hand, the plaintiff lost an 
eye, which has al ways been held to be a more, serious in- 
jury than the loss of a limb — and in feudal times, as we 
know, to deprive a man of one or both eyes was the 
greatest punishment short of death that could be inflicted 
011 a malefactor. 
In all cases of unintentional or accidental injury, the 
po'nt upon which the question of liability turns is whether 
there was negligence on the part of the person who 
caused the injury. Circumstances, no doubt, alter cases, 
and it ^eems clear that where the shooter is not actually 
to blame — -as. for example, where the injured party was 
not in the direct line of fire, but a single pellet from a 
charge fired at a rabbit ricochetted from a stone at aii 
itngU: nttd sivMCk hinpn \\\w ff^—jw -cowpc^Htlofl w-oyld, 
be recoverable at law, and none would be morally due 
This happened in the case of Stanley vs. Powell, tried m 
November, 1800, before Mr. Justice Denman, It was ao 
action by a beater for compensation for injuries caused, as 
he alleged, by the reckless shooting of the defendant at 
a pheasant. The jury, however, took the defendant's view- 
that some of the shots glanced from an oak tree, and so 
wounded the plaintiff in the face that he lost the use of 
one eye. They considered, therefore, that there was no 
negligence, but, in the event of the plaintiff being entitled 
to recover, assessed his damages at £100 The judge, who 
had reserved his decision, gave judgment for the de- 
fendant, on the ground that the plaintiff had failed upon 
the gist of the action, which was to show that the de- 
fendant was negligent. 
In the case now before us the jury came to a different 
conclusion. To fire through or toward a hedge with the 
knowledge that there are persons on the other side is an 
act which can only be characterized as reckless ; and if , as 
in this instance, a serious injury is the result, it is only 
right that the shooter should suffer for it. To some 
persons, apparently, it is useless to preach caution ; they 
either cannot or will not be taught the necessity for exer- 
cising it. The only remedy is to mulct them in damages 
for their carelessness, and let others know the penalty 
which attaches to such conduct. We have it now on 
record that, in the opinion of two different juries, the 
cost of an eye is £100. Let this be generally understood 
and we shall perhaps in future hear less of so-called "acci- 
dents" in the shooting field. 
Non-Resident Licenses. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have been an interested reader of everything in recent 
numbers of your journal on the subject of shooting 
licenses, and am much surprised that no one of the large 
and increasing army of sportsmen who acquiesce in the. 
license system as reasonable and necessary, has had any- 
thing to say on the subject so far as I have observed- 
I do not refer to enthusiastic advocates of the system- 
people are not usually very much delighted so far as 1 
have observed, at any additional taxes; but if there ie 
something they want, and it can be had by the imposi- 
tion of a moderate tax, they are willing enough to pay 
their share. 
I have talked with sportsmen in widely different parts 
of Indiana and Illinois this fall, and have not found one 
who did not agree, perhaps in some cases a little sadly, 
that the license idea is the right one. 
I have heard complaint that the license in Indiana is 
outrageously high, as it is, and suggestions have been 
made in regard to making a license so much a day or 
two days, or week, and not have the charge the same 
for the sportsman who spends but a few days in the field 
as for him. who enjoys as many weeks. These are all 
matters of detail, and sportsmen would better devote 
themselves to securing just and reasonable license laws 
rather than making a fight against non-resident license, 
laws in general — which are here, and here to stay, either 
with posted farms and sundry other things which make 
for game preservation, and arc welcomed by most intelli- 
gent sportsmen. 
There is among sportsmen generally more than ever a. 
recognition of the fact that game protection costs money, 
and some one must pay for it. I cannot understand any 
gentleman objecting to the principle of paying something 
for the privilege of shooting in another State, where 
he pays no direct taxes. 
He may consider the tax as absurdly high, and com- 
plain bitterly about it, as he would at any other excessive 
change, but that he should object to the tax as such is 
unreasonable, and I am happy to say, not many do. 
It is to be regretted that in this matter the editorial page 
of Forest and Stream does not reflect what I believe to 
be the views of sportsmen generally. The article of Jan 
18 on "The Proposed Maine License" shows a bias quite 
different from that of a very large number of sportsmen 
all over the country. You criticise the able and temperate 
address of Commissioner Carleton at the meeting of the 
Maine Sportsmen's Fish and Game Association, but give 
Mr. Oak, who opposes a license, the revenue from which 
is to be used for the protection of game, credit for "put- 
ting the case in a nutshell" of a dozen' lines, although 
his rambling and illogical speech was twice as long as 
Commissioner Carleton's, and contained statements which, 
under other circumstances, I should expect to have seen 
refuted or denied on your editorial page. Take this for 
instance. Mr. Oak says : "Having talked the matter 
over with numerous sportsmen, I find quite a universal 
disposition to try to get their money's worth; being 
obliged to pay money where they think they ought not to, if 
unable to secure trophies of the chase such as desired, they 
are more or less inclined to destroy a certain amount of 
property equal at least to the amount of money they 
have left." Gentlemen of the gun and rod, what is your 
opinion of such a statement as that? It is pleasant to 
think Mr. Oak does not ' believe you will destroy more 
than the cost of your license if you do not get any'trophies. 
If your license costs $25 and entitles you to two deer and 
"you get but one, you will give credit for $12.50 and care- 
fully destroy only an equal amount of property. 
The most bitter enemy of the sports of the field could 
not make a worse charge against our class than this ; and 
Mr. Oak assures us "this is no fanciful idea." He 
has heard "these sentiments expressed by the people 
themselves" who had been compelled to pay a license 
somewhere. 
Under the circumstances it would seem the proper 
thing for Maine to keep every acquaintance of Mr. Oak 
out of the State at any cost. The rest of us believe we 
might safely be allowed to pay for our licenses, and that 
there would not be serious risk of wanton destruction of 
property if our nerves were not steady and we could not 
bring down our game. 
This talk of creating a "select aristocracy" by the im- 
position of a $20 shooting license seems to me the veriest 
twaddle, Taking into consideration all the other expenses 
of a shouting trip to a neighboring State, in very few 
eases would twenty dollars additional decide the matter 
one way or the other. There is. an old saying that "those 
who dance must pay the piper," which I commepd those 
sportsmen win:' object Vq contributing southing toward 
