September, 1919 
FOREST AND STREAM 
479 
veloped a cult which seems to me the 
acme of snobbishness. The Catalina 
fisherman does not admit that there 
is any sport other than getting tied to 
a submerged leviathan and being drag- 
ged all over the ocean for seven hours. 
Why not go out in the black lot, make 
fast a line to a yearling calf and let 
him drag one about for a few hours? 
The result would be the same and the 
danger of broken bones vastly greater. 
I have never indulged in this kind of 
fishing — and never will. 
One fishes the inlets and bays of the 
Jersey Coast and the catch consists prin- 
cipally of plaice (incorrectly called 
flounders) and a few other ugly, un- 
gainly monstrosities of the croaker va- 
riety. And if one fishes from piers or 
near wrecks he catches tautog — a homely 
little brute, few, and far from being a 
fighting person. 
I have fished the estuaries of the Ches- 
apeake from the Susquehanna to the Po- 
tomac and caught a number of white 
perch and a very occasional striped bass. 
The latter fish is a bass and entitled to 
the respect and admiration due his fam- 
ily. But he is woefully scarce and very 
small. One gets a duck or two in these 
waters, but the fishing is utterly unim- 
portant. This is an iconoclastic state- 
ment but perfectly accurate. 
I might go into greater detail, but I 
think the foregoing will show the inland 
fisherman that he need not envy his 
brother of the coast. The rumored vast 
number of every sea fish that swims is a 
myth, and very few of those caught are 
worth going after. The only redeeming 
features of salt water fishing are its ac- 
cessibility and cheapness. I am not quite 
in sympathy with those gentlemen who 
write glowing, illustrated accounts of 
the excitement and exhilarating sport in- 
volved in landing huge masses of useless 
and ugly flesh. One may fish for weeks 
before he gets a tarpon or a channel 
bass ; I know — I had it happen to me, 
and the stuff he does get is trivial and 
the time used is wasted. 
To me, fishing is something more than 
cjllecting a large number of the finny 
tribe at hectic speed and at the expen- 
diture of great exertion. I much prefer 
to drop a fly in a quiet, reedy lake along 
toward evening and spend five minutes 
arguing with about three pounds of black 
bass. One has time to study the game 
and use a little finesse and strategy. Any 
lubber can drop a dead spearing into a 
school of bluefish and yank out a denizen 
of the deep, but that same lubber could 
not get a rise out of the wary old gentle- 
man of the quiet, sweet water. 
I’ve tried ’em all this side of the 
Rockies and am well content to make a 
yearly pilgrimage to the northern bal- 
sams and the rushing mountain streams. 
The ocean is supreme in its grandeur 
and its mystery, and I shall hope always 
to spend a few weeks of the year near 
it, but when I go a-fishing I shall trek 
to the home of the aristocrat of the wa- 
ters — where one gets not only the beauty 
and restfulness of the quiet places among 
the limpid lakes and whispering pines, 
but also, occasionally, a real fish. 
W. T., Maryland. 
ELK IN PENNSYLVANIA 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream : 
1 AM mailing, to you a kodak photo 
taken by Mr. Dick Lane, of Ebensburg, 
Pa. This, I think, is a remarkable pic- 
ture to have been taken in Pennsylvania 
of two wild elk. Elk were introduced 
into this state several years ago. 
Mr. Lane is a photographer and never 
travels without a camera. On this Sun- 
day a couple of weeks ago he and his 
wife were out for a drive in their auto 
and just as they came to this bridge, 
located between Cresson, Pa., and Dun- 
cansville, on the William Penn Highway, 
not far from the Prince Gallitzin spring, 
he saw one of these elk just coming up 
over the bank onto the bridge. Of course 
he got ready to shoot him with the 
camera, but before he was ready the 
other one showed up also and he now 
has a picture he values highly. 
Prospects for grouse look good now 
for next fall unless they were hatched 
too early and the wet weather during 
May was too much for them. 
Jeff Evans, Penn. 
SHOT GUN ACCURACY 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
Y our anonymous correspondent 
“Gaucho,” in his anxiety to cham- 
pion the double-barreled shotgun, which 
most of us consider as one of our best 
friends, has entirely lost sight of the 
object of my letter, and as there is 
hardly anything that I can add to my 
letter, my experiments having been care- 
fully made and fully described, I can 
only now try to smoothe the ruffled feath- 
ers of your Patagonian friend, who per- 
haps has had more experience with bolas. 
I, too, have shot continuously for quite 
forty years with the double-gun as at 
present in general use, principally grouse 
and partridge driving in England and 
Scotland where one is likely to shoot at 
more game in one day than it is pos- 
sible to meet in a month in this country 
and my letter was not intended so much 
for those who use the cylinder scatter 
gun as for those who use the fullest pos- 
sible choke at the trap, at either live 
or clay birds or for the duck hunter. 
It would be well nigh impossible to 
find the exact centre of a charge of shot 
from a cylinder bored gun at forty or 
fifty yards. 
Is “Gaucho” aware that all double 
rifles, as we make them in England are 
wedged apart at the muzzles and that 
the barrels are laid to centre in a six 
inch bull’s eye at 100 yards? Why? 
If the barrels of such a rifle were 
laid as shot barrels are laid, where does 
he think they would shoot? 
I would suggest to him to try the ex- 
periment of placing two nails in a board 
one and a quarter inches apart, and 
twenty-eight inches from them place two 
more at seven-eighths of an inch apart, 
these figures representing respectively 
the distance apart of the primers and 
the centres of the muzzles of a 28-inch 
barrel. 
Attach two strings to the nails at the 
breach and stretch them to touch those 
at the muzzles and note where they cross, 
and if these strings do not represent the 
centres of the charges of a shotgun or 
the bullets of a rifle, perhaps “Gaucho” 
will be good enough to explain to me why 
they do not? 
He acknowledges that some shotguns 
do shoot off centre, but he does not give 
the reason. 
To his statement that I never have 
tried a first-class accurate shooter, I 
would reply that I have, or have had 
guns by Purdey, Lang, Grant, Boss, 
Churchill, Westley-Richards and others, 
and with some of these mv experiments 
were made. He may have heard of some 
of these English makers and even allow 
Photograph of two wild elk taken on the William Penn Highway, Pennsylvania. 
