FOREST AND STREAM. 
217 
LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY. 
Rev. Myron W. Reed, of Indianapolis, re- 
cently read before the Saturday Right Club, 
of that city, nu essay on “The Shooting 
Mania." Mr. Reed betrays a thorough appre- 
ciation of, and participation in, the sports- 
mau's spirit. lie lias succeeded in telling, 
not without a great deal of genuine humor, 
so much truth about this same shooting 
mania, that we need make no excuse for in- 
troducing him to the wider and equally ap- 
preciative audience, which he will find in our 
readers : 
“Some men nnd dogs are guu-shy, but the 
rule is otherwise. The boy-baby tends toward 
a gun with native drift and instinct. There 
are people who, failing to catch the whoop- 
ing-cough in childhood, are caught by it lute 
iu life. These have it * hard.' So with 
shooting. A man may lead a blameless exist- 
ence until the white dust of the road of life is 
iu bis hair, and then fall. The gun malady 
will utterly possess him. The outsvarcl symp- 
toms are, a new and absorbing interest in 
Bportiug literature ; he subscribes for the 
Forest and Stream ; he sends his measure 
to Holabird for a suit of dead-gi ass-colored 
raiment. It is ‘ borne in upon him ’ lliat he 
must have an English gun and a liver-colored 
dog. He studies geography that he may know 
where mnrehes are, and wheat-stubble and 
other likely places for birds. Kailroadsarc of 
iuterest to him, as they tend toward these 
happy hunting grounds. When there is no 
shooting by reason of the law or the season, 
it is no small satisfaction to him to clean his 
gun. He has been known to use up all the 
sewing-machine oil in the house— dividing it 
between the locks of his weapon and the sit- 
tiDg-room carpet ; doing this on * off nights,' 
when his wife was absent at prayer-meeting. 
“All railroad trains that will take one to 
shooting grounds leave sometime between 
midnight and morniDg. The immediate family 
of the hunter are not altogether disinterested in 
this arrangement. On the night preceding his 
departure the watchman thinks from the light 
in the dwelling that there must be somebody 
sick inside, and there i6. The whole house- 
hold is sick, and it is an inexpressible relief 
when the spring-lock clicks behind the shells 
and gun and dog and man on their way to 
the station. An alarm-clock is a good thing 
for a shootiDg man to own. It would be bet- 
ter if one could remember whether he had set 
it or no. What with the night's vigil and 
breakfast eaten off the mantel-piece at an 
hour when no human being has an appetite, 
the hunter looks pretty haggard as he delivers 
his dog to the baggage muster. It is the hour 
of night when the vital powers are at their 
lowest ebb. It is the hour when most people 
die. The atmosphere of the ordinary car at 
that hour is not bracing. 
“Trains tlm*. carry men to good shooting 
grounds are all slow trains. The rouds thut 
lead thilher.are well provided with junctions. 
Some hunters are entertained at private houses, 
some at club houses, some live iu touts. 
The private house, in the writer's memory, 
had a bed-room fur six, and the sportsmen 
slept two in a bed, and betwecu the beds— 
beds of feathers brought from the old coun- 
try- The effect of thi9 to one unaccustomed 
is peculiarly stimulating. Of six men one 
may be counted on to snore ably and with 
continuity. Club-houses vary in quality of 
comfort, and mere mention of tent life in No- 
vember is enough. No use to paint the lily. 
“The early bird catches the worm. To 
catch the early bird the sportsman habitually 
has his breakfast in the night. To dress is to 
pull down his cap and get into a pair of 
clammy rubber boots. He takes dowu his 
cold gun and staggers out to bis boat. It is 
6harp at both ends, and shallow anil narrow. 
The more uncomfortable it is the better duck 
boat it is. Four o’clock sees the hunter on 
his favorite bog, pounding himself to keep his 
blood a-going, and wailing for ducks to come 
to him. There is an uncerlainty about their 
coming. A sportsman has been known to sit 
a long morning singing a variation on Tenny- 
son's “ He cometh not, she said." Maniacs 
have been known to pace the seashore for 
years looking for ships to come in that have 
long gone down. The sportsman mu6tbave a 
patience kindred to that. It is forbidden him 
to pace the shore. He must suffer and be 
still. The sailor hauling frozen ropes suffers, 
and the soldier in the ditch suffers. They 
are hired to suffer. The sportsman pays ten 
dollars a day to work harder than he ever did 
to earn fifty ; lives and suffers like an Indian, 
and does it for fun. Quail shootiDg hath this 
in it : that it exercises the whole man. No 
curling up on a cold duy waiting for them to 
come. They are most likely to be where 
there are burs. One day’s shooting will give 
employment for the rest of the week for the 
whole family in picking Spanish needles out 
of one's garments and flesh. It would facili- 
tate the movements of the hunter and add 
greatly to his comfort if the farmers would, 
in building fences, be careful to have the top 
rail flat and the fence not quite so steep. If 
the top rail could be upholstered it would not 
be so trying. The occasional introduction of 
a stile, similar to that on which the Irish emi- 
grant and Mary sat side by side, would meet 
a long-felt want. * 
L “Quails do not fly properly. They lack 
unity. Instead of scoring for a start they go 
any way, and by the time the hunter bus se- 
lected his bird and leveled ou him, he looks 
too young to shoot, and the hunter spares 
him. Quails must be taught to conform their 
line of flight to the direction indicated by tho 
gun, or else a gun must be built that will lake 
in more surface. Something modeled after 
the pattern of a mountain howitzer would be 
efficient. I he novice at quail shooting ought 
always to hunt in company with abler men, 
fire when they tire, and if any birds drop, 
claim them. It requires as much nerve to re- 
trieve birds as it dots to shoot them. If one 
cares at all about making a show of game to 
his wife und children, he must learn to re- 
trieve. It is astonishing how much lead a 
quail can carry and 11 y. I have seen one, handi- 
capped with the loads of seven barrels, make 
for the woods like a streak of browu lightning. 
In war one man is wounded or killed to 
every five hundred bullets shot in his direc- 
tion. The life of n quail is a better risk than 
that of a soldier. Muny a quail sits and sings 
“more-wet,” with the emphasis on wet, who 
has been caught in a hail-storm of shot and 
never lost a feather. 
“ A cross between the quail nnd the com- 
mon farm-yard hen is the ideal game bird. 
Then let there be coveys of this bird taught 
to have their habitat iu some dry, pleasant 
grounds, say “Central Park,” where the 
sportsman can go after a late breakfast iu a 
hack. 
“ While I am writing this there are men 
who leave their slippers und their firesides 
and their wives nud children, forsaking all 
these to stand ou bleak runways, in six inches 
of snow, in northern woods, waiting for a 
deer a day to pass them on a run. One 
chance in a winter a day for a shot by a shiv- 
ering man at a vanishing deer 1 It is the al- 
lurement of hardship that draws. Men tire 
of an easy, comfortable existence, and must 
taste the tonic of frost and hunger and weari- 
ness— laste it until they have sympathy with 
Esau, who, coming in from hunting, and 
smelling hot soup, sold his birthright for a 
plateful. Curious it is how the memory of 
the disagreeable becomes dim. One thinks of 
the camp-fire, the pleasant compuny nnd the 
soothing pipe, and forgets the sleet, the chill, 
the fatigue aud the ill luck. As a cold, his- 
toric fact, we remember that he never went 
on a hunt for fish or for game that he did not 
some time in the course of it call himself an 
idiot for coming. Nevertheless, that fact has 
no restraining power. He will go again and 
again. The native drift and instinct has 
come to him through a loDg line from grand- 
fathers who had to hunt, and who sent the 
habit down. It is stronger than ally personal 
experience, any skepticism of wife or child. 
Whatever it is in fact, pleasant is the memory 
of the bed of boughs and the crisp air of the 
morning. Pleasant is the remembered curl 
of smoke from tho ambush of the hunter. 
The man who had a sore heel on a tramp al- 
ways speaks of it with a grin." 
JJJcdiciiuiJ. 
ffublirntionil. 
Tiffany & Co., Silversmiths, 
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81. Diseases of Pigeons. 
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VCD 28 
