SI.1L1IER WOODCOCK SHOOTI\G. 
Published by the Rod and the Gun Association* 
WILLIAM HUMPHREYS, Editob. 
T. C. BASKS, BrsisESi SLlsagee. 
THE OMLYJOURS^ PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES 
Devoted Exclusively to 
SHOOTING, FISHING, NATURAL HISTORY, FISH CULTURE, 
AND THE PROTECTION OF FISH AND GAME. 
7«m* of Subtoription; Four Bollan a year in admnce. 
T** Rod ahd thb Gtix can be obtained from aU News Dealers. 
Ttti PosTAQB OB this piper Is pre-paid to subscribers in the 
Uaitsd States. 
Persons sending money to this office, by means of Money Orders 
should invariably make the same fayabls to Tbb Rod and 
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THE ROD AND THE GUN. 
31 Park Row, New York. 
We earnestly request all our contributors to adopt the plan in 
rufard to the use of scientific names which some of them have 
amaady adopted, viz ; to PRINT all such names legibly in the mann- 
ssHpt, aa tl^ will prevent error by giving the compositor plain copy 
M follow. Above all things we "say, do not venture upon the use 
of scientific names at aU nmess certain of their accuracy. 
SATURDAY JULY 17, 1875. 
CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. 
Page. Page 
The Rifle 241-212-244 The Ethics of Sport 218 
The Champion Shot of Sparrows— More Evidence .. . 213 
.dmerica 243 Unlawful Slaughter of Deer 
The Migration of Inland in Wisconsin 219 
Birds 243 The Illinois State Sports- 
Pigeon Matches 243 men’s Association 249 
Western Items 245 Letters from Sportsmen. ... 
Head Waters and Lakes of Shelter Is and 251 
the .Yndroscoggin 246 Queries and Answers 251 
Food in the Arctic Regions.. 247 I’lunket 252 
We intended to have removed The Rod and the 
Gun office to Xew York City during the present week, 
but it was found impracticable. This issue is, there- 
fore, published in Meriden. We expect to be in Xetv 
York, however, next week, and request indulgence for 
any irregularity in the issue of the 24th. Letters and 
communications may be sent, until further notice, to 
The Rod .vnd the Gun, 34 Park Row, New York. 
Some of our local news has run into arrears, chiefly 
owing to the length of the Rifle story. Even now we 
are conscious of deficienc}-, but the champions deserve 
all the space we accord to their splendid deeds. 
THE ETHICS OF SPORT. 
Under this title the London Sporting Gazetfi has writ- 
ten some articles in which it enters into a general de- 
fence of sport in answer to certain strictures of moral- 
ists and humanitarians. Incidentally the Gazette con- 
demns battues and pigeon shooting as ’‘wanton and 
purposeless slaughter.” To our thinking, the exception 
neutralizes the whole force of its arguments. Except 
for Hindoos and vegetarians all men are agree! that the 
taking of animal life for food is necessary and lawful, 
and that we may employ or kill animals for man’s uses. 
The inutility of the sacritice or the inconsiderate, cruel 
manner in which it is performed, are the only qualify- 
ing conditions to the general justification for the prac- 
tice. Whether for food, for clothing or moderat# re- 
creation, it is universally understood that life may be 
taken. These positions conceded, tj^e Gazette aptly 
says that the sportsman's conscience is his only law, 
for it would evidently he useless to appeal for a rule of 
action to those whose principles are fundamentally op- 
posed to his way of life. If the angler wastefully takes 
fish not for food consumption hut in mere reckless sport, 
tossing them aside to peri-h as useless or superfluous, 
-he common consent of the craii stigmatizes the set as 
un.'-poi’tsinanlike. If the fisherman uses small meshed 
ufcts ’Auich catch great 'and small fish, the lesser uot hav- 
ing attained their growth, it is condemuablc; since the 
small fry being comparativelj' useless are tossed back 
iato the waters or left on the bank, and even if made up 
into a “mes.a of ran fish’’ the utter worthlessnet! Of the 
food result justly brings such unprofitable fishing into 
diifavor, and it is reprobated by opinion or interdicted 
!) 3 ' legislation. In the pursuit of game there is jet an- 
other element which actuates the generous sportsman, 
“Give the game a chance.” The natural wariness of 
wild animals, their powers of escape or resistance must 
be overcome bj" the sportsman in a waj’ that calls out 
the ingenuity of man and does not exclude the animal’s 
use of itsnatu.al faculties. When pound nets are used 
in rivers or bays the animal has no chance; it must go 
in and it can’t get out. Thus we lose the excitement of 
the chase and we bring sporting down to a mere me- 
chanical certainty in which any fool is as good as the 
most painstaking sportsman or accomplished naturalist- 
The sportsman’s objection to the battue is not the 
number of animals slaughtered at one time, but that 
they are slain in a stjde that gives the animals no 
chance for the exercise of what Leatherstocking calls 
their “gifts.” A number of beaters and drivers en- 
circle the prey and drive them up to an inclosure where 
the shooters are lying in wait to kill them at con- 
venience. The ardor of pursuit, the joy of victorj' are 
wanting, one man docs the •work, another gets the^ 
honor. There is no question here of the wanton waste 
of life, for the animals are gatheied and packed and 
sent to market. Excepting that we have the open air 
and the forest glade, and the surroundings of nature, 
wuh the exciting possibilitj' of now and then potting a 
brother sportsman instead of the game aimed at, the 
gamemight just as -well be penned up and slaughtered 
at leisure by the butcher’s knife. Pigeon shooting does 
not stand on the same footing as the battue. Here the 
appeal to the spi.rting conscience and to common 
consent on which the Gazette relies is brought 
into play. It is true that the birds are 
caught and trapped — and that, so far, their 
natural chances are diminished — but so they would be 
if they were caught for food. For the pigeon-shoot, 
however, the}' must he caught tenderlj', cared for as- 
siduously and kejJt clean and well fed. Tbej' arrive at 
the shooting ground in first-class order, and the habitue 
knows, however odd it ma}’ sound, that a large per- 
centage of the birds make their escape and get back to 
wood and cover. When hit they are usually killed — 
those that are crippled are j ut out of their misery di- 
rectly and the bodies are sent to market, where, from 
their condition, the}’ bring a better price than the wild 
birds freshly brought from the woods. We are sur- 
prised that a sporting paper can find any peg for a hu- 
manitarian argument in either battue or pigeon-shoot- 
ing. Disguise it as we will, the relation of man to the 
lower animals is that of an absolute master ; superior 
and irresponsible force is always in play. The sub- 
jugation and employment of any animal is cruel in a de- 
gree ; the killing of any animal ;s objectionable to the 
transcendental moralist. But for a sportsman who does 
not object to hunting a single fox by a pack of hounds, 
or to running down deer and hares by fleet, strong and 
fierce animals with all their instincts lupplementeJ and 
heightened by training, or ■who would not object to 
firing at a flight of waterfowl w ilh the chance of crip- 
pling more than he can retrieve, it seems to he mere 
hair-splitting to talk of useless slaughter and inhuman- 
ily in pigeon-shooting. At the last Cleveland shoot 
an active and respected agent of the Bcrgh local soci- 
ety came on the shooting ground, saw the procedure 
and could find no ground, -n-hatever, for interference, 
either in law or in morals. Even had a Bcrgh agent 
interfered he would stand on very different ground 
from The Sporting Gazette. 
Mineola Dog Snow. — In our report some ciitical re- 
marks were made by the writer on Arnold Burges’ 
dog Rufus. We have received more than one comm’i- 
nication on the subject. Mr. Burges is one of the 
most competent judges of a dog on this continent, and 
it is not likely.that he would set store on an animal that 
was not first class. ^Moreover, as Rufus was not present, 
his demerits were not in question, and should not have 
been introduced. It is no part of the management of 
this paper to make a needless attack or to stir up strife. 
I The article in question was written by a gentleman 
knovrn ihroug’aout the co’actry, but had we known the 
facts the .'ji-sparaging comments would have been erased 
The Y'l'W chronicles the capture of a pike of 281bs. 
in an Iri.sh lake with a trout fly rod, after an hour's 
fight. The fellow had cleaned out the lake until it was 
almc-st teiiaatle*® of trout. 
The Fourth of July has come and gone. The posi- 
tion ive have taken on summer shooting has brought 
out some discussion in these columns, and we are open 
for more. As yet we have seen no reason to change 
our opinion. In the Turf Field and Farm we find the 
matter so . well and pertinently put that we cannot do 
better than copy the article. 
It is legal to shoot woodcock on the 4ih of July, as it 
is legal to do many thmgs of questionabl* propriety. 
We confess we can ree no enjoyment in trudging up 
hill and down dale in pursuit of any species of game 
when the thermometer runs up to the nineties and the 
game, whatever it may be, frequently — unless extraor- 
dinary precautions are taken — becomes putrescent and 
unfit for food before night. But there are some sports- 
men, and good ones, too, who are willing to encounter 
the risk of a sun-stroke or a bilious fever in pursuit of 
half-grown woodcock, and as long as they violate no 
law in so doing we refrain from denouncing the prac- 
tice. 
The woodcock, as the size and position of his eye 
would denote, is strictly a nocturnal bird, almost as 
much 80 as the owl, and, like the latter bird, he feeds 
by night, and is rarely seen, unless disturbed, upon the 
wing between sun and sun. In the summer he lies con- 
cealed by day in lonely places, enjoying the dolce farni- 
ente preparatory to the labors of the night, amid the 
long grass and ferns, under the dense shade of alders 
and willows, near marshes and brooks, and a-s his food 
consists of worms it is in fat and loamy soils, easily 
penetrated by his bill, and where such food most 
abounds, that he is to be sought for. Up to the molt- 
ing season, in August, when the birds disappear and 
perform their nocturnal migration to yet undiscovered 
covers, the youifg are always to be found in the close 
vicinity of the grounds upon which they ■were bred. 
Shade, "wet swales ’with oozing springs and a soil of 
black loam, narrow ravines on steep hill-sides among 
rocks and ■with a rill of water at the bottom, are all 
likely places to hold summer woodcock. In March last, 
on Bush River, in ilaryland, we put up half a dozen 
nesting bird-* in a walk of a few minutes through an 
open flat forest in which were marshy spots here and 
there covered with the swamp maple. What probably 
makes the woodcock such a favorite bird with our city 
sportsmen, is the singular fact that of all our game 
birds he is the least disturbed bv the “march of im- 
provement,” clinging with singular tenacity to his na- 
tive feeding grounds; he will return to them year after 
year until driven away by the city surve}’, the cutting 
of streets and the building of sewers. Up to this date, 
woodcock may be found breeding within the corporate 
limits of Jersey City. We have seen a nest there with- 
in three hundred yards of a row’ of dwelling houses 
built upon a paved street, and as late as the spring of 
last year, w e saw Count Shorb’s red setter Jock find and 
stand a breeding bird, and at command back from his 
point and resume it again within tw’o hundred yards of 
that street ? 
In our day we have seen first-rate cock shooting at 
York Springs, in Pennsylvania, when thirty or even 
forty couple of birds was no uncommon day’s sport; 
iut the very best shooting we ever heard of was in 
what are ca'ili-d “ The Drow ned Lands,” in Orange Co., 
N. Y., from which fli w the smaller tributaries of the 
Walkill, where, in 1839, Frank Forrester and his fat 
friend, “ Tom Draw” pir. Ward, of Warwick), who 
then weighed three hundred pounds and shot with a 
single-barreled gun, bagged in three successive days 57, 
79 and 98 cock, over a single brace of dogs, not begin- 
ning to shoot until late each morning. But alas ! we 
may exclaim of the Drowned Lands : “ Ichabod ! Icba- 
bod, thy glory has departed !” The Erie Railway has 
thrown them open to the pot-hunters amt the few birds 
which still resort there are remorselessly slaughtered 
even before the Fourth of July. 
-g* ♦ »» 
While we discuss whether pigeon shooting is sports- 
manlike or humane, it has grown into a favorite diver- 
sion on the other side. The first gentlemen of England 
follow it. A recent handicap sweepstakes of the Hur- 
lingham Club includes Princes Sapieha and Fursten- 
burg, the Duke of Montrose, Viscount Parker, Count 
''.lavacweki, Lord Churston, and a crow’d of other gen- 
tlemen of title and position. The Gun Club is equally 
well-patronized. As a general rule the shooting is not 
equal to the work done by our best men. The Chal- 
lenge Cup of the Gun Club was recently won by Mr. 
Thomas Lunt, w’ho killed six birds straight at 28 yards, 
there being no one to tie him out of 37 entries. 
The iMPORT-iNCE of the dog to the sportsman has 
never been questioned, but the growth of public esteem 
for the animal is strikingly shown in the number of dog 
shows. In this matter the English are as far ahead of 
us as they are in every other department of Field Sports. 
e note no less than twelve shows now in progress or 
to come c’ff wil’uia a month. 
-♦«-» 
The purcliasc of game eggs is held to be an un.^poils- 
manlike or at least an unneighborly act which encour- 
ages poachers. The London Field has Shut it? column* 
Rgeinst adve’^tiBemefits ^or sale 
