(Late THE AMERICAN SPORTSilAN), 
Publijilied by the Rod and the Gun Association. 
WILLIAM HUMPHREYS Editor. 
T. C. BANKS. Business Manager. 
S. H. TURRILL, Chicago Manager. 
THE ONLY JOURNAL IN THE UNITED STATES 
DEVOTED EXCLUSIVELY TO 
SHOOTIKG^.^FI|HlXa 
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THE ROD AND THE GIHST, 
33 Paek Bow. New Yoek. 
TS- We earnestly request all onr contributors to adopt the plan In 
re^rd to the use of scientific names which some of them have alrMdy 
aaodiited. viz. : to PRINT all such names legibly in the mannscrlpt, 
as this will prevent error by giving the coD'posltor plain copy to fol- 
low. Above all things, we say, do not venture upon the use of scien- 
tific names at all unless certain of t%lr accuracy. 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1875. 
CONTENTS. 
Page. Page. 
Rifle— Irish Team .305,6,7,8 Americans as Riflemen 312 
Librarv Table 309 Fish and Fishing 313 
Salmon Fishing 310.11 Game on Ixmg Island 314 
A.ssociation 312 Choke-boring, etc 314 
Irii-h Team 312 Pigson Matches 316 
Preservation of Fish 312 
Correspondents are requested to note change of 
address— The Rod and Gun, 3 3 Park Row, N. Y. 
Mr. S. H. Turk ill, of (Zliicago, Western manager of 
Rod and Gun, is to be found at 43 South Clark street, 
Chicago. Parties going West, and desiring to make 
inquiry as to localities for game and fish, hotels or 
routes, will be welcomed bj* Mr. Turrill, who will be 
pleased to give an)* information in his power. — Ed. 
ASSOCIATION. 
We desire to impress on our sportsmen the value of 
association. We will not tax the reader’s patience with 
a dissertation on the mighty results achieved by asso- 
ciation. Every school-boy knows that association for 
every purpose of human action is a characteristic of the 
age in which we live, and that while each man in his 
sphere may do much by precept and example, many 
men associated can accomplish a vast deal more than 
they can separately. 
Circumstances of recent occurrence have led to the 
revival of field sports, and have given them a tone and 
character they have long missed. The excesses to 
which some departments of field sports have ministered 
has led to their general depreciation. The sentiment is 
natural if unjust . Between rogues and their friends it 
is hard to discriminate. But there is a wide interval be- 
tween those sports which are practiced with gain as 
their sole or even their chief object, and those pursuits 
in which health, recreation and genuine social pleastire 
are the principal aim, and into which the pecuniary ele- 
ment never enters except when we come to count the 
cost of the entertainment. Our honest sportsmen, in 
vindication of their faforite pursuit, have, however, a 
duty. It is not enough to be honest one’s self ; one 
should protest in favor of honesty, and endeavor to en- 
courage the virtue in others. For instance, the close 
avoidance of shooting or fishing out of season by any 
one man is a small good ; but the public ]rri)tcst against 
the breach of law and the invitation to the pot liuuter 
to come UD and stand on a new platform and to get into 
the societ)* of those who do as they would be done by is 
a saving performance, and it is precisely this that we 
most need. 
The few men who met at Creedmoor for rifle practice 
were of slight importance three years ago. Their doings 
were carelessly chronicled, and respectable people who 
think that all sport savors of evil, only knew them to 
avoid them. Suddenly they beat the Irish rifles, and 
hence they are famous. They are the associates of arch- 
bishops and college dignitaries, the associates and rivals 
of princes of the bloood and ministers of State; ah, how 
good is it to be a rifleman. Now this resulted from 
their association — the old fable of the bundle of sticks. 
Our college boys have pulled an oar for many a year ; 
the straight-laced Pharisees lifted up their voice against 
athletic sports, but the boys went together, and now 
rowing is reputable as Greek, and far more popular than 
conic sections. Leading ecclesiastics welcome the 
champions, and erudite scholars remind us of the 
Isthnaian games, and compare our boys with the antique 
worthies. All this is fashion. 
Our gunners and fishers should take the tide at the 
flood. Let us have shooting clubs in every county. 
Our men of standing will do well to bring the humble 
brethren together and give them the benefit of their 
social influence. Let the voice of the sportsmen be 
heard in favor of preservation of game, in support of 
tree planting, against the pollution of streams, and let it 
be understood that a sportsman is not a mere destroyer 
nor are low habits or corrupt associations any part of a 
sportsman’s life, and that the many good and eminent 
men who find their chief recreation in field sports are 
not ashamed of their favorite pursuit, but are willing 
to proclaim themselves, and justify their calling before 
the world. 
THE IRISH-.IMERICAN TEAM. 
By the time this issue is under the eyes of its readers, 
our riflemen will have returned home, and, as we trust, 
will have been met with the warm reception from their 
fellow-citizens to which their skill and discipline have 
entitled them . We may not treat them with the bril- 
liant hospitality they have met in Europe, but it is in 
our hearts ; for not a man or woman on this continent 
but holds up the head and steps more proudly at the 
thought of the rifle team. 
Before closing this chapter, we, too, may take leave 
to remind our readers that the vigorous, pithy team let- 
ters which have appeared in our columns have been 
written by a “live” correspondent, who accompanied 
the team, joined in their work, and though not himself 
a competing shot, might well have been had any acci- 
dent required his services. We and our readers owe 
him thanks for duty done, and well done. 
PROTECTION TO OUR RIYERS. 
In another place we give a long and capital story of 
salmon-fishing, taken from the pages of the Atlantic 
Monthly. Though not belter than luacy similar original 
articles of sport or travel that have appeared in these 
columns, it is good enough to justify us in such a piece 
of scissoring. It is not, however, only the vividness of 
the story which alone influences us in the selection. It 
carries with it a moral which is appropriately found at 
the close, and in impressive words too long for repe- 
tition, but of which we pray all true lovers of the rod, 
and good citizens, to retain the sense and import. The 
rivers are again inhabited, fish are plentiful, and the 
supply of wholesome food is cheap and abundant. All 
this is the result of a protective system. 

.\MERICANS AS RIFLEMEN 
BY SNAP SHOT. 
I have noticed in the reports of speeches made by 
members of the New York rifle-team in Ireland, a tend- 
ancy to insinuate that Americans as a nation were not 
rifle shots. This is a great mistake. If Mr. Gildersleeve 
had spoken of New Yorkers he would have hit nearer 
the mark, but to say the Americans as a nation are not 
riflemen betrays a good deal of ignorance. I will not 
go as far as a celebrated poet of to-day and say that the 
true American is not to be found east of the Alleghenies, 
but I tliink that it is foolish to expect to find ready- 
made riflemen in the Europeanized cities of the East. 
Does Mr. Gildersleeve Ignore the hunters and frontiers- 
men of the Far West — men who have spent their entire 
lives in hunting large game, and in fighting Indians 
with the rifle? AYhy, sir, in many parts of the terri- 
tories where I have been, a shot-gun was a thing un- 
known, the hunters having the same contempt for it 
as did the men who followed Boone into what is now 
Kentucky. The very boys in the Far AVest learn the 
use of the rifle as soon as they are big enough to hold it 
at arm’s-length. There are plenty of boys of fifteen in 
the territories, who, with their Springfields or Winches- 
ters, have killed as much big game as ever the best shot 
at Creedmore has scored buUs’-eyes on a target. 
But not to go as far west as the Territories: In most 
of the States lying between the Alleghenies and the 
Mississippi, when you get off the line of railroads, you 
will find as many rifles used for liunting as shot-guns; 
and well do the farmer boj’s know the use of their long- 
barrel, uncouth-looking “squirrel” rifle. 
As late as ’66, when shooting prairie chickens in an 
eastern county of Illinois, I found that fully half the 
prairie chickens kUled (and it was a famous county for 
pinnated grouse) were shot with the rifle, their heads 
being neatly picked off at from 50 to 100 yards; and the 
marksman who hit the bird anywhere except in the 
head was considered a bad shot. 
The Creedmoor shots may sneer at such shooting, but 
let me tell them that it was such shots that have driven 
back the red man foot by foot, and have enabled our 
country to spread itself from a narrow strip on the sea- 
coast to what it now is. It was such shots who whipped 
the British at Saratoga, at Bennington, at Lexington, at 
New Orleans, and on a hundred other fields. 
He who can kill off-hand his antelope at 300 yards, or 
take off the head of a squirrel at 100 yards, is likely to 
do the Republic better service as a marksman than one 
who lies down on his back, curls up his legs, and pro- 
ceeds to peg away at a target at 1,000 yards with rifles 
fitted with vernier sights, wind gauges, etc. I must 
confess I cannot see the utility of this latter way of 
shooting.^ It maybe a pleasant .sort of pastime, but it 
neither makes a man a good shot as a soldier or hunter. 
1'he most useful ranges for practice as a hunter are up 
to three hundred yards; as a soldier, up to six hundred. 
There has lieen a good deal of capital made out of tlie 
fact that the invitation from Creedmoor to the riflemen 
and frontiersmen of the Far AVest was not accepted. 
But the riflemen of the AVest are mostly poor men, 
many of them supporting their families with their rifles, 
and it is absurd to think that they would come over 
two thousand miles or more to New York for the pur- 
pose of shooting at targets in a style which they never 
had heard of before. There is no other nation than tlie 
United States where the rifle is used so much by the 
people for hunting, or where so many are good rifle- 
shots. 
■ ^ ^ 
The National and International Dog and 
Poultry Exhibition. 
At a meeting held at the residence of Mr. .Jacob Pentz, 
at Newark, N. J., on Saturday last, composed of many 
of the more prominent amateurs of dogs and fancy poul- 
try resident in Newark and vicinity, the initial steps 
were taken to caiTy into effect the much-talked-of de- 
sign to hold at Newark, in February next, a national and 
international exhibition of thoroughbred dogsan'd fancy 
poultry. 
Air. Demorest, of Newark, was elected Chairman, and 
Col. Skinner, Field Editor of the Tnrf, Field and Fai-m, 
Secretary. On motion of Air. Eugene Shorb, of .Jersey 
City, the gentlemen present were invited to nominate 
members to constitute an Advisory Committee, to be 
selected from all sections of the country, to co-operate 
with a local Executive Committee to be hereafter con- 
stituted, whereupon the following were nominated and 
elected : 
Jacob Pentz, Newark, Chairman ; George H. AVild, 
of Red Bank, N. J. ; C. H. Raymond, Alorris Plains; A. 
P. Baldwin and Frederick Underhill, of Newark ; 
Eugene Shorb, AVm. Taylor, AA’m. Hughes, of Jersey 
City ; Theo. Aforford and A. AVaddell, of Newton, N. 
.1. ; John E. Long, of Detroit, Alich. ; Adolphe Gubner, 
Robert Robinson and Frederick Alassie, of Brooklyn ; 
AA’illiam Shipman, of Brooklyn, and H. S. Edwards, of 
Chicago, 111. ; Thomas H. Logan, of Cincinnati ; Geo. 
Hayden, .Jacksonville, 111. ; Air. Carman, of River Edge, 
N. J. ; George D. Saxon, Canton, Ohio ; Air. Bryson, 
Alemphis, Tenn. ; James Gordon, Pontotoc, Aliss. ; 
George T. Leech, New Orleans ; E. G. Benson, Phila- 
delphia, Penn. ; AVilliam Clarkson, Del. ; Hon. Thomas 
De Russey, New Brunswick ; .1. B. Sage, Buffalo ; 
Green Smith, AA'estern New York ; Air. Jenkins, Balti- 
more, Aid. ; Isaac A'an AA'inkle, Greenville, N. J. ; H. 
Shuyler Smith, AIo. ; Shirley Harrison, Brandon, A'a. ; 
John Swan, of Huntington Ridge, Aid. ; Air. Cobum, 
Duane street, N. Y. ; Alfred Phillips, Trenton, N. J. ; 
Clarence Gould, Charles Foster, of the Sportsman, and 
Air. Joseph Elliolt, of the Herald.^ On motion of Air. ' 
Underhill, which was sustained by eloquent and cogent 
remarks, the presidents of all ^e sportsmen’s clubs in 
the countrj’ were added to the Advisory Committee. 
The following gentlemen were nominated and elected as 
a local Executive Committee, to meet at the Park House 
on the first day of October next at 8 p. m. ; Jacob Pentz, 
Ed. Haj'nes, P. G. Skinner, Horace Smith, AVm, 
