Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1906. 
( ,yOL. LXVri.— No. 4. 
1 No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre¬ 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
objects. Announcement in first number of 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14,1873. 
FIELD TRIAL IUDGES. 
To their patrons, field trials offer many varied 
and exclusive features of diversion, mental and 
physical. It is strange, indeed, that, in a matter 
of such guild importance, their full merits have 
never been adequately set forth. Much lias been 
proclaimed concerning their worth in the up¬ 
lifting of man’s best friend, the dog; but their 
refining and ennobling influences on man’s other 
best friend, man himself, have been overlooked. 
While in the matter of mere size, field trials 
are far inferior when compared with other forms 
of sport, they nevertheless transcend all others 
in the comprehensive manner in which they cater 
to the pugnacity and weird vagaries of the in¬ 
dividual, or of groups of individuals. 
To the man possessing a choleric or spirited tem¬ 
perament, the brawling features of the field trials 
open up a field of perpetual pleasure. He, ac¬ 
cording to tradition, is accorded immunity from 
all responsibility. It is a dull season, indeed, 
when there is not a cross-fire of bickerings, 
malicious j anglings and babblings, with betimes 
some good, earnest brawlings, in which the par¬ 
ticipants vilify each other with refreshing candor 
and spirited effort in promoting good sportsman¬ 
ship and enlarging field trial interests. When 
the infinity of squabbles, wrangles and quarrels 
are all summed up, they present an almost un¬ 
broken series throughout the years since field 
trials were inaugurated, much to the enrichment 
of the purest and most wholesome of all gentle¬ 
manly sports. 
The dogs, at field trials, have a brief flurry 
called a competition, but the actual competition 
consists afterward in sneering at the awards, 
reviewing the performances each in manner to 
please himself, libeling the club managers, vili¬ 
fying the judges, and airing the methods of the 
handlers. This edifying and instructive feature 
occupies pages of space and weeks of time. 
The dominant field trial theme at the present 
time, as set forth in the columns of the journals 
specially devoted to the interests of doggy 
matters, has to do with the partialities, prejudices, 
prejudgments and incompetencies of the field trial 
judges. One writer alleges, with caustic directness, 
that he knows of a judge who cannot refrain from 
favoring dogs of his own breeding, or dogs possess¬ 
ing similar blood lines. Another alleges that he 
knows of a judge who, having placed a dog at a 
trial, favors such dog in any subsequent compe¬ 
tition regardless of the flagrant inefficiency dis¬ 
played by said dog. The allegations include in¬ 
competency, favoritism, lack of integrity; in 
short, almost anything that can be charged im¬ 
personally or by innuendo, so that when the 
charges are cqllected into a whole, there is very 
little left of the judges’ good characters or judi¬ 
cial abilities. It is one of the strangest of anom¬ 
alies that, in a discussion after field trial methods, 
wherein the reputations of reputable men are be¬ 
smirched in the alleged upbuilding of the sport, 
the ill-tempered vaporings of the chronic kicker 
or the poltroon who vilifies from the conceal¬ 
ment afforded by a nom de plume, are treated 
seriously and with dignified consideration. No 
one seemingly cares to ask whether the critic 
is disinterested, or competent, or properly in¬ 
formed or informed at all. A brief investigation 
into the critic’s antecedents as a rule would 
develop a chronic kicker, a chronic fault finder, 
or a man whose opinion was not worth the paper 
it was written upon. 
As a matter of well known fact, the field trial 
judges of America are an exceptionally sterling 
class of gentlemen. Most of them hold high 
places in the business and social world, and are 
accomplished in the refinements of life. Most of 
them serve because of a liking for the sport. The 
pittance given for their services is insignificant 
when compared with what they could make by 
attending to their business instead of judging, 
and none too much when the fatigues, hardships, 
knowledge and concentration of mind incident to 
the tasks of judging are considered. 
Betimes, when there is a lull between bicker¬ 
ings, as aired in the canine journals, it is pro¬ 
claimed that field trials are the noblest, purest and 
manliest of sports. They draw the participants 
nearer to nature. They are a means to afford 
delightful recreation, but, alas, they are neglected 
by the desirable class, the men of wealth, re¬ 
finement and fondness for dogs. With the per¬ 
petual brawlings associated with field trials, is it 
not strange that gentlemen of delicate sensibili¬ 
ties deny themselves field trial blessings? 
VACATIONS. 
Russell Sage never squandered any of his 
precious time in such frivolities as shooting or 
fishing or woods loafing. “During the eighty- 
eight years of my career,” he once wrote in the 
Independent, “I have not once taken a vacation.” 
He had to work. He had no time to fool away. 
“If I had a thousand tongues,” he said, “I’d 
preach, ‘Save time’ with them all.” He stuck to 
the office. He was chained to business. For him 
the highest happiness was found in everlastingly 
boning down to it. If in a fatuous moment he 
had started on an outing for pleasure, the antici¬ 
pated joys of the trip would very surely and very 
quickly have turned into an overmastering impulse 
to turn about and hurry back to the office and the 
work. An office dig who digs voluntarily, is as 
uneasy and as unhappy on a holiday as were 
those Pennsylvania mine mules which on the oc¬ 
casion of the coal strike were for the first time 
in many years lifted to the surface and turned 
out into the green fields in the sunlight. The 
poor creatures were in actual pain until they got 
back again into the darkness and the close at¬ 
mosphere- of the mine. The trouble with them 
was, that their whole nature as surface dwellers 
had been supplanted by the attributes common to 
moles and the blind fishes of the Mammoth Cave; 
and they could not stand the open air and the 
light. So with a human being under the obsess¬ 
ion of inordinate money getting. The loss of 
time is only one component of the restlessness 
which attacks him after he gets away from the 
rut. His nature has become so moulded and re¬ 
stricted to the ruling passion that he has lost 
capacity for finding enjoyment in other things, 
least of all in vacation surroundings and vacation 
w r ays. 
Everyone to his taste; and happy is he who is 
free to do what pleases him most, whether it be 
the making of another hundred on a call loan 
forward the accumulating of eighty millions, or 
the hooking of another big fellow where the foam 
swirls at the foot of the rapids. 
DEER FORESTS. 
The news dispatches tell us that Henry Phipps, 
of Pittsburg, has rented the famous Glen Quoich 
deer forest in Scotland. The estate comprises 
fifty thousand acres, or something more than 
seventy-eight square miles. The papers put the 
“total rent expenses” at $500,000 a season; 
but this is a patent exaggeration, although 
the finances of deer forests are expressed in large 
figures. At the time of a recent computation 
there were in Scotland one hundred and ten deer 
forests, covering a total area of two million acres, 
and bringing an annual rental, if let, of one mil¬ 
lion five hundred thousand dollars. 
A deer forest, by the way, does not of neces¬ 
sity mean a wooded tract; it is any territory set 
apart for a deer range, and may be wooded or 
open. A large proportion of the lands devoted 
now to deer was formerly used for sheep; and 
the change to deer forest has been made not out 
of sentiment, but because the hunting ground is 
much more profitable than the sheep pasture. The 
conversion of grazing and agricultural lands to 
such purposes of sport has been in times past a 
political question, and the world has heard much 
about the eviction of the crofters from their 
Highland homes by the deer preservers; but 
there are not wanting, apparently, convincing 
arrays of figures to prove the assertion that Scot¬ 
land cannot make better use of its mountain lands 
than to farm them out as hunting grounds for the 
deer stalkers, native and foreign. 
Of late years, as the demand for deer forests 
has increased, their values have appreciated 
enormously, and the rentals of the best forests 
have grown to such sums that only the very 
wealthy may enjoy the sport. 
In the British press there has been some carp¬ 
ing that the American millionaire was crowding 
out the British deer stalker; but the landed pro¬ 
prietors, who after all are the ones chiefly to be 
pleased, welcome the Pittsburg dollars at current 
rates of exchange. 
