336 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 13, 1913. 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
Charles Otis, President. 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. W. J. Gallagher, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENfE —Forest and Stream is the 
recognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in¬ 
formation between American sportsmen. The editors 
invite communications on the subjects to which its pages 
are devoted, but, of course, are not responsible for the 
views of correspondents. Anonymous communications 
cannot be regarded. 
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ADVERTISEMENTS : Display and classified, 20 cts. 
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ten and twenty per cent, discount for 13, 26 and 52 inser¬ 
tions, respectively, within one year. Forms close Monday 
sn advance of publication date. 
Lniered as second-class matter at the Post-Office, 
New York, N. Y. 
SHOOTING WITHOUT A GUN. 
Doubtless the highest test of sportsmanship 
is the woodcraft which gives one that knowl¬ 
edge of the habit of game that enables him to 
find it under the various conditions of weather 
and seasons, and the ability to make the stealthy 
approach which shall bring him within range 
without alarming the object of his pursuit. 
Without these qualities, partly inborn and 
partly acquired, there cannot be completely suc¬ 
cessful sportsmanship, however skilled one may 
be in the use of the gun, a skill that may be 
acquired in great measure by practice at the 
fixed and flying target. 
All the skill of woodcraft that goes to the 
making of the successful hunter with the gun 
must be possessed by him who hunts his game 
with the camera. 
His must be the stealthy, panther-like tread 
that breaks no twig nor rustles the fallen leaves. 
His the eye that reads at a glance the signs 
that to the ordinary sight are a blank or at 
most are an untranslatable enigma. His a 
patience that counts time as nothing when meas¬ 
ured with the object sought. 
When by the use and practice of these he 
has drawn within a closer range of his timid 
game than his brother of the gun need attain, he 
pulls trigger of a weapon that destroys not, but 
preserves its unharmed quarry in the very coun¬ 
terfeit of life and motion. 
The wild world is not made the poorer by 
one life for his shot, nor nature’s peace dis¬ 
turbed, nor her nicely adjusted balance jarred. 
He bears home his game, wearing still its 
pretty ways of life in the midst of its loved sur¬ 
roundings, the swaying hemlock bough where 
the grouse perched, the bending ferns about the 
deer’s couch, the dew-beaded sedges where the 
woodcock skulks in the shadows of the alders, 
the lichened trunks and dim vistas of primeval 
woods, the sheen of voiceless waterfalls, the 
flash of sunlit waves that never break. 
His trophies the moth may not assail. His 
game touches a finer sense than the palate pos¬ 
sesses, satisfied a nobler appetite than the 
stomach’s craving, and furnishes forth a feast 
that, ever spread, ever invites and never palls 
upon the taste. 
Moreover, this gentlest of sportsmen is ham¬ 
pered by no restrictions of close time, nor con¬ 
fronted by penalties of trespass. All seasons 
are open for his bloodless forays, all woods and 
waters free to his harmless weapon. 
Neither is he trammeled by any nice dis¬ 
tinctions as to what may or may not be con¬ 
sidered game. 
Everything counts in his score. The eagle 
on his craggy perch, the highhole on his hollow 
tree are as legitimate game for him as the deer 
and grouse. 
All things beautiful and wild and picturesque 
are his, yet he kills them not, but makes them a 
living and enduring joy to himself and all who 
behold them. 
HIP DISEASE. 
Abundant opportunity for misconception lies 
wrapped up in the term “class.” With respect 
to their drinking proclivities “sportsmen” are not 
a “class” any more than they are a “class” as 
to the color of their hair or a fondness for 
baked beans or their religious faiths or political 
opinions. It is a popular error to regard the 
men who fish or the men who shoot as for that 
reason being set apart from other men in a 
special class marked by common likes and dis¬ 
likes, virtues and shortcomings in other things 
than shooting and fishing. Forty years ago when 
Frank Forester was picturing the doings of his 
heroes in the field, the common error quite natu¬ 
rally instilled by his writings was that sportsmen 
as a class were excessively given to drink, and 
that Nimrod must be not only a mighty hunter 
but a mighty drinker as well. Forester 
was not alone iu ascribing to the sports¬ 
man of that day valiant prowess with the bottle. 
The Spirit of the Times was the accepted organ 
of the craft, and many of the writers who con¬ 
tributed stories of shooting and fishing success¬ 
fully emulated Herbert in their chronicles of 
drinking achievements. An examination of the 
files of the old Spirit would show that there was 
abundant ground for this complaint of a corres¬ 
pondent whose letter was published in one of 
the September numbers of 1855. 
This correspondent goes on a hunting 
expedition with two or three gentlemen. His 
description of the sport is very exciting and 
makes us wish that we were of the party, but 
from a perusal of the introductory paragraphs 
you might suppose that he was about establish¬ 
ing a wholesale liquor shop in the backwoods, 
where free lunches were to be dispensed to all 
who might travel that way. After the day's hunt 
is over, he tells you how the party conducted 
themselves, and you certainly could not be cen¬ 
sured for saying that our friend is either given 
to exaggeration or else the party of gentlemen 
have altogether forgotten what belongs to their 
character. Dr. Beecher can give us “A Day’s 
Fishing” without catching a trout, and many 
correspondents have given “A Day’s Hunt” in 
most bewitching colors without killing a deer 
or getting drunk. Let the correspondents al¬ 
ways remember that the hunt—-the sport—is the 
thing we want, not the quantity of liquor drunk, 
the number of cigars smoked or the amount of 
provender which one of the party contrived to 
stuff into himself. 
In spite of an occasional protest like this, 
the good things to drink continued to be dwelt 
upon with affectionate minuteness and prolixity 
by the Spirit writers, and as the public drew from 
that journal its notions of sport and sportsmen, 
it quite naturally put the man of the gun and 
his companion of the rod in a class specially 
addicted to the consumption of whisky. Long 
years ago the Spirit of the Times gave up its 
shooting and fishing correspondence, and Forest 
and Stream stepped into favor as a substitute. 
Long years ago, too, Forest and Stream de¬ 
liberately gave up shooting and fishing corres¬ 
pondence in which the bottle played a conspicu¬ 
ous part, and by.this time it should be commonly 
understood by all intelligent people that the old 
order of things has passed away. Nevertheless 
so tenacious has been the popular association of 
the bottle with fishing and shooting that even in 
these days a fisherman is astonished to find an 
anglers’ hotel in the wilderness with never an 
emergency drop of whiskey for a sprained thumb. 
WESTEHM UNION 
AM 
Form 1864 
THEO. N. VAIL. PRESIDENT 
SEPTEMBER 3 ED-1913. 
RECEIVED ATF W J7| f ran j<|fo St, N. Y 
A 7 . 0 NY -JQ 16 
TR TREM0NT NEWYORK SEPTEMBER 3RD-1913. 
MR W.G.BEECR0FT, EDITOR, FOREST AND STREAM 
137 FRANKLIN STREET,NET7Y0RK. 
VICTORY. THE SENATE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS HAS VOTED TO RESTORE THE 
HOUSE BIRD PROTECTING CLAUSE UNCHANGED. CONGRATULATIONS. 
•YI.T.HORNADAY. 
IIIPM. 
