Oct. 25, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
539 
THE 
PARKER 
GUN 
We make it reliable. 
Its friends have made it famous. 
Send for Catalogue. 
PARKER BROS. Meriden. Conn. 
N. Y. Salesrooms: 32 Warren St. A. W. duBray, Res. Agt. Box 102, San Francisco, Cal. 
ous in grass and leaves, and shows up decidedly 
better against the sky than the ordinary arrow 
that is varnished. 
A set of arrows recently designed and 
turned out by the writer have black shafts, but 
well varnished and finished dull. They have 
blood red feathers tipped with black, gold leaf 
riband or crest, finest second growth split hick¬ 
ory shaft, and steel broadheads. Some also have 
Y-shaped heads, and some are blunt heads, but 
all are same weight, balance, etc., and seem to 
have about same resistance to the air—an ideal 
quiver of hunting arrows, we think. 
It is right aggravating to send a broadhead 
through an old hare and see him buck jump a 
few times, and then fairly burn the wind for 
his hole over the hill to die a lingering death. 
Then there are times when one wants to behead 
a chicken for the cook, or clip a small twig or 
limb in two, or shoot a rabbit down in his tracks, 
or cut a snake’s head off for sure. Well, the 
Y-shaped head on a hunting shaft is the thing. 
It was discovered by the writer on some ancient 
Japanese war arrows, and an old book said that 
such arrows were used to disembowel the enemy. 
It is to the arrow head of the average arrow 
what the high-power soft-nose bullet is to the 
old patched lead ball of the muzzleloading rifle. 
The Y or Jap blade sure stops a rabbit, and you 
can’t miss a snake with it. Another good feature 
is, the writer believes, that it is easier on the 
shaft than the average arrow point. Probably 
go per cent, of the arrows broken come to grief 
by glancing. The point strikes a hard smooth 
surface at a very acute angle—an angle that is 
too steep for the point to stick—so the point 
glances away from the object and the feathered 
end of the arrow whips violently against this 
hard unyielding surface. This “whip” is what 
brings grief to the archer’s heart. This can 
hardly happen to the Y head, for one of the 
horns would be most sure to engage the object 
even if it was a stone. Then the feathered end 
would whip on over through a large angle with¬ 
out any damage. The Y head will not even 
glance from a twig or small limb. If it can’t 
cut the limb off, it stops, and the feathered end 
swings around the twig, and not against it, as 
would the broadhead or bodkin-pointed arrow. 
This style of point was not used by the 
American Indians, as it was not practical in 
stone; not by the English archer, as he fought 
armored men and used a small steel piercing 
arrowhead in war, and the broadhead against 
the deer. 
Shooting at the neck of a reared up black- 
snake with the broadhead means driving center, 
but with the Y head you can pull off an inch 
and then perform the needed surgery. 
This appeals to the archer, for once he 
needed just such an arrow badly. He was walk¬ 
ing around a pond that had dried up some and 
left the fringe of willows and briers a dozen 
feet from the water’s edge. The bullfrogs were 
taking their siesta back in these jungles where 
it was well nigh impossible to see them from 
the land side, so the archer was wading along 
the edge of the pond, crane-like, nailing a frog 
every now and then, when he saw a very large 
water moccasin lying in a bush only about twenty 
feet away. His long slim body was stretched 
out, so it meant a center shot at the neck, or he 
would come tumbling into the pond toward the 
bowman, whose entire costume at that moment 
was a lance bow, a quiver of hunting arrows, 
and a tattered shirt. But the good book says 
something about man bruising the serpent’s head 
at every chance, and here was a chance. In 
practice the archer had hit objects smaller than 
the snake several times in succession at twice 
or three times the distance, but this time he in- 
gloriously missed. Colonel Teddy may talk about 
charging lions and rhinos in darkest Africa. 
Such affairs are tame when compared to a charg¬ 
ing snake as long as you are, especially when 
your clothes are hung up in a bush across the 
pond. The snake broke all records but one in 
getting into that pond, and that one was the 
record the bowman made getting out of the pond. 
Arrows make a peculiar whistling noise as 
they pass through the air. Hunting arrows make 
quite a racket if the feathers are not trimmed 
up even near the nock. However, it is a pleas¬ 
ing sound to the archer. What might have been 
a serious accident once turned out right funny. 
The archer’s small brother and a boy friend were 
amusing themselves listening to the different 
whistles made by some arrows one day. At first 
one would stand behind a tree and let the other 
shoot by the tree; then the boy friend wanted 
also to hear the arrow hit, and lay down in the 
bottom of a gully well out of sight from the 
young bowman, who was to shoot and stick an 
arrow into the bank of the gully over the boy's 
head. They did not reckon on the arrows curv¬ 
ing trajectory, and the arrow dropped into the 
gully and thumped the youngster pretty good. 
Lucky it was a blunt arrow from a boy’s bow. 
The archer and his young brother when out 
with their bows shoot a great deal at any con¬ 
spicuous mark, at all bow ranges. Now at a 
leaf twenty feet away, next probably at a tuft 
of grass at sixty yards, etc., the best shot pick¬ 
ing the next mark and taking first shot at it. 
This is what the old English bowmen call Rovers, 
only their marks were usually on earthen butts. 
It is fine training for the hunting archer—takes 
one into the fields and woods, and seems far 
