Jan. 4, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
9 
PACK TRAIN COMING OUT OF CARIBOU BARRENS. 
Photograph by George B. Clark. 
Many a bloody battle of this kind has occurred 
in the mountains, in the days of sparse settle¬ 
ment, before the war and even since. In some 
of the more remote sections, as over in the 
Black Mountains, there are still wild hogs to 
be dressed. 
A mountain surveyor told me a tale of only 
four or five years ago that was thrilling 
a-plenty, and that hardly seems possible in this 
country to-day, but it was well verified and 
undoubtedly true. In a word, he was attacked 
alone in the mountains by a drove of wild hogs 
with nothing to defend himself but his Jacob’s 
staff with its iron prod for driving into the 
ground, on which to set his surveying compass. 
He backed up against a large chestnut tree, and 
being a strong man, succeeded in stunning some 
of the worst of his vicious besiegers, upon 
which others began to tear these helpless ani¬ 
mals to pieces, and the man escaped. Nowa¬ 
days the old hog rifles are used only for shoot¬ 
ing matches, as more powerful but lighter 
breechloading rifles have taken their places. 
But for accuracy they are hard tO‘ beat. 
The rifles are, of course, muzzleloaders, and 
the barrels are from 40 to 48 inches long. The 
caliber is about .35, I should say, and the cus¬ 
tom is to put a good strong load of black 
powder behind the rag-wrapped round bullet. 
The report is something tremendous, almost 
equal to an old bored-out musket. Some of 
the riflemen have learned, however, that a 
lighter charge of powder contributes to ac¬ 
curacy at short range. The guns are top- 
heavy, some of them, more or less burned out 
at the breech, are heavily rifled, and with big 
charges of quick-burning powder, they kick and 
often spoil the aim. 
The shooters get together by previous 
arrangement, about nine o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing, and as they are very deliberate in their 
aiming and getting in position, the shooting 
takes all day. There will be from fifteen to 
thirty contestants, and the most interesting 
feature of the event to the outsider is the tar¬ 
get system. Each man has his own private 
target, being a rough board about three feet 
long, on which is a piece of white paper with 
a notch at the top, or a diamond-shaped hole, 
perhaps. Mr. Rifleman aims at this hole, or 
notch, or some particular corner of it known 
only to himself, or at a circle target above the 
notch, as shown in the illustration. The real 
target that he is trying to hit, and that counts, 
is under the paper, out of sight. Mr. Rifleman 
has practiced with his gun until he knows just 
how much the sights are off, and where he must 
aim in order to hit the target. Before the match 
he has measured this out with great care and 
accuracy on the board, marking the spot at which 
he must aim, and covering the real target so 
it will not confuse him. All this instead of 
adjusting the sights so they will be true to aim. 
Bad luck is in store for the unknowing person 
who undertakes to shoot one of these long rifles 
without previously acquiring its particular secret. 
The distance is forty yards, and the shoot¬ 
ers lie prone on the ground, resting the gun 
on a rail or other solid support. Many of them 
have a piece of tin bent around the barrel over 
the sight, to enable them to see the sights 
better in the sunlight. Some of the knowing 
ones are apt to have serious difficulty with 
something getting stuck in their gun barrels 
on very bright afternoons, so that they are 
never able to do their shooting till the sun 
gets down out of their way. In the meanwhile 
the less experienced bang away and get quite 
excited dividing up the prizes according to the 
records so far made, when Old Mr. Rifleman 
goes to work and noses them all out. One 
of these is shown at the extreme right of the 
group, his ramrod hopelessly stuck until about 
4 p. M., when the obstuction gave way and he 
laid down and shot away first and second 
money, to the disgust of those who had already 
parceled it out among themselves. 
Usually the prizes are the parts of a beef 
or a big hog. There will be five “choices,” as 
they are called. The best shot of the day gets 
first choice, which in the case of a beef con¬ 
sists of the choice of the hindquarters. The 
second best shot gets the other hindquarter. 
The third and fourth get the forequarters, and 
the fifth gets the hide and tallow. It often 
happens that one man gets two prizes, for it 
is not the average shooting of each individual 
that counts, but each individual shot. Rarely 
—and this is about the proudest moment of the 
shooter's life—one man will be able to “drive 
the critter away on its four feet,” meaning that 
he has the best five shots of the day and no 
other man has a look in. Sometimes the crack 
shot will be barred from getting more than one 
“choice,” else the others would not go in. If 
no animal can be secured, flour and other pro¬ 
visions from a nearby store, but rarely money, 
may be substituted as prizes. The entrance fee 
is usually “eight shots for a dollar.” Years 
ago matches for money were the regular thing 
and there were more matches. Now there is 
not so much leisure. 
In those “good old days” everybody used 
to “hole up,” as they called it, when cold 
weather came, live in ease and careless comfort 
till spring called them forth. More than to 
make a little wood from day to day, go to mill 
and do a little hunting, they had nothing to do 
and did not think of doing anything but sit by 
the Are and visit among themselves, and live 
on the fat of the land in their simple, con¬ 
tented way. Now more pressure is left to 
work and “get things” that were not thought 
necessary before. 
But in spite of these new demands upon 
time and strength, the mountaineer is fond of 
his sport and will have it. He hunts bear and 
’coon and ’possum, and rabbits and squirrels, 
has his rifle shoots, his corn shuckin’s, his 
fishing and his taste of “blockade” applejack, 
takes life rather easily and not too seriously, 
and is advancing and improving and living 
much better than he used to do in those same 
“good old days,” when he lived in a log cabin 
and lighted it with a pine torch. 
Substitute for Rubber from Sea Fish. 
A REPORT coming from Amsterdam tells of 
a factory established at Ymulden, at the mouth 
of the North Sea Canal in Holland, to pro¬ 
duce a substitute for rubber. It is said that 
the company operating the factory has succeed¬ 
ed in producing a substance having the qual¬ 
ities of rubber and some special advantages over 
the genuine. While the process is a secret, the 
principal ingredient is said to be fresh sea fish, 
which are brought to Ymulden in vast quanti¬ 
ties by the Dutch fishing fleets. 
According to report, 15 to 16 per cent, of 
natural rubber is added to the fish and the re¬ 
sult is a substance as flexible and elastic as rub¬ 
ber, but much cheaper — about as 1.25 to 8 in 
price — compared with real rubber. The low 
price of this product will be caused partly by 
the by-products which are possible, for it is 
said that much albumen will be made from the 
fish and that half of the factory is arranged for 
the manufacture of fertilizer. — Chicago Tribune. 
