Nov. 2, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
567 
pounds lighter than his hunting bow, and a 
light hunting arrow made of fir instead ot 
hickory. Anyone of these conditions would en¬ 
tirely upset any target archery. 
Hunting with the bow has a charm quite 
apart from the variety which it affords, and 
that is the contest of skill between hunter and 
hunted. The chances of the game are very 
large, discouragingly so to the beginner in 
hunting. To illustrate: 
Earlier in the same trip we stopped at a 
small island that had been lumbered or burned 
over. Only a few of the lofty trees were 
standing, the rest were gone or else lying- 
prone, bolstered up on masses of roots. The 
space between fallen trunks was filled with 
ferns five to seven feet high, interlaced with a 
tangle of fallen branches. Such a country made 
hard going. Toward sundown I started a 
grouse, which flew to a limb some distance off. 
Standing balanced on a narrow log, the only 
available footing, I discharged several arrows 
at it, very badly, without dislodging it. Hav¬ 
ing no more to shoot, I called Challiss. At 
first he couldn’t see the bird, but finally he 
said, “Oh, way off there. I thought you meant 
somewhere near you.” Approach being out of 
the question, he shot. His first arrow fell 
short, but the second flew straight as a June 
bug for the grouse's head. “Meat for supper,” 
I thought, but not at all. The grouse, seeing 
the danger, ducked its head by a quick teeter¬ 
ing motion, just in time to let the arrow go by. 
Apparently it considered the last shot too close 
for comfort, for it left before the next. It 
may seem unsatisfactory to a hunter with fire¬ 
arms that the game should have got away after 
we had made a perfect shot. In reality, it was 
not so. The grouse had been quick of eye and 
body, and had by its cleverness deserved to live. 
All the demands for sport were satisfied; there 
was no need of killing. 
If killing is the hunter’s ordinary object, 
he should not go equipped with a bow. He 
can buy a large amount of accuracy ready¬ 
made in the shape of a rifle. The force be¬ 
hind the bullet is regulated by the manu¬ 
facturer. Necessity for estimating distance less 
than one hundred or two hundred yards is 
obviated by the flatness of the trajectory. Ele¬ 
vation beyond this distance is controlled me¬ 
chanically by means of the rear sight. The 
butt end of the gun is held in place by the 
stock. The hunter has merely to aim. pull the 
trigger and hold firm—the manufacturer does 
the rest. With implements of such simplicity 
as the bow and arrow the hunter has to manu¬ 
facture his accuracy for himself. The force be¬ 
hind the arrow is regulated by the amount he 
pulls it. Every distance shot has to be esti¬ 
mated. There is no mechanical device con¬ 
trolling the elevation. Both ends of the arrow 
have to be kept in line, and that most particu¬ 
larly when the strain on the archer’s arms is 
suddenly reduced from sixty pounds to zero. 
Aiming and firing is but one department in a 
complex series of motions. 
On the other hand, the bow has certain ad¬ 
vantages, chief of which are silence and con¬ 
sequent opportunity of shooting several times 
at the same game. Minor advantages are the 
ability to shoot over obstacles, to strike parts 
of game below the surface of the water, or to 
correct shots made at flying game. All these 
are, however, so over-balanced that it is no 
wonder that the bow could not compete in war 
even with very primitive firearms. The com¬ 
parison is not fair, however. In war the sup¬ 
ply of enemy is practically unlimited. In hunt¬ 
ing, the game is easily killed off. It is quite 
conceivable that had the firearm never been in¬ 
vented there would have been as much game 
killed as there is now. There is an analogy in 
the fishing industry. In bays and limited bodies 
of water the use of nets instead of hand lines 
causes at first a large increase in the number 
of fish caught. Later fish become so scarce 
that fewer are taken with nets than were in 
the old days with hand lines. So with game; it 
is more than likely that the primitive weapon, 
with its insidious silent attack, might now be 
killing the same amount of game as is the rifle. 
There would be more game, more shooting, 
more sport, and probably as much killed. 
These last considerations, are, of course, 
useless from a practical point of view, unless 
some archer goes into game preserving on a 
large scale. They are worth remembering, 
however, in case an archer should have the mis¬ 
fortune to go hunting in company with a gun¬ 
ner. The latter will invariably grant him one 
shot, and if he misses, scare all of the game 
out of the neighborhood, and then laugh at 
the archer for using an inefficient weapon. 
The man who has done target archery does 
not need to be told the fascination of using 
a primitive weapon and manufacturing his ac¬ 
curacy for himself. He knows that it is the 
very simplicity of his implements that makes 
the use of them such a difficult and fascinat¬ 
ing Study. He might like to know, however, 
whether he could not get still more pleasure 
out of hunting, also whether it is possible to do 
both target and hunting archery. 
In my opinion, by far the best of the two 
sports for a standby is target archery. The 
necessity of relentless accuracy demands in¬ 
telligence. study and practice. There are more 
archers who won’t learn how to shoot than 
who can’t. Anyone who is determined to learn 
the game will sooner or later be rewarded; yet 
no one is so experienced that he has nothing 
more to learn. In hunting he is likely to 
reach a level that he can do nothing to im¬ 
prove. On the other hand, there is a certain 
artificiality about shooting fixed distances at 
fixed targets, and it is a relief to get off into 
the woods, where no two shots are alike. It 
is quite possible for a target archer to do so 
without hurting his target shooting. One rule, 
however, is absolute. He must not change his 
form from target style to hunting style, and 
vice versa. The penalty for doing so is 
mastery of neither. By sticking to his target 
form he can do much better at hunting than 
the hunter can at the targets. Even in hunt¬ 
ing he can give the hunter a good run for 
his money, at the short ranges, and perhaps 
beat him at the long. If the target archer is 
careful not to let his form deteriorate he will 
not be harmed by hunting, but gain in concen¬ 
tration and in sensitiveness to adverse condi¬ 
tions. as well as adding variety to the other 
charms of archery. 
The aim of every advertiser is to gain an 
audience. Forest and Stream readers make a 
big one. 
Practice Archery Scores. 
Chicago, Ill., Oct. 22.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The following scores were made by 
Chicago archers within the past few days: 
Women’s team round, 96 arrows at 50yds.: 
Mrs. Witwer-Taylor.. 22 108 23 119 22 124 2° 12’ 89 473 
23 109 21 107 24 154 23 139 91 507 
Men’s team round, 96 arrows at 60yds.: 
Mrs. Witwer-Taylor . 19 75 17 73 23 93 19 81 78 330 
Columbia round: 
Mrs. Witwer-Taylor . 24 138 23 167 24 180 71 485 
Men’s team round: 
Geo. L. Nichols.24 116 
TT 21 115 
Homer W. Bishop... 21 95 
H. L. Walker. 20 92 
Dr. E. B. Weston... 20 92 
Jas. H. Pendry. 
22 98 22 114 24 118 92 446 
24 146 23 127 23 135 91 523 
19 115 21 97 22 122 83 429 
21 109 18 80 19 91 78 372 
20 106 18 74 21 99 79 3“1 
. 80 346 
We recently had a pleasant visit from C. W. 
Nichols, of Batavia, Ill. Mr. Nichols is the 
father of our George W. Nichols, and took part 
in the first national tournament, which was held 
in Chicago in 1879. Though Mr. Nichols is 
seventy-nine years old, he shot both forenoon 
and afternoon, and made creditable scores. 
Mr. Tac Hussey, of Des Moines, who also 
shot in the first tournament, is another young-old 
archer, who has not yet quit the game. Mr. 
Hussey is over eighty, and recently made an 
American round score of 84—464, a fine score 
for any archer. 
I am sending to you a few scores recently 
made by Mrs. Burton Payne Gray. When it is 
known that Mrs. Gray shot but a few arrows 
before the national meeting, held in Boston last 
August, it will be seen that her work is remark¬ 
able. It should greatly encourage young archers 
when they see what can be done in a short time. 
Mrs. Gray’s double Columbia round score, here 
given, was higher than the one which Mrs. Wit¬ 
wer-Taylor made in the tournament when she 
won the Columbia round championship. 
Double National round: 
60yjs. 50vds. 
Hits. Score. Hits. Score. 
36 137 16 82 
39 161 22 96 
Total. 
Hits. Score. Golds. 
51 219 4 
61 257 1 
75 298 38 178 112 476 5 
Double Columbia round: 
50yds. 40yds. 30yds. Total. 
Hits. Score. Hits. Score. Hits. Score. Hits. Score. Golds. 
21 121 22 136 22 144 65 401 17 
22 124 24 134 22 142 68 400 11 
43 245 46 270 44 286 133 ~801 28 
Mrs. Gray’s last men’s team round, 96 arrows at 
60vds.: 
' 16 68 19 89 18 80 21 103 74 34o 
Mr. Gray writes in part facetiously: 
“These scores were made by a woman who 
took up the sport in the summer of 1912 to please 
her husband, and in doing it has become so in 
love with archery that everything else is of minor 
consequence—even her husband.” 
This whole subject interests me in two ways: 
First, from the standpoint of an archer; then 
because of my friendship for the Gray family. 
We first met and lived in Plighland Park, III, 
more than thirty years ago. Mr. Gray's father, 
the Rev. W. B. D. Gray, and I together shot in 
the first national tournament in 1879 and again 
in 1912. 
In 1880 the Gray family moved to South 
Dakota, which was then a hunter's paradise. It 
was my good fortune to visit them annually for 
ten years, when it was time to harvest the prairie 
chickens, or the ducks and geese, and the memo¬ 
ries of those days are among the pleasantest of 
my life. 
The four Gray boys went to college. After 
graduating. Burton the eldest went to Boston and 
its law school. When he had completed his 
(Continued on page 579.) 
