Nov. 4, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
695 
Some Good Reasons 
Why You Should Shoot 
THE 
PARKER 
GUN 
B© high man at th© traps. 
Shoot th© finest brush gun made. 
Mechanical construction perfect. 
Send today for illustrated catalogue. 
PARKER BROS. 
New York Salesrooms: 32 Warren St. 
Meriden, Conn. 
y'l 
HUNTER 
ONE- 
TRIGGER 
In the brush or at the traps you want to 
feel sure of your gun. A second’s loss of time means 
the loss of your bird or a failure to score in the competition. 
The strongest insurance policy the world over for sports¬ 
men is a Hammerless Smith Gun with the Hunter 
One-Trigger attachment. 
THE HUNTER ONE-TRIGGER gives a pull, short, clean 
and quick. There’s no creep or drag. The speed of the 
mechanism far exceeds the speed of the trigger finger. The 
aim is not disturbed -because there is no relaxing, no re¬ 
gripping, no accommodating yourself to the different lengths 
of the stock—but just a firm, steady grip and pull. 
The very newest Hammerless Smith Gun is the 20-Gauge Hunter 
One-Trigger— and it’s a beauty. Weighs only Sjf 
to 7 lbs. Just the finest gun that can be made at 
the price—simply all gun 
and no frills. Be sure 
to ask your dealer 
about it. 
Write today for hand¬ 
somely lithographed 
Catalogue—it is free. 
THE HUNTER ARMS CO., 90 Hubbard Street, Fulton, N. Y. 
AS OTHERS SEE US. 
It has been remarked that an increasing num¬ 
ber of American sportsmen are annually find¬ 
ing their way to this country for the shooting 
season and leasing shootings of various kinds, 
particularly moors and forests in North Britain, 
for which they willingly pay increasing rents. 
Surprise, says the County Gentleman, has 
been expressed that Americans should consider 
it worth their while to cross the Atlantic and to 
pay large sume for the right to shoot grouse, 
partridge, pheasant or deer on the compara¬ 
tively limited areas of British shooting grounds, 
when the whole wild sport of the United States 
is practically open to each one of them without 
let or hindrance, trouble, or price. 
Such surprise, however, would appear to pro¬ 
ceed from somewhat imperfect information as to 
the kind and amount of sport now obtainable in 
America. Some people seem to be under mis¬ 
apprehension as to the real quality of American 
sport with gun and rifle, taking their informa¬ 
tion mostly from accounts of that sport as it 
existed thirty or forty years ago. 
The American sportsman, as a matter of fact, 
has now to combat conditions in the United 
States vastly different from those of even a 
quarter of a century ago. The last quarter of a 
century has witnessed changes in the sport of 
that country of a more marked character than 
all those occurring during the century before 
that period, the outstanding features of these 
changes, so radical and distinct, comprising the 
multiplication of sportsmen and the decrease of 
game, coupled with the gradually growing ap¬ 
preciation of the need for protection of game. 
The modern American sportsman only sees the 
bison, for instance, as a specimen in the Zoo¬ 
logical Gardens, and almost the same thing 
might be said of many of the deer tribe and the 
mountain sheep and goat, which in the vanished 
past gave so much sport to the gunner in the 
American wilds. 
Then the supply of game birds in these days 
in the States is not very much better, and for 
years the American journals of sport have loudly 
demanded their better protection, not by indi¬ 
vidual effort, but by codes of State laws very 
stringent in their protective provisions. All this 
is a development of the last two or three 
decades, which, as the Americans themselves 
admit, has put them in sad straits as to their 
supply of furred as well as feathered game. 
American sport, it may be added, would 
clearly seem to be in the transition stage—a 
stage that never has been found productive of 
the best results to the sportsman. The great 
increase of shooters in America and the yearly 
increasing popularity of shooting among all 
classes with time and money to spend have 
driven America out of its old indifference and 
negligence as to game, which were persisted in 
until nearly all game bade fair to be extermi¬ 
nated, at all events in the more accessible places. 
That result was caused not only by the great 
growth of shooting by an increased band of 
bona-fide gunners, but also by the efforts of 
what are there termed “game hogs,” who shoot 
solely for the money to be made out of the 
game. The free hunter of the prairies that we 
all read of with such delight and so much ad¬ 
mired in^ our boyish days has to-day been bap¬ 
tized a “game hog” by our American cousins, 
and public opinion would seem strong enough 
across the Atlantic to penalize him severely by 
statute as a breaker of all the equitable rela¬ 
tions that ought to exist beween the individual 
sportsman and his fellows to prevent anyone 
bagging more than his own individual share of 
game. 
So Americans are opening their eyes to the 
folly of exterminating their game of all kinds; 
tney ar e getting gradually rid of the idea that 
the_ hunter’s or shooter’s bag should only be re¬ 
stricted by his own skill and endurance. And 
their eyes have been opened only just in time to 
perceive the necessity for conserving those re¬ 
sources by protective laws if they are to be en¬ 
joyed much longer. Every State now has game 
preservation laws that regulate the amount of 
shooting any one sportsman can be permitted 
to enjoy, with due regard to the rights of his 
fellow sportsmen. Therein lies, it is considered, 
the first germ of game preservation in America, 
which has still to travel through the period of 
years that may bring it to treat both furred and 
feathered game-shooting as a valuable right, 
having its exact equivalent in money—a right 
that can be bought and sold or leased by indi¬ 
viduals according to demand and supply. 
It is, as we have said, a transition stage. 
American public opinion has come to regard 
with antagonism the hunter who makes money 
out of his right to shoot game, but it has not 
yet quite come to regard the sportsman who 
buys game rights as having title to their full 
enjoyment if by so enjoying them he deprives 
his fellows of some amount of their accustomed 
sport. 
We clearly recollect a case in which the pur¬ 
chaser of a well-known wildfowl shooting in 
America was severely attacked for shooting 
larger bags of duck than he required for his own 
use. Killing the ducks merely for the sport of 
killing was stigmatized as the action of a “game 
hog,” who attracted ducks from other grounds 
by skilful tactics, and then shot the birds that 
might have afforded general sport to a dozen or 
two of those free-lance shooters who com¬ 
plained! 
Here we have an example of the transition 
stage in American game-shooting—the feeling 
freely expressed of men, for which in this coun¬ 
try we could have no sympathy whatever, who 
would try to regulate the size of a sportsman’s 
bag made upon his own land in legitimate man¬ 
ner. It was opined that he must not obtain 
all the sport that belonged to him because of 
the interests of others who paid nothing what¬ 
ever for its enjoyment! 
Such happenings, it can be seen, do not tend 
at the present moment to make America, as it 
once was, the sportsman’s paradise. The man 
of wealth partial to big bags has, to begin with, 
public opinion, short-sighted though it be, dead 
against him, and, to end with, apparently he is 
trammeled by State laws that regulate what he 
may kill and what he may not kill for the benefit 
of gunners at large. In other words, American 
