440 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company 
Chas. A. Hazen, President Charles L. Wise, Treasurer 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary 
22 Thames Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENCE:—Forest and Stream is the re¬ 
cognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in- 
ormation between American sportsmen. The editors 
nvite 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. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3 a year; $1.50 for six months; 
10 cents a copy. Canadian, $4 a year; foreign, $4.50 a year. 
This paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Foreign 
Subscriptions and Sales Agents—London: Davies & Co., 
1 Finch Lane; Sampson, Low & Co. Paris: Brentano’s. 
Entered in New York Post Office as Second class matter. 
OUR NEW DEPARTMENT. 
With this issue we have 'begun a new depart¬ 
ment, another help for the man who wants in¬ 
formation about matters in man’s estate. Forest 
and Stream was the first publication to recog¬ 
nize the fact that thousands of questions come 
to readers, problems that are not, in the regular 
course of events, answered in the magazine. 
Each year our editors have answered more than 
three thousand letters from subscribers, besides 
answering over the telephone, questions from 
men who do not read Forest and Stream, but 
who are referred to it by sporting goods deal¬ 
ers, arms and ammunition people, and others 
who know we have reliable information and 
willingly give it those who seek it. It will be 
difficult to answer all inquiries in print, but we 
will cover as many as possible. Those not 
taken care of, or not of interest to more than 
one reader, will be handled as before. We in¬ 
tend using trade names when necessary. In 
other words we will endeavor to tell through 
the new department exactly what we have told 
in letters. Neither names nor initials will be 
attached to printed questions nor will inquiries 
be printed in full. In fact in most cases the 
question will be omitted, the answer being so 
handled as to make a news item for a large per¬ 
centage of our readers. The scope of the de¬ 
partment is practically unlimited and where a 
problem calls for more space than can be allotted 
to it, in the “Question, Answers and Sugges¬ 
tions” department, it will be referred to in that 
department and published in the department to 
which it ordinarily belongs. So Mr. or Mrs. 
or Miss Subscriber turn loose your gatling of 
queries and we will try our darndest to make 
you happy. Where to, when to, how to, what 
to, and any other ? ? ? pertaining to the realm 
of sport are within the province of this new de¬ 
partment, so fellow huntsman—Shoot. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
THE RELUCTANT CAMP-FIRE. 
The depressing opposite of the fire that is the 
warm heart of the camp is the pile of green or 
rain-soaked fuel, that in spite of all coaxing and 
nursing, refuses to yield a cheerful flame. Shav¬ 
ings from the resin-embalmed heart of a dead 
pine and scrolls of birch bark fail to enkindle 
it to more than flicker and smoke, while the 
wet and hungry campers brood forlornly over 
the cheerless center of their temporary home, 
with watery eyes and souls growing sick of camp 
life. 
Night is falling and the shadows of the woods 
thicken into solid gloom that teems with mys¬ 
terious horrors, which stretch their intangible 
claws through the darkness to chill the backs of 
the timid with an icy touch, and the silence is 
terrible with unuttered howlings of imaginary 
beasts. 
Each one is ready to blame the other for the 
common discomfort, and all the high priest, who 
so far fails to kindle the altar fire. He is an 
impostor who should be smothered in the reek 
of his own failure. 
Yet, as the group regard him with unkind 
glances and mutterings of disapproval, he 
perseveres, feeding the faint flame with choice 
morsels of fat wood and nursing it with his 
breath, his bent face and puffed cheeks now 
a little lightened, now fading into gloom, till 
suddenly the sullenness of the reluctant fuel is 
overcome, wings of flame flutter up the column 
of smoke, and the black pile leaps into a lurid 
tower of light, from whose peak a white banner 
of smoke flaunts upward, saluted by the waving 
boughs that it streams among. 
Tent and shanty, familiar trees and moving 
figures with their circle of grotesque, dancing 
shadows, spring into sudden existence out of the 
blank darkness. 
The magic touch of the firelight dispels every 
sullen look, warms every heart to genial com¬ 
radeship; jokes flash back and forth as merrily 
as the sparks fly upward, and the camp pulses 
again with re-awakened cheerful life. 
Verily, fire worketh woders in divers ways. 
TRAP AND FIELD SHOOTING. 
One October day, some years ago, we went 
out woodcock shooting with a New York busi¬ 
ness man. Our companion had spent much time 
in practice with his gun at flying targets. To 
place his gun on the ground behind him, throw 
an apple into the air, turn and seize his gun, and 
then wheel and shoot the apple before it fell to 
the ground, was for him the simplest child’s play. 
When we had reached the cover and the dog 
came to a point, the New Yorker, being the guest, 
was given the first shot. The bird flushed and 
he missed it “clean” with both barrels. He 
missed the second bird, and the third, and fourth, 
and fifth, and sixth. Then he owned up that he 
had never, before shot at a bird in the field. A 
few more trials convinced him that the proper 
thing was to go home, and he accordingly went. 
This shows that a very good shot may be a 
very poor shot. It partially answers the ques¬ 
tion which has been raised of the utility of 
trap-shooting as a preparation for field work. 
A recent objection made in these columns to clay 
pigeon shooting was that it did not make one a 
crack field shot. Certainly it does not; nothing 
but actual experience with the real birds ever 
can do so. On the other hand, the discipline of 
trap-shooting will accomplish a vast deal toward 
the acquirement of such skill, for it accustoms 
the shooter to the handling of his gun, teaches 
him how to bring it to the shoulder, how to hold 
on and ahead, and when and how to shoot. This 
is all so much drill which will surely tell when 
he goes into the field. By it he is put just so far 
ahead of the novice who has never handled a 
gun at all. 
A medal won in trap-shooting, however, will 
not necessarily serve as a prophylactic against 
the nervous excitement to which most gunners 
are subject when they for the first time walk 
up to a bird in the field. No matter how cool, 
calm and collected he may have been when 
shooting off ties for first, he will be flustered 
when he now hears the first whirr of the game. 
So in rifle-shooting; practice at the target will 
teach a man very much, but he may expect to 
go through the “buck-fever” before he brings 
down meat. 
A man may excel in trap-shooting and yet 
never become anything of a field shot; it is not 
in him. There are men whom neither trap work 
nor field work can ever make crack field shots. 
We have frequently been out shooting with a 
friend, whose company we value most highly; 
lie has a large fund of woodcraft, is a close 
observer, and as full of ardor as any sportsman 
we ever knew. He has followed the dogs day 
in and day out, tramped hundreds of miles in 
pursuit of woodcock, grouse and quail; fired 
no one knows how many thousands of shots at 
the birds. The total amount of game actually 
brought to bag by him in the last ten years 
comprises two ruffed grouse and one woodcock 
—and there is every reason to believe that the 
grouse were killed by accident. As a field shot 
this man is a veritable, incorrigible “duffer." 
But at the traps he can break ten glass balls 
straight, or kill the live birds sprung from a 
trap as often as any other gunner in his vicinity. 
It is also noticeable that some very good field 
shots have but indifferent success at the traps, 
they never win a match, and their clumsy misses 
usually mean defeat for the side which is so 
unfortunate as to claim them. 
Trap-shooting at artificial targets has never 
been more popular in this country than it is at 
present. The demand for improved implements 
has stimulated invention, the object being to de¬ 
vise a target which shall imitate as closely as 
possible the flight of the actual bird. The clay 
pigeon is, in this respect, the nearest approach 
to nature; its flight is not that of the real bird 
but resembles it so much as to answer all prac¬ 
tical purposes. The shooter who is an expert 
with the “clays,” may reasonably expect, with 
short practice, to make a fair field short. 
Trap-shooting differs essentially from a tramp 
after birds. In the one competition and rivalry 
are the stimulants, in the other the pleasure, and 
exhilaration of out-door surroundings. But for 
the thousands of busy men who cannot “get 
away” for a trip to the grouse cover, and for 
sport during the closed game season the clay 
pigeons afford a very fair substitute for quail 
and woodcock. 
