990 
FOREST AND STREAM 
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DANGEROUS AT BOTH ENDS 
By S. Allen, Charing Cross, London. 
If the outside bark is wet, the underneath bark 
will be dry. Shelter your fireplace from the 
rain and shred this underneath bark. Build the 
fire by laying a stick on either side of the grate; 
these sticks should not be as large as the ground 
sticks; in fact, you must not put bigger sticks 
on smaller ones, but the reverse, lest the fire be 
top heavy and fall over after it has been started. 
The one thing you do not .want in the way of a 
cooking fire is a big, burning flame, which you 
cannot approach; neither do you want a smoking 
fire. To cook comfortably—in fact, to cook at 
all—you must have a good, hot bed of coals which 
will last until you are through cooking. This 
means the use of hard wood in building your 
fire. Soft wood coals are easily attained, but 
they do not last long. 
If you are cooking a larger meal, or one that 
requires a long fire, start another fire near your 
cooking fire and replenish the latter from the for¬ 
mer as necessary. Try to time your cooking so 
that the various dishes will all be done when 
you want to eat them; otherwise you will have to 
eat cold and soggy food, unless you do not mind 
eating your bacon first, your desert second and 
then perhaps your biscuits and potatoes. Try to* 
plan a meal before you start to cook it, deciding 
which utensils you will use for each thing and 
about how long each item will take on the fire. 
Experience is the only teacher for this lesson. 
Before turning in for the night see that every¬ 
thing in camp is prepared to stand a storm,. and 
then you will nol have to get up in the middle 
of the night and go out in the wet to fix things 
up; you never know for sure when the weather 
will change. See that there are no mosquitoes 
in the tent before you retire; this will insure 
against having to get up and light the lantern to 
kill them later on. Remember that no matter 
how warm it is when you turn in, it probably 
will be good and chilly before sunrise, so have 
something in the way of warm clothes or covers 
near you—do not keep them packed up out of 
the way. 
On every clear day it is imperative that you 
hang your blankets up to air and dry; if you 
neglect this you will find your bed a very cold 
and damp affair in a few nights. Do not close 
up the tent at night any more than is necessary; 
get all the air you possibly can, for that is one 
of the greatest benefits to be gotten from a 
camping trip. 
A very useful article, costing 45 cents, which 
you might add to your outfit, is a folding canvas 
bucket. Be sure to get one with a canvas top 
to it, so that you can carry water in it without 
spilling most of the water as you walk. In the 
daytime rig up both of the “beds” as flies over 
your fire in a case of rain, and over your “dining 
room” if the sun is very hot. You can use the 
lacing ropes on the “beds” in erecting these flies 
However, some extra rope is always handy—even 
valuable at times. 
If you should run into very cold weather, you 
may open the front part of the tent and build a 
good fire out in front; but this is a hard thing to 
keep going all night and takes a lot more wood 
than you will cut for it—no matter how much 
you cut. Try digging a hole in the ground under 
the tent. After turning back the ground cloth, of 
course, fill this hole full of red-hot coals. 
Put your largest cooking pot upside down over 
this, and stop any leaks around this with dirt. 
This makes quite a good tent heater, and lasts a 
long time. 
Let me urge all you fellows who like the out¬ 
door life, who like fishing, tramping, hunting and 
the camera bugs, too, to make up your minds to 
get an outfit and spend the week ends out in the 
country. Unless you have tried it you have no 
idea how much good it will do you, both men¬ 
tally and physically; and you will enjoy every 
minute of it. Do not hesitate to buy your out¬ 
fit, for you will surely use it if you have it. The 
main thing is to find a congenial friend and get 
busy. Spend your vacation this way; it is much 
cheaper than going to a hotel and is a thousand 
times more fun, and better for you. 
To return to the old combined weapons that 
were so popular with the old-time European hunt¬ 
ers who could afford them, the accompanying 
photograph shows three aspects of a flintlock 
pistol and seventeenth century hunting sword. 
This piece is English, with a typically English 
shell guard. 
Ignoring, for the moment, hunters who write 
from high-toned hotels, it may be said the hunt¬ 
ing sword never appealed to the old sportsmen of 
A BSTRACTLY considered, pulling the trig¬ 
ger of a gun is a very simple thing; but 
to pull it effectively at the right time may 
be very difficult under some conditions. If the 
said trigger is number 2, the gun a heavy one and 
the shooter a novice, the second report may not 
materialize at all. By the time the poor tyro has 
regained his equilibrium there is no need for the 
second barrel; the bird is either dead or out of 
sight. 
So small is the percentage of successful sec¬ 
ond barrel shooters, that many marksmen do not 
use the second—that is, with any pretense at 
speed. They use the piece just as they would a 
single barrel, except that they do not have to 
load as often. This giving up without persistent 
effort is unwarranted. To use both charges ef¬ 
fectively is the desideratum in shotgun work and 
worth years of practice. Though less than half 
of our .field shooters become proficient in the 
“follow up” shot, it is not as hopeless as it seems 
to the neophyte. A bird within thirty-five or 
forty yards is Still in your reach, so have a try 
at him, anyway. Persistent effort may bring out 
unsuspected ability; it is certain that “laying 
down” will not. In Germany, it is the rule that 
failure to shoot constitutes a miss. 
Some shooters endeavor to see the effect of 
their first shot before sending in the second. This 
is fatal to all hope of speed; the interval between 
the reports should amount to only a fraction of 
a second, and there is no time for such consid¬ 
eration. 
The fundamental essential in working for a 
“good second” is to regard the whole thing— 
first, interval, and second—as one effort. The 
second shot should be theoretically made before 
the first trigger is pulled. The interval should 
be reduced to the minimum by overcoming the 
shock of the recoil as far as is possible. Hold 
these islands as it did to the seventeenth century 
Continental hunters. Perhaps chasing your 
quarry into water and then hacking at him from 
horseback lacked the right thrill. For this reason 
such English pieces are rare. 
The military authorities of both France and 
Germany borrowed the idea of a combined sword 
and pistol from the well-to-do hunters of their 
time, and quite a late form (pinfire) survived in 
the armies of both. 
the gun properly, and in the act of pulling trig¬ 
ger exert a pressure of the hands toward each 
other. This tends to “block” the recoil—to use 
a boxing term. 
Familiarity with the gun by constant practice 
is all that will cure flinching. Make it a point to 
keep both eyes open; closing them in anticipa¬ 
tion of the report causes flinching; we always 
fear most what we cannot see. From every 
standpoint binocular shooting is to be preferred. 
The shooter must learn to use his second barrel 
without conscious planning. It is here that a 
psychological principle enters into the business. 
The necessity for quickness with the second bar¬ 
rel must be impressed on the subconscious mind 
’til the action becomes “instinctive.” The swing 
must always be finished, and the arms taught to 
act automatically in this respect. While the brain 
is momentarily paralyzed from the first shot the 
hands and eyes must continue the work and fin¬ 
ish it by “habit”—on the command that has been 
given them previously. The act of walking il¬ 
lustrates this use of subconscious mentation. It 
is so easy now that we can walk while thinking 
of other matters, one foot does not have to be 
told to follow the other; but there was a time 
when this was quite a feat. As soon as the con¬ 
scious mind had taught our feet the “trick” the 
guidance was assumed by the subconscious “in¬ 
stinct.” 
There are shooters who remain too sensitive 
to the shock of the first report, in spite of all 
training. For these, a long gun will be some re¬ 
lief ; it carries the noise a little farther from 
the head. Another class get so rattled that their 
finger works convulsively and explodes the sec¬ 
ond barrel without regard to the target. For 
these, about the only adventitious aid is a harder 
trigger. In all cases, this psychological training 
will be of inestimable value in acquiring a de¬ 
pendable second barrel. 
THE SECOND BARREL 
TO USE BOTH CHARGES IS THE ACME OF SHOT¬ 
GUN WORK AND WORTH YEARS OF PRACTICE 
By L. E. Eubanks. 
