55*> 
[Oct. 3, 1908. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
PLACE YOUR ORDERS FOR LOADED SHELLS 
NOW 
The Game Season is here and 
YOU CAN’T AFFORD 
to run the risk of being disappointed. 
THEREFORE 
send in your specifications to your Local Dealer for 
shells loaded with 
DUPONT BRANDS 
of Shotgun Smokeless Powder. 
Dupont Smokeless Hazard Smokeless 
“New Schultze” “New E. C. (Improved)” 
(All “Bulk” Powders.) 
Or “Infallible Smokeless” 
The Only “ DENSE ” Powder made in America. 
If YOUR dealer can't supply you, write us AT ONCE and 
we will tell you WHO CAN. 
E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS POWDER COMPANY, 
Established 1802 Wilmington, Del, 
FISHERMEN NEED DIXON’S GRAPHITE 
of ferrules, tangling of line 
and is good for reefer- ishcmS ifiyB tted-ik— Get 
free sample and booklet P-52. 
JOSEPH DIXON CRUCIBLE CO,' 
JERSEY l 
WILDFOWL SHOOTING. 
Containing Scientific and Practical Descriptions of 
Wildfowl; Their Resorts,.Habits, Flights, and the Most 
Successful Method of Hunting Them. Treating of the 
selection of guns for wildfowl shooting, how to load, aim 
and to use them; decoys and the proper manner of 
using them; blinds, how and where to construct them; 
boats, how to use and' build them scientifically; re¬ 
trievers, their, characteristics, how to select and train 
them. By William Bruce Leffingwell. Illustrated. 373 
pages. Price, in cloth, $1.60; half morocco, $2.50. 
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO. 
THE 20™ CENTURY 
GUN OIL 
buy. Cleans out the barrels. Espe¬ 
cially good when smokeless powder 
is used. Oils the mechanisms, 
polishes the stock, and positively 
prevents rust on the metal in any 
climate and any kind of weather. 
Use before and after shooting. 
3-IN-ONE OIL CO. 
j 61 New St., New York City. 
When writing say you saw the adv. in 
‘Forest and Stream.” 
ARE FISHERMEN REALLY LIARS? 
Many unworthy sayings have been uttered at 
one time and another, and by those who ought 
to have known much better, about anglers as a 
race, writes G. A. B. Dewar in the Field. That 
threadbare old joke, attributed to Johnson, 
about a fishing rod having a worm at one end 
and a fool at another, has undoubtedly told 
against us as a race, while scarcely less hurtful 
was Byron’s: . . 
And angling, too, that solitary vice, 
Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says: 
The quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet 
Should have a-hook and a small trout to pull it. 
—Don Juan. 
—lines which made his acquaintance, Capt. 
Medwin, a keen angler, so cross that he felt 
constrained to observe in his “Angler in Wales,” 
“he (Byron) was always straining at some para¬ 
dox to startle with. I believe he never, threw 
a fly in his life; nor, except at Newstead, in 
some dull pond, ever wetted a line nor used 
any other bait than a worm.” Infinitely more 
frequent, however, than imputations of folly 
and of cruelty and vice against us anglers, are 
direct charges of untruthfulness. People who 
do not fish at all, as well as people who oc¬ 
casionally handle a rod, with, the object ap¬ 
parently of either fastening their hooks into 
their clothes, into those of their indiscreet com¬ 
panions by the riverside, or in fact into any 
conveniently near.object other than a fish’s 
mouth, are very fond of asserting that all 
anglers are liars. They say that we exaggerate 
the weight of the fish we land, that we hugely 
exaggerate the weight of those which we hook 
but do not land; more, they say sometimes that 
we never really get anything at all save a mere 
fingerling, a stickleback, or a minnow. We 
might be able to very easily refute the state¬ 
ments and arguments of these traducers. of our 
beloved craft were it not for the fact that we 
have treacherous folk within our own ranks. 
Anglers are traditionally and thoughtlessly fond 
of a good story; so much so, indeed,‘that, all 
others failing, they will often listen , to, and 
laugh heartily over, jokes at their own expense 
as a race. We say race because, though we 
have frequently known our friend Splitcane 
chuckle indecently at a tale which tells against 
Greenheart, Steelcentre, or the race of anglers 
as a whole, we have never known more than a 
sickly glimmer over his countenance at - a tale 
which illustrates how he himself—Splitcane-r- 
grosslv exaggerated the sport he had among 
the sockdolagers last May-fly season, or how 
overstated the weight of a particular trout' he 
killed (or lost) by a matter of a couple of 
pounds. Is there any sportsman who com¬ 
pletely relishes stories which show how he has 
been convicted of exaggeration? We have 
never met him. 
It is only natural that when there are con¬ 
stantly to be found within their own ranks 
folk who love to tell stories, the invariable 
point of every one of which is the little weak¬ 
ness of fishermen in regard to the size and 
number of the fish hooked, anglers should come 
to be regarded as, to say the least, prone to 
exaggeration. And then from an exaggeration 
to a lie is not a very far cry. Occasionally 
really good anglers tell these stories of one an¬ 
other, and of the whole race. More often they 
are spread about, sown in every quarter, es¬ 
pecially the press, by persistent, but fearfully 
unsuccessful members of the craft. An angler 
who has been out all day and taken nothing, 
and who, moreover, rarely, if ever, does hook 
anything sizable, is not always inclined to turn 
a charitable ear toward the stories his more 
fortunate companions in the angling line have 
to, tell about the day’s sport and the day’s 
losses. Such a disappointed angler will, you 
may have noticed, not uncommonly suggest in 
a general way, without naming any particular 
person, that all anglers are liars; and, if op¬ 
portunity offers, point his calumnious remarks 
by various stock anecdotes. Thus there is the 
weff-known story about the fish that was so big 
that when it was for a moment lifted by the 
American angler from Lake Michigan,, it caused 
the level of the water to perceptibly sink. Then 
we recollect some joke about a fish that Jones 
