FOREST AND STREAM 
55 
T HAT fragrant odor of G. D. caps! 
How lovingly it caressed the nose 
when the hammer of the old muzzle 
loader was lifted from the tube and the 
incense stole suddenly heavenward on a 
white wisp of smoke. Down through the 
years the sense of smell has eagerly await¬ 
ed the welcome tingle again, and, like all 
surprises, it is but a short step away. To 
tell the truth, it will have a slightly dif¬ 
ferent bouquet, yet the old delightful tickle 
is not quite lacking when a tiny .22 caliber 
smokeless cartridge is placed in the grace¬ 
ful action of a long, racy target revolver, 
and, upon the gentle release of the sensi¬ 
tive trigger, the muzzle whips out its vi¬ 
cious snap and from between cylinder and 
barrel a familiar thread of white bends up¬ 
ward and on it the memory runs back¬ 
ward to short pants and muzzle loaders. 
Perhaps the majority of people associate 
the coined word “foolkiller” with the word 
revolver and the minority would be in the 
front row with their full names if one of 
the $1.98 weapons were mentioned. A very 
different feeling may well lay hold on all 
when a $15 to $20 target revolver built for 
.22 caliber ammunition is indicated. There 
is, by the way, a sinister meaning in the 
words “.22 caliber ammunition” which can¬ 
not fail to impress the mind, not to men¬ 
tion the pocketbook, of him who uses any 
cartridge with a primer in its head, un¬ 
less, perchance, the shooter was fortunate 
in the late stock market. If ever there was 
a sovereign right it finds its full meaning 
in the desire to burn powder and not count 
cartridges when at target practice. And 
as for the revolver itself there must be a 
real reason for its being since two popular 
makers go to the trouble of getting from 
$15 to $20 into an arm that can be used for 
nothing but pleasure. Taking the side arm 
by and large it has as many uses, if not 
quite, as there are chambers in its cylinder. 
Such a variety would lead one to think re¬ 
volver shooting is not a confined art, never¬ 
theless, in our case, that of a sportsman, it 
is quite so. A process of elimination will 
reveal its confinement. 
F EW sportsmen need a revolver for de¬ 
fence, not only because they usually 
have a better weapon at hand but also 
because they are where “hold-ups” are rare 
unless incited in the highest type of the 
animal kingdom. The writer for a num¬ 
ber of years passed most of his waking 
hours in front of a wicket where he fondly 
hoped a revolver might not be pointed at 
him at any hour of the day and although 
the manager of a famous detective agency 
advised him that a “crook” is a coward if 
covered with a revolver, he held strictly 
to his original plan in which the word 
“cover” held quite a different, not to say 
comfortable, meaning. 
All kinds of vermin are fair targets for 
a revolver and the thought is suggested by 
THE TINY TWENTY-TWO 
INDOORS AND OUT WITH 
THE TARGET REVOLVER 
By Fred O. Copeland. 
the fact that shot cartridges are on the 
market for so small a cartridge as the .22 
caliber. The shot charge is so light, how¬ 
ever, and the barrel so hard to clean after 
their use that they are hardly worth a 
trial save to see what the miniature load 
will do. They are effective only at a very 
few feet. 
Hunting with a revolver will, indeed, 
draw a smile from many, yet it is quite the 
thing for the sportsman going into the big 
game country of the East to add a .22 cal. 
revolver to his equipment. They are used 
almost exclusively to shoot grouse and al¬ 
though the birds are quite tame in these 
out-of-the-way places, the sportsman can 
The Revolver Has Been Enlarged to a 44 
to Show, But the Principle is the Same. 
hardly be censured who can place a .22 
mushroom bullet from the little side arm in 
a partridge’s head at almost any distance 
the bird will allow him to approach. 
F UN is the right name for the pastime 
of shooting at something that will 
wiggle or hop around when hit yet 
will experience no pain. In the heat of 
summer the sportsman is a woods rambler, 
a veritable coureur de bois, for he simply 
cannot resist being in the haunts of the 
game he loves. Perchance he may see the 
woodcock carrying her young, actually 
catch the ruffed grouse in the act of drum¬ 
ming, or give the mother partridge the 
satisfaction of leading the intruder away 
from her precious little chicks. It is at this 
waiting time of the sportsman’s year—in 
so far as game is concerned—that an oc¬ 
casional whiff of powder smells sweet. In 
crossing a pasture where the background 
is surely free from living things, on some 
swell of ground between 25 and 50 yards 
away, stand erect several elongated thin 
stones and see how quickly the members of 
this improvised gallery respond to your 
aim. Tin cans “take on” more than rocks 
when hit but they are conspicuous by their 
absence in the hills. The river bottoms sup¬ 
ply the cover where tin cans abide but the 
river bottom is quite likely to be well in¬ 
habited and therefore an unsafe place to 
throw bullets even though they are very 
small and driven by a very few grains of 
powder. For the 12 to 15 yard range the 
12 gauge empty shot gun shell cannot be 
improved upon as a target, and it will 
stand a lot of abuse, too, jumping gayly 
into the air again and again when the shot 
goes a bit low and the brass base is slight¬ 
ly touched. Shooting at shot gun shells in 
this way after you know how to shoot acts 
as a barometer for your nerves; some days 
one hit out of five is the reading, but on 
those better days four hits out of five. In 
fact, the revolver enthusiast is restricted in 
his pleasure only by lack of ingenuity, but 
he may find the revolver is a spur for this 
quality. 
We are, at last, after no little wander¬ 
ing, at the threshold beyond which lay re¬ 
volvers both plain and fancy, targets with 
bold bull’s-eyes and bashful, and ammuni¬ 
tion of .22 caliber reaching the mystic num¬ 
ber of 53. But why choose any of these 
more than another? 
A LEAF out of the writer’s past though 
the contrast is extreme may illustrate 
better than argument why there is a 
choice and incidently why the writer him¬ 
self is spared to burden the world with 
these lines. Fancy, if you will, the back 
porch of a home in a suburb of a city on 
the west bank of the Missouri. The rays 
of the sun are level with the prairie and it 
is a fitting time for a sunset gun. On the 
porch stands a wild-eyed urchin of eight 
summers and in his hand a revolver found 
the week before. It is rusted almost be¬ 
yond recognition, its cylinder held in place 
by a wooden pin and its stocks are missing 
but curved between the small hand that 
hides part of the space they once occupied 
is a deadly thing, a whalebone corset spring 
roughly fitted to give life to the hammer. 
Diligent search about the neighborhood had 
unearthed a .44 caliber cartridge and after 
much persuasion with a pocket knife one 
chamber of the cylinder had been induced 
to accept the cartridge. The first shot with 
a revolver was about .to be launched as a 
“feu de joie.” With set jaws, the trigger 
was yanked back. Thud ! she had missed 
fire. Thirty more blows of the hammer 
failed to dent the primer; the sun had set 
without a salute. The other son had been 
spared the ordeal of “setting” in the morn¬ 
ing of his youth and although he lived to 
help drive live primers into loaded 10- 
gauge shot gun shells the next day and still 
retire regularly at eight o’clock in the even- 
