84 
FOREST AND STREAM 
SKATING 
The King of Winter Sports and 
the most Fashionable. We have 
a superb line of Skates of every 
make, grade and price including 
the famous CANADIAN 
AUTOMOBILE SKATES. 
All makes of HOCKEY,RACING 
and FANCY FIGURE SKATES. 
Outfits from $ 7.SO Up 
Also Sweaters, Mufflers, Caps, 
Gloves, etc., in infinite variety. 
See our Stock or write and let us 
tell you about it. Mail Orders 
Receive Prompt, Intelligent Care. 
Sportsmen’s Headquarters For 80 Years. 
J. B. CROOK & CO., Inc. 
Specialists in Sporting Goods 
(Established 1837) 
463 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
Opposite The Library Tel. 244 Vanderbilt 
The Bi^esT 
Little Work 
Saver 
It’s the Handy Oil Can 
filled with 3-in-One Oil 
and it costs but 25 c. 
3-ln-One bas a hundred uses round 
the home and the Handy Oil Can 
is the cleverest and most unique 
container you ever saw. Get one. 
FREE —Sample bottle of 3-in*One and 
Dictionary of U®'* 0 
3-In-0ne-0il Co., 112 New St.,N 
CAMP CRAFT 
By WARREN H. MILLER. 
The most up-to-the-minute book, on camping 
ever written. Handsomely bound in cloth. 315 
pages. 50 illustrations; no outdoorman should 
be without a copy of Camp Craft in his outfit. 
All the modern camping outfits that you don t 
find in the earlier books are described in this 
one. AUTOGRAPHED COPY, $1.50. With a 
year’s subscription to Forest and Stream, $2.50. 
THE MEDICINE MAN IN THE WOODS 
Chap. I, Camp Medicine; Chap. II First Aid 
in the Woods. Price, 50 cts. With a year s 
subscription to Forest and Stream, $1.60. 
THE BOY’S BOOK OF HUNTING AND 
FISHING 
If you have a boy this is your best Christmas 
present for him. $1.25 net. With a year’s sub¬ 
scription, $2.00. BOOK SERVICE. Send us a 
list of any outdoor books you want bought or 
let us select them for you. We can save you 
money and attend to forwarding the lot. This 
service is FREE. 
FOREST and STREAM, 118 E. 28th St., N. Y. C. 
THE AIREDALE 
by Dr. Wm. Bruette 
An up-to-date treatise on these useful dogs. 
There is no better all-around sportsman’s dog 
on earth than a well-trained Airedale. This 
practical book tells how to train them. 196 
pages, cartridge board cover, price $1.00. 
Fully illustrated. 
THE TWENTY-TWO RIFLE 
ITS PLACE AND POSSIBILITY IN THE HUNTING FIELD 
By Seneca. 
T HERE is this about the .22 caliber 
rifle: it appears of all small firearms 
the most in use, and notably designed 
for what it accomplishes. Small as its 
performances are it exerts a stupendous 
part in instilling a love for other and more 
powerful firearms. Two-thirds of the big 
game hunters and expert military rifle shots 
of to-day were started in their shooting 
through the medium of the small arm. 
To secure even ordinary proficiency in a 
sport it must from the start commence 
from actual love of it—mere liking does 
not suffice. And to have this love come 
to the surface some achievement must be 
the recompense of continual trials. 
Today it is easy within the prowess of 
memory to recall many men who annually 
go to the woods, and are inexcusably poor 
rifle shots. The hi-power rifle is their 
arm, yet they can accomplish little with it. 
There are amidst this class of men those, 
who persistently flinch before a shot is 
fired, jerking the almost-the-whole-thing 
part of the rifle, the trigger. Some even 
go so far as to blaze away at the objedt 
without sighting, performing mentally an 
uncalled-for visualization of a kill before 
the act is accomplished or even possible 
through their mode of shooting. This is 
enough proof that their early rifle training 
was wrong—if they ever had any. At least 
they began at the wrong end of it—before 
they were temperamentally, physically, or 
otherwise ready for the hi-power arm. 
Admitting the tonic properties of the big 
outdoors, even to extremes, I have never 
seen it steady the nerves of a beginner 
with a hi-power rifle. Then with some— 
though they will not admit it—they are in 
perpetual fear of their rifle. The mark 
eludes them every time. And yet the most 
spectacular kind of shooting, which they 
try to perform, snap shooting, requires for 
the instant nerves of steel, and the imme¬ 
diate correct alignment. 
The best way to start in any game is 
the right way. The average American boy 
and the .22 caliber rifle for years have been 
inseparable; and because of it many men, 
who take to outdoor big game hunting, re¬ 
fuse to see its vocational side in the skilful 
handling of large rifles. With the vanish¬ 
ing of wild life that little rifle still holds a 
big spot in a boy’s heart. It is a passion 
with him, encouraged by the pictures he 
conjures of some time hunting big game. 
He is the only one who recognizes no short¬ 
age in game as long as he is within city 
environment. He has a vague, baffling no¬ 
tion of its existence in abundance in some 
far-off forests or swamps. And he is 
going to hunt it some day with a hi-power, 
too! For the present he must learn rifle 
shooting within the circumscribed area of 
city domains. The ubiquitous little Eng¬ 
lish sparrows, stray cats, unwary pigeons, 
and multitudinous other marks must hold 
his attention until he has graduated to hi- 
power class. Through all these apparently 
insignificant steps, he is acquiring skill, and 
enlarging his desires to the point where 
the time for the big rifle will arrive. Ini 
his career, the vocational side of the much- 
maligned .22 is already evident, as it 
marks the first steps of graduation from: 
one size of caliber to another. 
Were it left to the part of the writer to- 
give advice on the subject of the hi- 
power rifle to those who are admittedly in¬ 
efficient, I would say, begin all over again,, 
but begin properly. As they now stand 
they can get no further in the game than 
they are. Their shoulder still dreads get¬ 
ting a pounding: their ears yet find no mu¬ 
sic in the snappy, reverberating report: and,, 
anticipating all this, their finger refuses- 
them ordinary steadiness in pulling. Accu¬ 
mulate these frailties in a sportsman during 
his first try at game, and the result is 
amusing. He may believe that he is hold¬ 
ing somewhere on the dodging whitetail 
as it jumps over the heaps of down tim¬ 
ber, but the bullet usually lodges far from 
where he had intended it. 
W ITH the obvious necessary trend to- 
preparedness the vocational side of 
the little .22 looms up more hugely. 
It will give a sense of comfort to hands that 
dread the first feel of firearms when they 
have not fired a rifle before. It will lead 
to correct all faults of rifle shooting in the 
men who have no desire to become experts 
in military marksmanship, yet are keen to 
familiarize themselves with modern rifles. 
They are the kind of citizens, who want to 
feel in case of national offense or defense, 
that they can ably share their part of the 
burden; and that signifies familiarity with a 
military rifle and reasonable proficiency. 
Take a man of this kind—a business man, 
perhaps—and he is in the same ridiculous 
state on his first handling of the modern 
hi-power as the man who goes to the woods 
for the first time in late life: he is not 
prepared. All his life the vocational side 
of rifle shooting with a small arm has been 
entirely ignored. It was, however, intend¬ 
ed to be absorbed at some future date, as 
readily as the patter of the sporting-goods 
salesman that lured him into possessing, for 
the first time, a hi-power rifle. Whether 
at target or on game, after careful con¬ 
sideration, it is difficult to make the average 
man believe what strange numbers of 
curves and circles that elusive sight de¬ 
scribes. And it is this kind of man we 
want to get hold of and start right. 
Let the man come with a start from the 
little .22 caliber to the big game or military 
rifle by common-sense gradations. The .22 
must be used often at the gallery or in the 
field until there is skill acquired. Then fol¬ 
lows the .22 hi-power, 25.20 and 25.35, grad¬ 
ually the novice ascending as his education 
progresses. The step from the large to the 
small should not be to rapid, but enough 
that pride in achievement will counsel, as 
powers of alignment, steadiness of hand 
regulate. In this manner the change of 
weights will not be so readily observed, 
still at first minor kills of crows, rabbits, 
and woodchucks must not he deemed in- 
