through the water, a big trout struck 
his tail fly, a Parmaehene Belle. The 
fish hooked itself, and then a real fight 
began. It first tried to sulk in the bot¬ 
tom among the lily pads, and was at 
last roused from this mood. Then it 
started for a stake some fifty feet away 
and was happily snubbed before reach¬ 
ing the fatal point. My nephew had a 
new outfit and strong. A good rod, a 
new line and leader, first-class flies. 
He was a quiet, unexcitable lad, with 
the habit of obedience, and he did just 
what the guide told him to do, and 
after twenty or thirty minutes he had 
the triumph of seeing the big trout in 
the bottom of the canoe. His jaws 
were black with age and scarred with 
other contests, and he weighed just 
five pounds, the largest speckled trout 
known to be taken in those waters, and 
by a lad of fifteen and his first trout 
with a fly. We stayed just an hour and 
bi ought to camp seventeen pounds of 
trout. 
The third story—and a real fisher¬ 
man, especially if he uses a fly, is known 
for his truthfulness—is from the west- 
n Adirondacks where a little company 
of friends, known as “the Clerical An¬ 
glers, have whipped the same river 
for the last twenty-six years. It is a 
stream of wonderful beauty and vari¬ 
ety, but it is not preserved; it has seen 
much lumbering, and more than once 
we have said in disgust, after a poor 
day's catch, “The river is fished out.” 
1 hat s what I said on a recent May 
morning, when I had been casting till 
eleven o clock without a rise or as much 
as a sign of a trout. It was on a still- 
water made by an old dam, the river 
winding with a sluggish current 
through an old beaver meadow. I was 
casting from the bow of a canoe, not 
a manly sight in a fisherman, but to 
be accepted by an old man whose legs 
have gone back on him. That particu¬ 
lar morning I had yielded myself to no 
luck and the beauty of the scene, when 
about eleven there was a sudden hatch 
of May flies on the water, and every¬ 
thing was changed. Dead water was 
alive; trout were rising on all sides, 
and they were quite as eager for my 
flies. Almost every cast brought a 
good trout to my creel. It was this 
way for an hour before lunch and for 
an hour after. We cooked our coffee 
by a cold spring where the river runs 
through a gorge between arches of 
trees and banks of ferns. The fishing 
after lunch stopped as suddenly as it 
began. But forty-seven beautiful trout 
were in my basket and it was sport for 
a Walton. “Ash ” 
day, “Pleasant Valley,”' as Elizabeth¬ 
town was anciently termed, has been a 
veritable Mecca for devotees of the pis¬ 
catorial art, the local ponds, Boquet 
River and its tributaries, as well as the 
Black River and its branches, yielding 
in early times bountiful supplies of 
speckled trout, generally acknowledged 
to be the most delicious pan-fish; later 
other fish were put into the ponds, espe¬ 
cially pickerel, perch, black bass and 
bull pont. It often happened that men 
working through the week would ar¬ 
range to go fishing for bull pont Sat¬ 
urday night. Thus it happened one 
Saturday night that C. E. Daniels and 
his cousin, the late Arthur H. Horton, 
of Elizabethtown, went fishing for bull 
pont. They had a good catch and they 
fished late, so that it was well into 
Sunday morning when Mr. Daniels re¬ 
turned tired and sleepy. He decided to 
dump his bull pont and the grass into 
which he had put the fish into a dishpan. 
He then conceived the idea of putting 
the dishpan in the sink and turning the 
faucet so that fresh water would run 
on to the fish during the night. This 
worked all right up to a certain point, 
and then the grass washed over the top 
of the dishpan and clogged the drain 
so that the dishpan and sink both ran 
over and flooded the kitchen, dining¬ 
room and the hall with several- inches 
of water. When “Carl” got up late 
Sunday morning he found the bull pont 
swimming around the kitchen apparent¬ 
ly as happy as when in their native 
waters. 
George L. Brown. 
THE ART OF WING 
SHOOTING 
(Continued from page 557) 
about six feet to insure its coming 
within the circle of pellets. 
The Second Barrel 
The best way to increase your con¬ 
trol over the second barrel is to use it 
at every opportunity. If you kill a 
bird dead in the air with your first 
shot, try and hit it again before it 
strikes the water or the ground. One 
of the principal secrets in developing 
facility with the second barrel is the 
piactice of continuing the swing of the 
gun even after the trigger has been 
pulled, for the man who does this meth¬ 
odically finds that, after shooting the 
first barrel, his gun continues mechani¬ 
cally, along its course and by the time 
he has steadied himself, it is practically 
in the right position to be fired again. 
The man who checks his gun immedi¬ 
ately he has fired the first shot finds 
himself so far behind, when he is ready 
to fire again, that the only way he can 
get his gun up is with a jerk so rapid 
that he is unable to point accurately. 
Dear Forest and Stream: 
From the time when the Adirondacks 
teemed with Indians down to the present 
Page 573 
Dear Forest and Stream: 
g EVERAL years ago Mr. H. E. 
West opened up the Lost Soldier 
Dome, north of Rawlins, Wyoming, by 
drilling in a large producing oil well. 
The oil was run into a broad pit dug 
into the earth. When he went over 
the next morning he found about sev¬ 
enty-five sage hens arranged about the 
sump and all talking at once. He 
walked to within fifty feet of them and 
they paid no attention to him. They 
were intent on discussing what manner 
of fluid was before them, for none had 
ever seen or smelled anything like it. 
The older birds would lower their 
heads sideways in close examination of 
the oil and then chatter and tell their 
opinion. They were holding a regular 
convention and Mr. West is positive 
that these birds have a language and 
a definite means of communication. 
The older birds apparently were the 
main spokesmen and that is the same 
custom that prevails in Indian confabs. 
Thos. M. Galey, 
Independence, Kan. 
Allowance for Crossing Birds 
The following table has been calcu¬ 
lated on the basis of the table of veloci¬ 
ties of shot and shows the space tra¬ 
versed by a bird moving at the rate of 
sixty feet a second in the brief inter¬ 
val that elapses from the fall of the 
hammer to the arrival of the shot at 
the various distances mentioned. It is, 
of course, understood that with slower 
biids approximately smaller distances 
must be adopted, and when the faster 
birds are encountered the figures must 
be correspondingly adjusted. These 
allowances are only absolutely correct 
for crossing birds. 
For a bird distant 20 yards, lead 
3 ft. 6 in. 
For a bird distant 25 yards, lead 
4 ft. 9 in. 
For a bird distant 30 yards, lead 
5 ft. 11 in. 
For a bird distant 35 yards, lead 
7 ft. 2 in. 
For a bird distant 40 yards, lead 
8 ft. 6 in. 
In the case of going-away birds, the 
time occupied by the shot in reaching 
thirty-five yards is such as to allow the 
biid to have moved further seven or 
eight inches and the shot must cover 
the extra distance before overtaking 
the bird. This does not, however, ex¬ 
ercise much influence on the aim taken 
by the shooter, because a bird going 
away is more or less in the nature of a 
stationary object as viewed by the 
