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52 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[JAN. 13, 1906. 

my effects upon him, hoping to so disturb his 
slumbers as to induce him to leave me for more 
peaceful neighbors. My cartridges,: belt; even 
my watch and chain were sacrificed, but all with- 
out effect. Last of all I dropped my hunting 
knife, and when that, too, failed to induce a 
sign of motion in the huge bulk below me, I 
felt almost like casting myself upon him, but the 
memory of those cruel eyes and horns restrained 
me. 
There are people who can sleep under any 
conditions, except, perhaps, actual physical 
suffering; to that class I belong. Gradually, 
in spite of my dread and my desire to remain 
alert for any signal from my friends I became 
so drowsy that it was necessary for me’to pro- 
vide against a fall. I climbed a little higher up 
and, securing myself as well as possible in a 
crotch of the tree, soon drifted into slumber. 
How long that lasted, I do not know. I was 
awakened by a sound so horrible that I hope 
never to hear it duplicated under similar con- 
ditions. Without really knowing what had 
happened to awaken me I felt instinctively that 
something awful: was in close proximity and 
crouched ‘tremblingly on my perch, the ague 
chills of an unfathomable horror chasing up and 
down my spine. 
There was perhaps five minutes of perfect 
silence, save the usual forest voices of the night. 
Then, from the dark recesses of the very tree 
in which I sat there came a shriek so awful 
and blood-curdling that I all but lost my head. 
There was—there could be no mistaking that 
voice. A panther was beside, almost upon me. 
With a cry almost as startling to myself, if 
not so loud as his, I sprang rather than climbed 
down, my adversary of the afternoon forgotten. 
Then with every muscle tense and every nerve 
aquiver I rushed away toward camp as rapidly 
as fright and my best efforts would take me. 
On, on, blindly, desperately, never looking be- 
hind to see what pursued and half expecting 
every moment to feel those horrible claws sink 
into my flesh but dreading even: more a repe- 
tition of that terrible shriek. It seemed as if 
I could never listen to that again and keep my 
senses, 
I probably never ran better in my life, but my 
feet seemed weighted with lead, and I made 
constant efforts to increase my gain still without 
looking back. What was there that I wanted 
to see? I could imagine enough. 
But there is a flesh and blood limit beyond 
which even desperation cannot carry one, and 
before long I realized with horror that I was 
tiring out. Then for the first time I ventured 
to glance over my shoulder and discovered, to 
my intense relief, that I was not pursued; but 
the next moment, so wrought up were my 
nerves, when I made a mis-step that threw me, 
I let out an involuntary cry that startled even 
myself with its own weirdness. 
What was that to my right? Surely an 
answering shout; and as I lay half dazed and 
wholly unable to rise, I realized that voices 
were approaching and rescue at hand. Fright 
and exhaustion had together done their work, 
and when the searching party came up they 
found me helpless and had to carry me back to 
camp too weak for a time to even explain the 
situation. When I finally became strong enough 
to make them fully understand my story the 
night was turning to gray. 
Instinctively I saw that I was not believed. 
Some awful experience they thought had driven 
me insane as, indeed, I think it nearly did. But 
later in the day, with strength and confidence 
restored, I was able to lead them back to my 
involuntary camping-ground. Forget it? I 
could find my way back now, if the place re- 
mained the same as then, so indelibly is the lo- 
cation fixed on memory’s tablets. In an hour’s 
time we were near the edge of the woods and 
cautiously approaching the tree in which I had 
so recently been forced to take refuge; 
cautiously, I say, because although it was not 
probable my adversaries of the day before 
were still there, my own horror of the place 
was SO apparent to the others that they did not 
doubt that they were about to face the evidence 
of some awful event. 
What was our surprise to find my sentinel of 
the day before still faithful at his post as I had 
seen him. Around him lay my hunting knife, 
watch, cartridges and all the rest, but they had 
indeed disturbed not his slumbers, for he was 
dead. Killed by my bullet? No, we found that 
lodged in a tree trunk safe enough. Old age 
had done the work. He had left the herd and 
retired to that secluded spot with the instinct 
peculiar to his race to die alone. My approach 
had disturbed his last moments and his angry 
charge upon me had been the final act of his 
career. Then all those weary hours after his 

JOHN B. BURNHAM, 
hief Game and Fish Protector of New York. 
rugged life had gone out his ponderous form 
had kept me prisoner as effectually as though 
it was still enlivened by the spirit that had ani- 
mated it so many years while he was monarch 
of the plains. j 
But what about the panther? At least I could 
now claim full credit for that, the most terrible 
part of my adventure. But—let me whisper it 
—one night a short time afterward, while lying 
safely in camp, I once more heard that awful 
shriek, now in the distance, and heard the still 
more startling intelligence from one of our 
hunters concerning the diminutive character of 
the particular kind of owl that uttered the cry. 
XENO W. PUTNAM. 
The Flying Shot. 
It would be interesting were some antiquary 
sportsman to discover when the first flying shot 
was made at game. We know when the art of 
shooting birds on the wing began to come into 
vogue, and we can form a very good idea why 
it did not obtain acceptance earlier; but we do 
not know, and probably we never shall know 
who was the man that first brought down a 
bird with match or flint-lock. There can be 
little doubt but that the “art of shooting fly- 
ing,” as that quaint old work Pteriphlegia calls 
it, was developed by degrees. A writer named 
Sprint in this somewhat rare little book, dated 
1700, gives his reader explicit directions as to 
the use of his gun. The fowling piece of that 
day can hardly be called a shoulder gun, since 
its barrel was 5 feet 6 inches, or 6 feet long 
(“all above are unmanageable and tiresome”) 
and the sportsman was told that he must carry 
with him a stake on which to rest his weapon 
when aiming. It is in this little book that we 
find’ the idea of shooting on the wing first 
mooted; the sportsman could hardly hope to 
stand up to his game “level” and bring down his 
bird with his clumsy weapon; it was too heavy 
for any man of only average strength to use 

regularly from the shoulder; we have on oc- 
casion tried the experiment of aiming a gun 
two hundred years old in the same manner as 
a modern double-barrel, and the exertion is 
great enough to put it outside regular practice. 
At the time Sprint wrote, the wing shot was 
usually taken in the only possible way; the 
gunner planted his stake and “leveled” his 
weapon in the direction which his knowledge 
of bird habit led him to think they were likely 
to fly when they rose. The flying shot at this 
period was only taken when two sportsmen 
were out together; the first planted his stake 
and “blazed into the brown,” and the second 
was admonished to “take them on the wing if 
any escape the shot on the ground,” a hint 
which justifies the assumption that the first 
man bagged all he could get. The man who 
fired at the survivors was counseled to aim 
“three yards from the ground, a little inclining 
to the way you see their heads stand.” Some 
good advice is added as to the right moment 
for pulling the “‘tricker.” The flying shot was 
to be timed by the firing of the ground shot; 
the character of the gun and the method of 
using it afforded no chance of correcting the 
aim; it was practically a case of hoping the 
survivors would fly into the -charge in its 
passage “three yards above the ground.” Our 
sporting forefathers, however, were stout fel- 
lows, who knew nothing of luxury in shooting; 
a true flying shot seems to have been taken oc- 
casionally from the shoulder when a suitable 
opportunity occurred, but the sportsman who 
did this, and did it successfully, stood out from 
his fellows; his practice was the subject of re- 
mark and he was pointed out as a man who 
“shot flying’ to distinguish him from the ruck 
who shot sitting. So much we may justly infer 
from Addison who, in his Spectator papers, 
makes Sir Roger de Coverley refer to a yeo- 
man friend who would be a better neighbor if 
he did not kill so many partridges and “shoots 
flying.” This was written in 1711, eleven years 
after Sprint gave his readers hints on usin 
the gun on flying game. : 
It would be easy to follow the progress of 
the sportsman as a flying shot from this date, 
for it was during the Eighteenth Century that 
considerable progress was made in improving 
sporting guns which bv degrees became lighter 
and handier. We do not know that more con- 
venient lock mechanism had a great deal to do 
with the change in the mode of using the gun. 
Sprint says nothing to show that he found it 
easier to shoot flying with a flint-lock than a 
match-lock, though he wrote at a “period when 
the former had largely superseded the latter in 
the hands of sportsmen who by 1700 had recog- 
nized the superiority of the flint-lock.” Its 
“superiority” was purely relative as we gather 
from Colonel Thornton’s remark in his famous 
Sporting Tour in Scotland. This trip was made 
about the year 1786, and from it we learn that 
one day the Colonel had five misfires in eight 
shots, though he put in five fresh flints. Shoot- 
ing on the ground seems to have gone out of 
fashion among regular sportsmen by the time 
Colonel Thornton wrote; but we came recently 
upon a passage in the old Sporting Magazine 
of just a century ago which seems to indicate 
that though disapproved, the practice was not 
entirely unknown. The passage to which we 
refer is a scale of fines which, says the chron- 
icler, was hung in the breakfast room of a 
Sussex shooting lodge. This ordained that the 
gunner who shot at a pheasant on the ground 
or in tree, or at a partridge on the ground 
should be fined one guinea; there are other 
fines for other shooting misdemeanors, as 
shooting at unwounded birds at an unsportman- 
like distance, but these we need not notice. 
This Sussex sportsman’s action in hanging such 
a placard in his breakfaast room sufficiently in- 
dicates that shooting on the ground was then 
not unknown and was regarded as a grave 
offense against the accepted canons of sport. 
The guns of 1805, as killing weapons, in handi- 
ness and excellence of workmanship left nothing 
to desire; however unreliable the flint mechan- 
ism they were well balanced and as easy to bring 
to shoulder as a modern gun. 
