Old and New in Virginia

Editor Forest and Stream:

I learn that FOREST AND STREAM will soon be ten years old. Accept my congratulations. May you live to be ten times ten and "then same." I know that I but voice the sentiment of every sportsman in America who has enjoyed the good fortune that has befallen me of reading your excellent paper almost continuously since its birth, when I say that it has no superior in appearance nor matter, original and contributed. I owe you a debt of gratitude I can never repay, for many pleasant and profitable hours spent in perusing its columns, and were I to undertake to enumerate the great good it has accomplished in the way of improving our sporting dogs, preserving the game of the country, enlightening its readers in all matters pertaining to field and aquatic sports, the interchange of experiences between well-informed men on all the various subjects embraced in the ample scope of its purposes, I would consume more space than you would be willing to give me. How many pleasant lasting and life-long friendships have been established through this medium. While your readers have been thus benefited, enlightened and entertained, it must surely bring a supreme satisfaction to you, Mr. Editor, and those who have preceded you, to look upon the success of your enterprise and the great good you have accomplished. "May you live long and prosper," is the hearty wish of myself, and will, no doubt, be echoed by every true sportsman in this broad land.

The actual changes which have taken place in Virginia the last decade in the mode of following the sports of land and water, have not been very marked. True, the introduction of breech-loading arms, the cheapening of good guns of American manufacture, and improvement in the breeds of our sporting dogs is quite apparent. The number and character of the men who now go a-hunting and fishing have perhaps undergone a greater change than anything else. Formerly it was not considered "exactly the thing" for a business man to be seen with dogs and guns and fishing tackle, and men of that class, if they indulged their propensity for those sports at all, did it "on the sly." The hunting wagon was brought up to the back gate at unseasonable hours, and the tackle or hunting outfit smuggled into it, the dogs spirited out of town by a "fifteenth amendment," and the sportsmen silently stole away like the Arabs.

Now everything is different. Professional men and business men, when their occupations allow it, boldly don their hunting clothes, seize their breech-loaders, and defiantly mount into the wagon or board the train, while Don and Dash and Fleet rush madly along the street, or look complacently out of the vehicle, as if pitying the stay-at-homes. Much, if not all, of this is due to the sensible and well-timed articles which have appeared in the FOREST AND STREAM in the last ten years. Sensible men have come to the conclusion that innocent recreation is quite as harmless, morally, as sitting around discussing your neighbors' affairs, and a great
more health-giving, brain-strengthening and nerve-invigorating, so that it is now becoming quite the fashion in our country to pity the misfortunes of the poor young (or old) man who cannot leave off money-making long enough to give his body and mind that rest and recreation which nature demands. In fact, "the bottom rail is on top," so much so that at present at one of our most fashionable watering places, Rawley Springs, the ladies are quite carried away with the sport of rifle and pistol shooting, and forsake the sentimental promenades, the morning Germans and the evening drives for the more exciting and manly sport of target practice.

Although the changes to which I have alluded have taken place in the last ten years, and are very perceptible, those which have taken place in a longer period, running back, say twenty years, or to the close of the war, have been much more marked. Just after the war there was not one man who hunted birds and fished for trout and bass, where there are ten who do it now. In those days, you rarely saw anything but men hunting or fishing. Now the boys are at it, as well as a much larger number of men. When I first began to shoot quail on the wing, thirty years ago, there were not over one dozen men in the town and county who indulged in the sport, and there were not more than that number of pointers and setters here, such as they were. Now, and for several years past, on open season day, you can count men and boys and dogs by the sore, sallying forth to the slaughter (and most of them practice the gentle art, too, and "go a-fishing" every chance they get), so that we can now show some of as fine field shots and fly-fishermen as can be found anywhere.

Our breeds of dogs have greatly improved by reason of the reading of such papers as yours, and the ready intercourse afforded by the railroads, which enables the sportsmen of one locality to learn something from his brother sportsmen in another by actual contact. Our dogs are better broke, too, than they used to be, though nothing like so well as the dogs of the North and West. This matter of dog training, and the rapid improvement made in it in the last ten years, I attribute almost entirely to the influence of your valuable journal and others. Indeed, I find in looking back over "old times" and comparing with the present, that great strides have been made in the direction of improvement in almost every branch of hunting and fishing lore, and I think it all traceable directly or indirectly to the knowledge imparted to sportsmen through the columns of sporting papers, by means of the interchange of ideas and experiences of men with each other, the contributions of scientific men, and the well digested and instructive editorials to be found in every issue.

This comparison of the old times with the modern opens up a field too vast to be covered by one article. Indeed, it would require a volume to exhaust it. But that there has been great improvement in everything pertaining to hunting and fishing except the quantity of game, and that your valuable journal has contributed largely to bring about this desirable result, there can be no doubt.

The field is still large, and there is still room for improvement, especially in the matters of impressing sportsmen, and other with the importance of good game and fish laws, and the duty every man, who calls himself a sportsman, owes to the public in obeying those laws, and seeing that all who break them are punished; in the matter of establishing correct standards for judging dogs, both at field trials and bench shows, and in the matter of educating men to know that slaughter is not sport, and that the most moderate, temperate and humane man is the most liable to derive the greatest pleasure from the pursuit of game and fish, as in all other pursuits of life.

I may, when I have more leisure, give you my views on some matters which have lately been discussed in your columns, especially the relation of field trials to bench shows, the mode of judging, etc.

JACK.

STAUNTON, Virginia, July 16.