Forest and Stream, February 3, 1887
BIG-GUNS IN VIRGINIA.
Tourists and sportsmen -- Field sports - Hunting : Waterfowl and shorebirdSea -- Market hunting
Editor Forest and Stream:
There is the best authority for stating that parties in Alexandria, Va., have conspired to introduce into the State Legislature (which will soon convene) a bill authorizing State, district or county officers to sell licenses for use of large guns (now illegal) in shooting ducks, etc., and that they have secured the services of an able and well-known lawyer of that city to manage the affairs by lobbying and otherwise.
If such a bill should pass, and the license fee be set high, then a comparatively few pot-hunters and wealthy men may monopolize duck shooting in the State, and if the fee be moderate or low, then so many might avail themselves of the privilege as to keep the big-guns booming everywhere ducks venture to alight. In either event, the result would be nearly the same, for those fowl that escape death would seek safer and quieter regions.
The FOREST AND STREAM reaches a good number of those legislators who must vote on the proposed bill, and in that way and otherwise it may prove a defender of the interests of the great army of gunners who do not desire to kill for the sake of filling the market, and have neither inclination nor leisure to indulge themselves in licenses for wholesale destruction of water fowl of any kind. Give us your aid to frustrate the plan of the selfish few in the interest of the better many.
H.
AN ATTEMPT TO KEEP TERRAPIN.
reprinted from Baltimore Sun, December 5.Sea -- Terrapin
Mr. Edward H. Strong was in Chestertown recently, and gave some interesting information about the diamond-back terrapin. Mr. Strong is a farmer, but, living near the water, and being fond of all the sports which it affords, spends a great deal of his time in his famous canoe, the Mayflower. He states that terrapin are easy to catch in the spring, but the trouble has always been how to keep them until winter, the time at which they are in demand. If you confine them in a pond of water they will become very poor and very often die; if kept in the air they are sure to die. The high price they bring in the city during the winter is the result of the difficulty experienced in preserving them from the spring until the winter. It is nothing unusual, for fine diamond-back terrapins to bring from $50 to $75 per dozen in Baltimore or New York city during the Christmas season. Last spring Mr. Strong caught a great many, and resolved to try several experiments in order to see whether or not he could find a successful plan of keeping them. About the 1st of June he placed seven in an iron box and hermetically sealed it; he put nine in a wooden box that was not air-tight, and then took twenty-six or twenty-seven and buried them in the earth about 18in. deep. A few days ago he determined to examine the terrapins. All of those he had put in the iron and wooden boxes were dead, while all those he had buried were alive, fatter and in better condition to eat than when they were buried last June.