A NEW SPORT.
MMAREY, in his greatest work, the " Vol des Oiseaux," • analysed the movements of the beating wing by an ingenious instrument which he called the photographic gun. In it was a camera, which, from the form in which it was mounted, could be held to follow a bird in flight; a trigger released the shutter at the moment desired, and spun a disc by which a number of images in rapid succession were left -upon the edges of the plate. As his main object was to see, -and enable others to see, the general facts of flight, the com- moner birds, such as pigeons and galls, were generally taken as /subjects. At the same time he lamented the want of oppor- tunity for taking records of the movements of the larger and rarer birds when wild, and urged the sportsman-naturalist 'to go out into the fields," and use not only his eyes, but the camera, to show others what was otherwise seen by him alone. The answer to this appeal comes in an attractive form in an illustrated article in the Cosmopolitan Magazine, -entitled " A New Sport in the Rocky Mountains," by Mr. A. G. Willahan, of Routh county, Colorado. His home lay in the mountains near the snow-line, and he was accustomed to make hunting expeditions where the forest and the rocky ground meet, and antelopes, bears, and pumas, are found not far distant from the range of wild sheep and goats. As early as 1885 he began to discard the gun for the camera, or rather to make the employment of the latter his first object, while retaining the weapon for use or defence as might be. Any one who has tried to stalk even a wild-rabbit when fee/ing, will surmise that the new sport was one to test the skill of a trained hunter. Mr. Willahan did not possess the special instrument invented by M. Marcy. Instead he used a hand-camera, though in time he became such a master of this new phase of woodcraft, that he photographed the shyest animals of the mountain f►om an ordinary tripod. Mr. Willahan relies for description rather on the camera than the pen, but he gives his experiences in detail sufficient to indicate the means by which those who follow him must seek success. Like every other form of sport, it needs special knowledge of the country, as well as of the habits of the creatures pursued. The ground in which the first results were obtained was broken and rocky, with large groves of high timber in the valleys, and streams of water in the ravines.
Mr. Willahan knew the country well, and chose, for his first attempt to lie in ambush, a spot near a drinking-place used by the prong-horned antelopes. There he made a screen for his camera, near the month of a gap by which the creatures might be expected to approach the water. This was just after dawn,—for the antelopes and deer of the Rockies are not pos- sessed by that haunting dread of danger which drives the greater number of animals in Southern Africa to drink only at night. Some of the animals were disturbed in the ravine when their visitor arrived. But the place was favourable, and the instinct of curiosity, which commonly makes the American antelope inclined to approach an unusual object, even on the open plains, in this case aided their unseen visitor. His description of his morning's sport contrasts agreeably with those with which modern works on shooting in the Rocky Mountains have made us familiar. "As I waited, I shifted my tripod into all possible positions for sweeping the gulch, but as noiselessly as possible. Suddenly, by some impulse, I glanced over my shoulder, and there, peeping over the bank, for antelopes are curious, were half-a-dozen heads. Of course a snort and a stampede followed, and I was forced to readjust the camera, and possess my soul in patience. Presently others came down in front, but they were out of range. Nevertheless, I held out, motionless and expectant. At last, when my patience was almost gone, there was a slight movement directly on the other side of the gulch. Treading gingerly, and scenting danger, they came over the bank, straight towards me. The keen-eyed rascals did not see the camera. They scampered down to the water's edge, and were just getting their noses to the stream, when they turned, quick as a flash, and ran back. But it was only ten feet or so. Then they stopped to wonder why they had been so foolish. They did not seem to hear the click of the shutter ; they stood a moment or so, then walked up to the water, drank their fill, and slipped away to the feeding-grounds. The plate-holder was reversed, and I was ready for more." The subsequent watch by the stream, as the herds came down, one by one, out of range, was a delightful experience in itself. But the sport lasted. A buck soon appeared close by the watcher. "I hardly ventured to breathe, for behind him were two more. The three were barely ten yards distant when I snapped them, and in an instant they were gazing curiously at the brass and wooden instrument looking at them over the brush. But as they saw no motion they were satisfied, and passed on to drink their fill." A very large herd came down later in the morning, and these were all photographed, at some distance, but with accuracy enough to give a pleasing picture of some sixty antelopes, standing, feeding, or running, at a distance of eighty yards.
No one can deny that this was an excellent morning's sport. It gave all the excitement of watching for game from an ambush ; it had its climax in the " shot " with the camera ; it falls naturally into the descriptive phrase common to hunters ; and because it was noiseless and bloodless there was a gain in quantity. The crack of a rifle, in the place of the click of the camera-slide, would probably have ended the morning's shooting, with the scaring and disappearance of the first herd. In a subsequent photo- graphic stalk of the black-tailed deer, the adaptation of hunters' use and skill is more strongly shown. Mr. Willahan showed the patience of a jungle-tribesman. He spent three days in searching for the favourite tracks of the deer, and finally selected a spot in a cedar-grove, where three trails met. There he hid when the sun was scarcely up, and the shadows still long, and waited for the deer, The first that came was a fine buck, which had been frightened in the pastures above, and was hurrying through the forest, panting and restless. The critical moment, which sometimes causes what deer-stalkers call " stag-fever," arrived. " Would he keep that trail, I wondered breathlessly, or would he cross over to the main one where I was lying in wait for him ? It was certainly not a case of mind-reading, for even as I stood trembling with expectation, he turned into the trail covered by my instrument. He was a beauty. Should I take him at sixty feet, or risk securing him at thirty P I attempted a ruse, and bleated in imitation of a fawn. He stopped in. stantly, and looked straight at me, whereupon I hastened to spring the shutter, to make sure of him, and obtained, even in my excitement, what proved afterwards to be a firm negative. When I made a movement he could see, he bounded off up the hill. When he reached the crest, he paused to assure himself he was justified in his alarm, and looking back at me over his shoulder, he assumed a pose which was grace itself." The result of this portrait is not among the illustrations printed with the text. These are reproduced from a work called " Hoofs, Claws, and Antlers of the Rocky Mountains," and are not all from the camera of Mr. Willahan. Of those which bear his name, one shows a hind swimming across a creek, another a herd of deer descending to the water, and a third a group of eight antelopes, though these have no characteristic setting to add to the local interest which is absent from photographs of animals in confinement. In addition, there are two photo- graphs which are unique, and will attract the attention of all sportsmen and naturalists. They show two incidents in the hunt of a puma, or " mountain-lion," as it is locally called in the Rockies. The puma had been killing colts on a neigh- bouring farm, and it was determined to hunt it with dogs until it was " treed," and then shoot it. The first " lion " was hunted until it took refuge in a tree almost level with a flat- topped rock, and from this point it was photographed as it sat among the branches. The accident of position, by which the tree-top was close to, and on a level with, the camera, is not likely to occur again. The result shows a large puma standing among the top forks of a half-dead tree, its hind-feet on a lower branch, while the fore-feet rest on the higher and more slender boughs. The tail hangs down, and the general attitude is like that of the quaint lions sculptured over the gate of Mycenn. The face looks out of the picture with the contracted eyes and the sulky look of a cat spitting at a dog. Beyond is the steep, almost precipitous, side of the ravine, covered with spruce-firs loaded with snow. A second puma was next day driven into a large dead pi;ion tree and photo- graphed from below, almost in the act of springing. In this case the animal is crouched like a cat among the dead, twisted limbs, its face lower than its back. The form is not so distinctly seen as that of the first puma, but the whole makes a graphic and living picture of a scene never before presented to the general eye. It suggests that the new sport may be such as will give pleasure not only to the actor, but to many others who see its results. Its trophies can be multiplied, and obtained in the first instance without diminishing the number of wild animals which remain. Even the demands of museums may be satisfied in part by these faithful records of what " specimens " look like when alive ; and it will not be necessary for others to follow the example of that American zoologist who recently justified success in killing some of the last examples of the Rocky Mountain goat, on the ground that the animal was almost extinct.
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