The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-11-22
HUNTING IN SOUTH JERSEY
The Game Is Plentiful This Season
and Good Sport rs Promised.

ana GO0O SpOFa rs fIOkAShnSus
The king sport in New Jersey is deer
hunting, and that will be awful after
November rs.
There was a time, and not many years
ago either, when deer were as plentiful
in Atlantic and Cape May Counties as
rabbits are now. Then hunters focked
to the pineries along the and
Great Egg Harbor Rivers from all points
of the compass, and the party who failed
to bring in three deer at the end of a
days hunt were the smallest kin of
pumpkins.
Advancing civilization and the regular
ity with which the deer hunter showed
up in Atlantic County reduced the num-
Der of deer until hunting them became
more of a science than sport. But the
law stepped in to protect them, and now,
up near McClure's, Doughty's Tavern
and Buck Hill, there is some lively sport
to be had when the nights get frosty
and an occasional furry of snow comes
down to make the following of game
easy.
Last year in Atlantic, Cumberland and
Cape May Counties forty deer were kill
ed, and the old hunters say that game is
| going to be more plentiful this year thar
it has been for a long time.
Doughty's Tavern is a famous resort
| for deer hunters. There isn't a man in
New Jersey, who ever stepped foot in
Atlantic County with the purpose OF
bringing down a roe or a buck, that
| doesn't know the road that winds like an
avenue carved out with a cheese knife,
through the pines to Doughty's Tavern.
The old building has stood right where
| it stands now ever since long before the
war. In the old days it was the scene of
| many interesting gatherings, for every
body bent on deer hunting started from
| the tavern, and when the hunt was fin
| ished the sportsmen returned to it, and
before the great fireplace, in the midst
of dense clouds of tobacco smoke and
stimulated by, deep aug OF apple
jack, they related the exciting expert
| ences they had had.
The oldest settler in those parts says
that there was but one row at Doughty
tavern in those good old days, and that
was between two stalwart hunters from
Camden County, who differed as to who
should send around the applejack jug
next, each claiming the right. 1t was
| proposed that the dispute be settled by
wrestling five bouts.
They fell to tussling. They were evenly
matched, and 1t was a long time before
the contest was settled. When it was
| finished they found that the jug had been
| travelling back and forth in the crowd of
spectators until it was empty.
In the d~oorposts of the tavern are cut
the initials of a good many men who
used to be yearly visitors there and who
are now dead. The walls of the assem-
bly-room, which has. an immense fireplace
on one side and a bar quite as fiery on
the other, are hung with antlers that
formerly graced the head of a noble
buck, and covering some of the chairs
are bearskins taken from the bodies of
big brutes that a few years ago infested
the pineries.
The bears have dwindled down to a
small number now, but they can be
dangers of the vast swamp that covers
the northwestern part of Atlantic Coun-
ty in the neighborhood of Hammonton.
You will find, too, in the doorposts in
the assembly-room targets the bullseyes
of which have been put out by we'll
aimed bullets from revolvers, for it used
to be the custom of certain annual visit
pistol shooting. Applejack for the crowd
was the prize. 1t is plain that, in any
event, the crowd won.
The man who contemplates a trial of
deer hunting in Jersey should cover his
body with heavy underclothing. Heavy
should wear strong hunting boots to
protect the legs from the short brambles
and briers with which the pineries
abound.
A Sharps or a Winchester rifle, with a
belt full of cartridges, a pair of leather
gloves, a small vial of liniment to be used
in case of a sprain, and in an inside
pocket a flask of something stimulating
and refreshing all equally necessary
New York Sun.