66 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



offenders, they would learn to fear if not to respect the 

 law, and good results would follow. 



Our own State is not an exception to the prevailing 

 vandalism. Not only do these violators of the laws of na- 

 ture and of man deem all game their rightful plunder, but 

 they persist in bagging it at all seasons and by any device. 

 This is as true on the vast plains of the great West as within 

 the borders of civilization, and is as persistently practised 

 on the recently stocked salmon waters of Maine as in the 

 over-fished lakes and rivers of the Adirondacks. Public 

 sentiment is being gradually educated up to the proper 

 standard upon this subject and it will ultimately reach a 

 point when it will serve as a moral check upon all classes of 

 the community, but meanwhile nothing but the terrors of 

 the law and the enforcement of its penalty will act as suf- 

 ficient restraints upon its habitual and persistent violators. 



''If all has not been done that is desirable," said one of our 

 number, "something has certainly been accomplished by the 

 discussion of this subject within the past twenty or thirty 

 years. I remember when sportsmen not professional 

 poachers or pot-hunters did not deem it unsportsmanlike 

 to string set-lines in the lakes and rivers of the North Woods 

 to swell their 'count/ This practise has, I believe, been 

 generally discarded, except by the low-down riff-raff, who 

 have no more idea of what is legitimate in the practise of the 

 art than an Esquimau has of the principles of algebra. 



"I once met one of these fellows on the North Branch 

 of the Moose River a great many years ago. We saw him 

 set his line at a point famous for the number and size of the 

 trout, which seemed to make it their headquarters. He sup- 

 posed himself unobserved, of course, and retired to his 

 shanty sure of a good haul in the morning. I was in camp 

 with Dick O., whom most of you knew as 'a fellow of in- 

 finite humor,' and as muscular as he was witty, and as fond 

 of fair play in angling as he was 'down on' all poachers and 

 pot-hunters. When it was suggested that we make a mid- 

 night raid upon the trap set by our neighbor, Dick dissented, 

 with the remark that 'he would make him a visit early in 



