8 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



Devotsd to Field and Aquatic Sports, Practical Natural History, 

 xtshOdlturb, the Protection of Game, Preservation of Forests, 

 Am> the Inculcation in Men and Women of a healthy interest 

 tH Gut-door Beorkatiob and Study : 



PUBLISHED BY 



GAME PROTECTION. 



17 CHATHAM STEEET, (CITY HALL SQUARE) NEW YORK, 



[Post Office Box 2832.] 



♦ 



Terms, FIvo Dollars a Year, Strictly In Advance. 



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Advertising Rates. 



In regular advertising columns, nonpareil type, 12 lines to the inch, 2E 

 Cents per line. Advertisements on outside page, 40cents per line. Reading 

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 month, a discount of 10 per cent, will be made; over three months, 20 

 per cent. : over six months, SO ner cent. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1876. 



To Correspondents. 



All communications whatever, whether relating to business or literary 

 correspondence, must ho addressed to The Forest and Stream Pub- 

 lishing Company. Personal or private letters of course excepted. 



All communications intended for publication must be accompanied with 

 real name, as a guaranty of good faith. Names will not be published if 

 objection be made. No anonymous contributions will be. regaraed. 



Articles relating to any topic within the scope of this paper are solicited. 



We cannot promise to return rejected manuscripts. 



Secretaries of Clubs and Associations are urged to favor us with brief 

 notes of their movements and transactions, as it is the aim of this paper 

 to become a medium of useful and reliable information between gentle- 

 men sportsmen from one end of the country to the other ; and they will 

 find our columns a desirable medium for advertising announcements. 



The Publishers of Forest and Stream aim to merit and secure the 

 patronage and countenance of that portion of the community whose re- 

 fined intelligence enables them to properly appreciate and enjoy all that 

 la beautiful in Nature. It will pander to no depraved tastes, nor pervert 

 tae legitimate sports of land and water to those base uses which always 

 tend to make them unpopular with the virtuous and good. No advertise- 

 ment or business notice of an immoral character will be received on any 

 terms ; and nothing will be admitted to any department of the paper that 

 may not be read with propriety in the home circle. 



We cannot be responsible for the dereliction of the mail service, if 

 money remitted to us is lost. 



Advertisements should be Bent in by Saturday of each week, if possible. 

 CHARLES HALLOCK. 



Frh'tor aT1 {} Bnpineps jVTanaeer. 



CALENDAR OF EVENTS FOR THE COM- 

 ING WEEK. 



Thursday, August 10tb.— Racing: Saratoga. Trottin»: Piqua, 0.; 

 Rochester. N. Y.; Pent water, Mich.; Tiekihva, 111. Rifle: Eleventh 

 Brigade practice at Creedmoor. Ba«e ball: Cincinnati vs. Chicaffo. at Cm 

 cinn ati; Louisville vs. St. Louis, at Louisville, Kv.; Mutual vs. Athletic, at 

 Brooklyn; Nassau vs. Hudson, at Brooklyn; Athletic vs. Lone Star, at 

 Catskill, N. Y.; Alaska vs. Enterprise, at Jersey City, N. J. ; Boston vs. 

 Live Oak, at Boston, Mass. 



FamAY, August 11th. —Trotting: Rochester, N. Y.; Piqua, O.; Tiskll- 

 wa, 111. First race between the Countess of Dufferin and Madeline for 

 "America" cup; N. Y. Harbor. Regatta, Saratoga Lake. Rifle: Third 

 Brigade practice at Creedmoor. Ba«e Ball: Mutual vs. Hartford, atBrook- 

 lyn; Boston vs. Rhode Island, at Boston, Mass.; Enterprise vs. Star, at 

 PatersonN. J»; San Francisco vs. Eureka, at Philadelphia; Stottsvillevs. 

 Athletic, at Stottsville, N. Y.; Greenville vs. Summit, at Greenville, N. 

 J.; Resolute of N. Y., vs Alpha, at Stapleton, S. I.; Resolute vs. Hobo- 

 ken, at Elizabeth, N. J.; Alaska vs. Resolute, of Elizabeth, at Jersey 

 City; Quickstep vs. Flyaway, at Melrose, N. Y. ; Monticello vs. Chat- 

 ham, at Jersey Citv. 



Saturday, August, 12th.— Racing; Saratoga. Trotting: Piqua, O. 

 Second race for "America" cup; regatta West Rutherford Park, N. J.; 

 regatta Quebec. Rifle: Geiger Bulls* ye Badge, Turf, Field and Farm 

 Badge, and Seventh Regiment 'shells 1 ' at Creedmoor. Base Ball: Cin- 

 cinnati vs. Chicago, at Cincinnati; Louisville vs. St. Louis, at Louisville, 

 Ky. ; Athletic vs. Hartford, at Philadelphia; Alaska vs. Mutual, at 

 Jersey City; Quickstep vs. Dauntless, at New York; Mutual vs. Alaska, at 

 Jersey Qjty; Staten Island vs. Orange, at Orange, N. J.; Athletic vs. 

 Witoka, at Brooklyn; Witoka vs. Mutual, at Brooklyn; Two nines from 

 Franklin Lit. Soc, at Brooklyn; Winona vs. Olympic, at Brooklyn; Os- 

 ceola vs. Star of Elizabeth, at Elizabeth, N. J. 



Monday, August 14th.— Trotting: Zanesville, O. R'fle: Second Brig- 

 ade practice at Creedmoor. Base Ball: Athletic vs. Hartford, at Phila- 

 delphia; Alaska vs. Olympic, of Manhattanville, at Jersey City; Chelsea 

 of Brooklyn vs. Cricket, at Binghampton, N. Y, 



Tuesday, August 15th,— Racing: Saratoga. Trotting: Utica, N. Y.; 

 Zanesville, O.: Manistee, Mich.; Warwick, N. Y; Lewiston, Me.; Point 

 Breeze Park, Philadelphia; Mendota, 111. Match between yachts Susie 

 S. and W. R.Brown, N. Y. Harbor. Rifle: American team practice at 

 Creedmoor. Base Ball: Mutual vs. Hartford; at Brooklyn; Monticello 

 vs. Enterprise, at Jersey City; Alaska vs. Chatham at Jersey City. 



Wednesday, August 16th.— Trotting as above. Rifle: American 

 team practice at Creedmoor. 



i 



GUIDES AS GAME PEOTETOR8. 



M. M. Barker.— Letters for this gentleman are frequently 

 addressed to the care of this office. Mr. Barker some 

 months ago dissolved his connection with. Forest and 

 Stream, as its traveling canvasser and correspondent, and 

 is now, we believe, employed upon the Bod and Gun in 

 some capacity. 



—Now at the beginning of a new volume (Vol. VII) is a 

 good time to subscribe for Forest and Stream, especially 

 as the fall shooting season is close at hand, and our columns 

 always contain much valuable information on topics per- 

 taining to the field. 



Y last letter wound up with a pair of direct assertions, 

 that will probably meet with unfavorable criticism 

 unless I am able to make them good; they were to the 

 effect that the Game Law itself was indirectly the cause of 

 the dimunition of the trout and deer in our Adirondack 

 wilderness. That it is so, and why it is so, I will endeavor 

 to show. 



The law is not only a failure, as far as restraining goes, 

 but it is an active agent against itself; it causes the very 

 evil it is intended to prevent. Let me get back to figures 

 and facts aejain for a moment. Four years ago my guide j 

 and I spent five days in fishing three miles of rapids and J 

 deep pools. It was in May, so the fish were not yet in the 

 "spring holes," and we iced down eighty pounds of dressed 

 trout— not troutlings— my big one par excellence weighed 

 three pounds seven ounces, and was taken at sunset, when 

 I could not see the white miller that unfortunately for him, 

 he did, and fifty of my best weighed fifty-one pounds. 

 This year I went over the same course twice and three of 

 us caught three trout of three ounces each. After that I 

 spent* the day catching bull-frogs. (I was very lucky 

 with frogs). I don't believe any one will do any better 

 next year, unless the trout thrive in spite of the law. There 

 is too much improper fishing which is legal, and too much 

 proper fishing and shooting which is illegal. You see I 

 draw a distinction between propriety and legality. 



There is a combat between the Law on the one side and 

 Nature on the other, and with no lawyers nor law officers 

 to carry out its provisions, the Law fares badly. My ex- 

 perience has been that of many, this year, and will be 

 that of more the next. Chubs, suckers, and bullheads 

 feed us instead of trout, and will do so because the law 

 carries in itself its own destroyer. As I have tried to show, 

 our guides, our wood-choppers, and so-called "hotel" 

 keepers, are a sturdy, independent set. Most of them are 

 intelligent and would be auick to break up a set-line, or 

 prosecute the man who would for mere wantonness or for 

 profit, "hound" deer, or kill more than he needed. But not 

 a man among them dare do it. The law is that he who kills 

 bird or beast out of season becomes by the act a criminal, 

 and thus, being himself subject to the penalties of the law, 

 cannot proceed against others who for lighter motives in- 

 fringe more grossly. Our pioneer is strong and uncultured, 

 but his natural points are coequal with his strength. He 

 has only his own wife and his own little ones for his com- 

 panionship, and no man outside can be more devoted to 

 his home. Our woodman is human, and he has human 

 rights which over-weigh those of the beast. Leading the 

 way for civilization to follow he leaves behind him the 

 meat market, the grocery, and store, and advances axe in 

 hand, hewing a living out. of the dense forest, and digging 

 it from the sterile soil— a living, yet a bare subsistence; a 

 life where bread is a luxury. This man has a natural in- 

 born right, and he knows it, to the food that Nature with 

 one hand provides, and with the other punishes him 

 with loss of his only capital — his strength — if he refuses. 

 By meat he must live, and meat he will and must have. 

 What cares he for the young of the deer if his own young 

 are suffering for food; if his own strength, which is their 

 support, is failing him for want of proper sustenance? Of 

 what importance is it to him that the young partridge does 

 suffer for its mother's care, if his own young one lies suf- 

 fering with illness, unable to partake of the pork and po- 

 tatoes which are its daily fare, far from the care of physi- 

 cians, left to him alone, and his mate. Nature leads to his 

 very door the most succulent of meat; he has but to take 

 and eat. He must be more or less than human if he re- 

 frains. He kills the deer, he feeds his family, and he lias 

 become a criminal. A man, whose hands, bound by 

 . his illegal deed, though committed through thehonestest of 

 motives, cannot be laid upon real criminals who, for mere 

 love of cruel sport or wantonness slay many, where he has 

 slain but one. "The law is the law, and he who breaks it 

 shall suffer death," was the old Draconian creed, and how 

 far have we got beyond it? He sees his larder grow leaner 

 year by year. He toils harder, but grows poorer. He 

 sees crimes that he would but cannot prevent because he 

 himself is a criminal. He sees the injustice of the law, he 

 sees that it cares for the young bird and the young deer, 

 but not for his young, that it insures, or tries to insure to 

 the city sportsman coming in at the proper season a fair 

 share of sport, but not to him a fair share of the necessaries 

 of life, and he rebels against it. "What is the law but a 

 nullity, a thing to be despised?" he thinks. "Who or what 

 is this law that says to me, 4 You must starve, you and your 

 brood; the animal's rights are greater than yours, their 

 young must not suffer, their mates, for a season, be be- 

 reaved.' Who is to carry out this odious law? The 

 Game Constable, a law breaker himeelf, elected by us who 

 have broken the law, and who will break it, and who can- 

 not be stopped?" So reasons the guide and woodsmen — 

 guide only during the short season of sport; a hard laborer 

 for the rest of his time. 



And who gainsays him? Sportsmen come into the 

 woods in June and July for trout, in September for deer. 

 The first finds "mutton," which he knows to be venison upon 

 his table, laughs, and, if he can, buys a saddle to carry out. 

 The later comer eats his trout, even if he knows it comes 

 from the spawning bed, and asks no questions. Can we 

 expect the guides and "hotel keepers" to act as purveyors 

 to our consciences, as well as to our stomachs, and sacri- 

 ficing their own comforts, save them to be pur luxuries? 



We don't prosecute nor make game constables of ourselves 

 We are hungry, feel the lawlessness of the woodland air' 

 we eat and are merry. I'll not accuse others, and plead 

 guiltless, for I have eaten and enjoyed a steak from a two- 

 year-old on a table where but for it I would have fared 

 badly. At Round Lake, a guide was employed by a visitor 

 to procure some lakers. The next morning he was de- 

 tected, as the fog lifted, in overhauling a set-line. Public 

 opinion was aroused, the hotel keeper was determined to 

 prosecute him; one guide determined to drag for the 

 line and destroy it; another proposed to "lick him." 

 I joined in their indignation, and encouraged each party to 

 carry out his plans; but they all fell through. I had other 

 matters to attend to and couldn't stay. "George" krew of 

 this one and that one killing deer out of season, and not a 

 man dared touch him. It was the game constable's busi- 

 ness! It was everybody's business, and nobody's. I read 

 to them your criticism on the firing at the Hon. W. A, 

 Wheeler's party, and as Mr. Wheeler was likely to be Vice- 

 President, and as I lived in Washington. I was supposed to 

 have a good deal of influence with him, and I worked them 

 up till they all promised well; but George Burton goes free, 

 and if any one wants lakers they have only to engage him. 

 A just law, a wise law, that will give to the man who, 

 living in the woods must live by the w 7 oods, a right to do 

 what he now does and will do in spite of the law, would 

 make game constables, and good ones, of nineteen out of 

 twenty of the men who are now criminals. Give the right 

 to kill for food and killing for sport would become a dan- 

 gerous business. Put the woodman in a position where he 

 can uphold a law, and make a law he can uphold, and he 

 will do it. There are not so many men in the woods but 

 that our deer and fish would thrive under their protection 

 better than without it. With, my guide I saw on a fisher- 

 man's premises a spear intended to take the salmon on her 

 spawing bed. I was assured that it was not used, but 

 quien sale. Through the ice in winter hundreds of 

 pounds of trout are taken for the market, and law does not 

 seem to have inherent power to stop it- Spy Lake, where, 

 two seasons ago, fine catches of splendid trout rewarded an 

 evening's troll, this season is but a barren pond. Three 

 hundred pounds, J was informed, were taken from it last 

 winter through the ice. 



There is, too, destructive fishing which is not illegal, 

 but should be; aud it is to it more than to all other causes 

 combined that Piseco is losing her brook trout. I will 

 give my own experience. Taking a Sunday's drive to the 

 head of the lake, I met men there who told me tales of 

 mountain brooks, near by, "where brook trout were plen- 

 tiful." Three parties who had fished them this season 

 "had carried away, one 80, another 60, and another 36 

 pounds each, in two days' fishing." By Monday evening 1 

 had broken up at Rude's, and was shantied out about five 

 miles up an inlet, a wild romantic little river spreading in 

 two places into pretty lakes, and navigable for our boals. 

 We were in the real woods. The next morning's work 

 satisfied us; trout after trout sprang eagerly to our flies, 

 none were less than three inches long, none over 

 seven, and few over six'. We threw back such of these 

 babies as were not too badly hooked, and at noon broke 

 camp disgusted, having in our five baskets, perhaps 15 or 

 20 pounds that had fallen victims, while we were working 

 rapidly along in hopes of better game. We, too, could 

 have gotten "80 pounds" had we chosen, but we were not 

 fishing for a tavern. The baby trout, perhaps 400 pounds, 

 which have been taken (for several parties of sportsnien (?) 

 have followed us), to every pound an average of eight 

 or ten fish, would have furnished next year to Piseco fully 

 a thousand pounds of trout worthy of the name. Our 

 game was but a short remove from the spawn bed. To he 

 be sure they had spots, had absorbed their sacs, and were 

 trout— brook trout-^-that noble game that entitles its captor, 

 even of a dozen with a pin hook, to dub and think him- 

 self a fisherman. Nobody tried to stop us from going to 

 this fish preserve, because it was nobody's business; so 

 reasoned the guides whom I reproached for permitting us 

 to learn by experience what they already knew. Nobody 

 could have stopped us had a trial heen made had we have 

 chosen to go on, for there is no needed precept in the law " 

 which preserves such inlets to public waters. Nor is there 

 in the law a provision that he who shall offer for sale or 

 barter any brook trout less than six inches in length shall suffer 

 penalty. Those little trout that made up the 80 pounds, I 

 traced to this village, where they were sold to a tavern, 

 and fed to New York drummers. At the foot of this lake 

 another guide took another party, innocent of ill purposes 

 as I was when I went out, up another inlet, and another 

 fine lot of little ones paid for the trip. 



The consequences of this wanton destruction are making 

 themselves felt. The brook trout are becoming scarce, 

 the sport is becoming a toil, the landlords and guides are 

 becoming poorer, lake after lake, once teeming with splen- 

 did fish, are but frog and bullhead ponds, and the day is 

 not far off when the big chub that even now too often takes 

 the spoon, will be welcomed instead of damned. The long 

 suffering goose whose eggs have been golden, furnishes 

 now but silver and dross, and very soon she will have 

 ceased her vocation as did the one of fable. There is a 

 remedy for this surely growing evil, but that remedy must 

 be applied promptly to be of service. Stocking the lakes 

 will be of but little avail if the winter's depredations 

 through the ice, and the slaughter of the young trout in 

 the inlets be not prevented. Our hope is in a law based 

 upon the actual situation; one that, guided by the experi- 

 ence of those who actually go into the woods and who 

 learn, whereof they speak, will provide penalties for wrong 



