Duc. 18, 1884.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
407 
like those given us at the last session of the Legislature, 
should be accompanied by a special appropriation for their 
enforcement. We should haye been enabled to station a 
competent warden and assistants at certain portions of our 
State, to make prompt arrests of persons, weapons and out- 
fits. Toa limited extent we have done this, but were only 
enabled so to do by withdrawing funds and expending money 
that should have been devoted to other branches of service. 
We again here reiterate our recommendations of last year. 
Our wardens are to look for their pay chiefly to one-half 
the penalty against convicted persons, At present, through 
the means afforded us, from the SSH trial justice to the 
bench, the enforcement of the laws and the punishment of 
crime is as uncertain and precarious asa venture by lot- 
tery. The jurisdiction of a trial justice is limited to twenty 
dollars. he penalty for killing a moose illegally is one 
hundred dollars; a caribou or deer,forty dollars, All these 
cases must goto a higher court. We are there met by a 
grand jury at best unsympathetic from indifference, Our 
county attorneys are elected by the votes of the people. 
Their salaries, as a rule, are entirely inadequate to the severe 
and important duties required of them, They are the ad- 
visers of the grand jury; a heavy docket of criminal cases 
does not render to the county attorney the pay that the 
most puny shyster can earn in the purlieus of a police court. 
Might we be allowed most respectfully to suggest whether 
it would not be an improvement on our present system, both 
in economy and justice, that the county attorneys be ap- 
pointed by the Governor and Council, and hold office during 
good behavior? Let them have a good salary for the talent 
and work they are to devote to the duties of the office, and 
thus have protection in the fearless performance of their 
duty, independent of popular caprice. We most earnestly, 
emphatically desire to impress upon our Legislature the 
necessity that final jurisdiction be conferred upon our trial 
justices for all violations of our game laws, regardless of the 
amount of the penalty, Weeould then obtain speedy trial 
and justice, while the parties would be protected against 
the great expense of delay before our county courts, almost 
equal to the penalty, even when the defendant is successful, 
The moose of Maine have increased in numbers in sections 
of the State remote from the borders. The law has been 
better observed by our own citizens than by visitors from 
other States. The most serious pest and outrage is by the 
Tobigue and St, Francis Indians, and whites from New 
Brunswick and Canada, crust-hunting for skins. 
It is said, and ihe information comes from reliable sources, 
that upward of one thousand moose hides were marketed in 
Toronto this last spring, from animals killed in the State of 
Maine, It creates a great deal of bitter feeling among our 
Own citizens, as aliens are beyond our jurisdiction unless 
caught in the act on our territory. Four good wardens 
stationed on our border could atop all this, had we the means, 
If the Dominion of Canada and the associated provinces 
would pass laws co-operative with ours, forbidding the kill- 
ing of moose, caribou and deer, excepting from October 1 to 
January 1, and grouse from September 1 to December 1, 
and their exportation from the Dominion or Provinces at 
any time, an effective and positive remedy would be ap- 
plied. The Maine game laws were enacted entirely from a 
desire of our own citizens to protect and preserve the indi- 
genous game of the State. The Legislature has at the same 
time generously so framed ber laws as to shut out poached 
or stolen game from other States, 
Even the Provinces, and the Dominion, and Massachusetts 
are so protected. The citizens of Maine willingly, freely, 
liberally pay for the care and protection of the game of their 
State, that they may indulge—in their yearly vacation, in 
their own forests—their love of field sports. The United 
States laws do not permit us to shut out even aliens from 
sharing with us. We are taxed and pay the expense of 
legislation and protection; the least our visitors can do, if 
deserving the name of men, is to obey our laws. Maine 
owns all the game of the State, and has the right to dictate 
the terms upon which the same may be killed, and the ex- 
tent of the title to the property when killed. If the game of 
Maine is to be preserved, so that her citizens may indulge in 
their favorite pastime, no future exportation of it must be 
permilted. Let the law be so amended, if possible without 
letting in the market-liunter, that a man who has legally 
killed his quota of game may be allowed to take it to his 
own home within the boundaries of the State, but in all and 
every instance strictly accompanying it himself and haying 
it in his own possession. 
The same Jaw should apply to all our game, ducks, wood- 
cock, plover, partridge. Every class of men coming to our 
State, in the pure spirit of selfishness, to participate in our 
field sports, toward which they haye paid and pay not one 
cent, deem themselves qualified to demand an alteration of 
the law to meet their own wishes. If their business require 
them to take their vacation in August, they modestly ask 
that they may be allowed to take, after they have dishonestly 
taken, so much of our immature and breeding and nursing 
game as will eke out the scant fare of their camp. Others 
desire September added, etc., ete., etc,, cach presenting a 
treason for the desired change, In reply, Jet us state that 
every penny expended by our visitors is upon themselves, in 
pure selfishness. and in an indulgence of license they would 
not care to exhibit elsewhere. 
Our venison is not done nursing in September, and still 
comes down to the water in our usually hot and dry autumn. 
The cover is too thick for the most skillful of still-hunters 
to secure fairly a head of game, The real object sought is a 
ehange that will permit moose calling when it is as fair and 
noble and sportsman-like as to spear fish on their spawning 
beds. It is also equally sought for the noble sport of shin- 
ing or jack hunting the wretched deer in the water, No! 
no change there! From the prominent men of our own 
State, of all parts and professions, comes the request for a 
close time for all our venison for five years. When we ap- 
plied fer the relief which our Legislature so generously and 
promptly granted but two years since, had it not been ex- 
tended to us there would not be a head of game left to raise 
an argument over now. It is true it has inereased beyond 
our most sanguine expectations, but jt is not up to the 
desired standard; far below the capabilities of our territory. 
Let the present law, as a modified close time, remain un- 
touched, in full force for two years longer. That will give 
us time to correct our laws understandingly, and take the 
osition we intend to hold for all the future. The State of 
aine owns all the game of Maine. and alone has the power 
to leyislate and give the right to kill, and the title to property 
when killed, and its disposal. 
Three thousand copies of the fish and game laws of the 
State of Maine, and two thousand posters containing 
abstracts from tlie lawsas to dates of close and open times, 
penalties, etc., have been printed by the Commissioners and 
- 
a 
distributed at all the principal hotels, railroad stations, etc., 
throughout the State. Notwithstanding this large number 
circulated, it has not met the demand, and a further edition 
was withheld, simply from our want of funds. 
To the poachers’ ery of wolf, the Commissioners have re- 
sponded by the offer of a double bounty for every wolf 
scalp. No claims have been presented. 
NON-RESIDENTS IN NORTH CAROLINA. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Two gentlemen from Philadelphia have just passed 
through here on their way home. Their experience has 
been a dear one. I give a synopsis of it, and ask for some 
explanation, They went to Currituck Sound, North Caro- 
lina, for duck shooting. When they reached there they 
found that they could not shoot from. batteries, not being 
residents of the State. They tried point shooting, but as 
there were three batteries within some 500 yards of their 
point they got one duck, while each battery averaged (they 
think) near 100, They inform me also that even the mem- 
bers of clubs, with charters from the State, are not allowed 
to shoot from batteries, but can only shoot from the shore. 
Having in mind the article in Forest AND STRHAM of a few 
weeks ago, relative to the Narrows Island Club and the 
great expense they have been to fit up their club house, also 
the quotation ($5,000) of the price of shares, I write to ask 
if these gentlemen are restricted to the shore also, and if 
they are, is the law restricting them legally right? Of 
course | mean is the law constitutional? If it is, persons 
going there from another State will probably have the same 
experience as the two gentlemen I have reterred.to. 
But the ill luck of these gentlemen did not end there. 
They left the old North State in disgust and came up to 
Cobb’s Island. There were neither ducks, brant nor geese 
there, so they kept on up to Paramore’s Island, walking 
through heavy sand four miles to the pounds where they shot, 
from the house at which they were staying, twice a day for 
two days. They got one black duck. They left yesterday 
for Ocean City. 
The completion of the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk 
road brings the counties of the eastern shore of Virginia in 
close communication with the North. Years ago this would 
have opened up to the sportsman a country abounding in 
game, but those happy days have gone. The bays are filled 
with oyster boats that shoot and shoot at every unfortunate 
duck, trash or otherwise, that comes within two hundred 
yards. This, with the constant presence of the oystermen 
at the low tides, has driven wildfowl away. This has been 
so for years, and accounts, I believe, for their great increase 
in Currituck. 
So much for the water shooting, on laud it is even worse, 
The high price of sweet potatoes, and the adaptability of 
the soil to their culture has led the farmers to neglect other 
erops for this. No oats are sown, wheat never was. In 
consequence there is no stubble, and the few birds that are 
raised live in the swamps. If they come out to sun or dust, 
as soon as they get up they fly back into these impenetrable 
recesses. Seven birds is the largest bag I have heard of for 
three men this season. I understand the same experience 
holds in the lower eastern shore counties of Maryland. 
The fishing here is excellent. for weakfish trom May until 
August, and from September until November. Shore bird 
shooting isa thing of the past. Every Fifteenth Amend- 
ment has a gun and blazes away at everything. They scare 
more than they kill, but what is stranger, the guns never 
seem to burst. I haye trespassed on your space long enough, 
and haye wandered far from my subject. Is the Jaw of 
North Carolina, forbidding non-residents shooting from bat- 
teries, constitutional or not, and what effect bas it on organ- 
ized clubs? ' 
Accomac County, Va. 
CANADIAN GAME LAW, 
fee sportsmen of Canada are taking measures to haye 
the game law changed. Last week a deputation con- 
sisting of Mayor Boswell, 8. Downer, J. B. Henderson, W. 
H. Mathews, C. G. Harstone, C. A. Johnson, and C. H. 
Nelson waited upon the Hon. T. B, Pardee, Commissioner 
of Crown Lands. Mayor Boswell explained that on the 22d 
of March last a meeting of the leading Canadian sportsmen 
was held, when the amendments were discussed. The sec- 
ond clause in “'The Protection of Game Laws,” if the pro- 
posed amendments were ratified by the Legislature, would 
read as follows: ; 
None of the animals or_birds hereafter mentioned shall be 
hunted, taken, or killed within the periods hereinafter lim- 
ited; (1) deer, elk, moose, reindeer, or caribou between the 
fifteenth day of Decernber and the fifteenth day of October; 
(2) grouse, pheasant, prairie fowl, partridge, woodcock, 
snipe, waterfowl, known as mallard, gray duck, black duck, 
wood or summer duck, other ducks, swans or peese between 
the first day of January and the first day of September; (3) wild 
turkey and prairie fowl be protected for three years; (4) quail, 
between the first day of January and the first day of Octo- 
ber; (5) hares, between the first day of March and the first 
day of September. 
No person shall at any time anchor or place decoy ducks 
in open water, lakes, or bays, at a greater distance than fifty 
yards from the beach or shore of such open water, lakes or 
bays. And in case of swampy shores or where rushes or 
other natural growth in the water is sufficient to form a 
natural place of concealment for the sportsman then not 
more than fifty yards’ from such natural place of conceal- 
ment. 
No shooting of ducks of any kind shall take place after 
sunset in the evening or before daybreak in the morning, 
The Commissioner of Crown Lands has the power of ap- 
pointing officers to see to the observance of this Act and any 
other Aet which may hereafter be passed relating to game in 
this Province. — 
Tn future no person except farmers can, at any time, shoot 
within the meahing of this Act without being authorized 
thereto by a license to that effect, 
Such permit may, upon payment of a fee of $25 (twenty- 
five dollars), be granted by the Commissioner of Orown 
Lands to any person not domiciled in the Province, and 
upon payment of the sum of $2 by any person domiciled in 
the Province, other than farmers, who apply to him there- 
for, and shall be valid for the whole of one season’s shooting. 
Tt must be countersigned by the Game Superintendent. 
Every wood ranger, appointed by the Commissioner of 
Crown Lands, is, while in office, as such, ex-officio game in- 
spector for the division under his superintendence, and he ts 
not entitled to any additional salary for such services, 
The Commissioner of Crown Landa may also appoint as 
game inspectors any other persons besides the wood rangers, 
and assign to them such territory or division as he may think 
proper under the circumstances. 
Every game inspector shall, during the last days of the 
month, forward to the Crown Lands Department a report of 
his proceedings during the month and of the infringements 
of the law which have come to his knowledge during the 
same period. 
It shall be the duty of every such game inspector appointed 
as aforesaid, forthwith to seize all peltries and animals, or 
portions of animals, in the possession of any person contrary 
to the provisions of this Act, and to bring the person in pos- 
session of the same before a Justice of the Peace to answer 
for such illegal possessions, 
Tt shall also be the duty of every such game inspector to 
institute prosecutions against all persons found infringing 
the provisions of this Act or any of them, and every such in- 
spector may cause to be opened, or may himself open in case 
of refusal, any bag, parcel, chest, box, trunk, or receptacle, 
in which he has reason to believe that game killed or taken 
during the close season, or peltries out of season, are hidden. 
SOME REMARKABLE SHOTS. 
Liditor Forest and Stream: 
The shot on which I pride myself most, as being the result . 
of skill as well as chance, occurred in this wise: Hight 
inches of soft snow had fallen during the night, and I started 
out in the morning feeling that | ought to seore a successful 
day’s hunt. A fine buck, killed after following him but 
little over an hour, justified my expectations; and about 11 
o’clock I took up the track of a doe, with a single very 
large fawn. The wariness of this doe was wonderful. In 
spite of the splendid hunting, she baffled me st every turn, 
She never seemed to lose sight of the fact that she was being 
followed, and seemed to depend wholly on her cunning; 
running but very little. In spite of my determination to get 
a shot at her, which had increased as the day wore on! I 
followed her till sunset, without haying obtained anything 
like the merest glimpse of my game. I wus fast losing hope, 
as but afew moments of daylight were left me, when, on 
coming to the edge of a flat, covered by heavy yellow birch 
timber, and terminated on the further side by an abrupt 
bank, like that of a river, I saw the old doe standing half 
Way up the bank, broadside to; the fawn below her, its 
slender neck upstretched exactly in line with its mother’s 
shoulder. At that distance (96 very long paces) the neck 
looked about the size of a hoe handle; but 1 took a quick 
look through the double sights, and fired. The fawn went 
down like a stone, the doe gave one convulsive bound, nearly 
twenty feet, to the top of the bank, dropped dead in her 
tracks, and rolled back across her fawn, 
My next shot, purely one of chance, I think can be classed 
as wonderful. I had finished my season’s hunting and gone 
into a lumber camp to work the balance of the winter. ‘The 
cook was an artist in his line, and was distressed because he 
had no yenison to make mince pies, none of the crew being 
adepts in the art of still-honting. The snow at that time waa 
very noisy, but I agreed to furnish the necessary pie material 
at the yery first opportunity. This occurred on the next 
Sunday morning, when, on rising very late—according to 
camp etiquelte on that day—I found that five inches of soft 
snow had just fallen, and it was still lazily coming down. 
I hastily swallowed the regulation quantity of pork and 
beans, and taking my trusty rifle, which had honestly earned 
its title of ‘‘The Deerslayer,” plunged in among the snow- 
laden boughs. Almost within sight of camp I came upon 
the faint imprint of deer tracks in the new-fallen snow, evi- 
dently those of a doe and fawn, made in the earlier part of 
the storm (if the quiet snowfall could be called such). This 
suited me, as does and fawns were then in their best condi- 
tion, while the bucks were frightfully thin. True to the 
still-hunter’s instincts, 1 began creeping on the iracks, as if 
the deer were surely within gunshot; and it was well 1 did, for 
within twenty rods of where Istruck the tracks I suddenly 
saw half the neck and the head of the fawn, which was lying 
down, partly turned from me, placidly chewing its cud. A 
shot through its neck stretched it lifeless, and with my rifle 
held ready for a second shot, I advanced cautiously, expect- 
ing to see the doe; but nothing stirring, | concluded that she 
had got away unobserved in the thick spruce growth, So 
setting away my rifle, I began to dress the fawn, which 
proved to be a very large and fat one. In doing this I had 
changed my position, so that on rising I caught full sight of 
the doe lying dead, twenty feet away to the left, and at right 
angles with the line of fire. Half stupified with amazement, 
I walked up to her, and found the warm blood still trickling 
from a bullet hole in the center of her belly, and saw that 
she had died in her bed without a kick. On going back to 
the fawn to investigate, I found that the bullet (a pointed 
one), about fourfeet beyond the neck of the fawn, had passed 
through a hackmatack sapling two inches through, a little to 
the left of the center, tearing the left side out and cutting the 
tree nearly half down, then turning at a right angle, it had 
struck the doe as mentioned, passed directly upward be- 
tween the kidneys, cutting off the big artery and burying 
itself in the spine, The deer was as safe from a direct shot 
as though the Rocky Mountains had interposed between us. 
At another time, when following a big, fat doe in a feath- 
ery snow, which adiered to everything, on coming to an 
alder run, about eighty yards across, filled with these bushes 
from the size of a knitting needle to over an inch through, I 
caught sight of her black tail hanging down motionless. 
There was about one chance in a thousand of getting a bullet 
through, but J always took all such chances, and fired with- 
out a moment’s hesitation. The tail disappeared instantane- 
ously, and fixing my eyes on an object in range, so as to ad- 
vance in a direct line, I followed the path of the bullet. 
Half way across [ found an alder about as big as a pipe stem 
cut off clean; half way from there, to where the déer stood, 
and fully ten feet to the right of the line, I saw another 
alder, fuily an inch in diameter, cut off not more than a foot 
above the ground, and thrown three feet from its stump. 
“That settles it,” I said to myself, and started rapidly for- 
ward to take up the track again. On reaching the spot, I 
found some black hairs lying on the snow exactly as if cut 
out by a bullet, and the first bound of the deer was nearly 
twenty feet. This looked like a wounded deer, but smiling 
at the absurdity of the idea, I pressed forward, and within 
ten rods came Upon my game stone dead, with a bullet ex- 
actly through the center of its tail. To have struck the 
| deer at all after being deflected ten feet out of its course 
would have been sufficiently remarkable, but to go exactly 
to the spot aimed at was a singular chance. 
One shot with a “scatter” gun and I have done. Duck 
shooting one fallin Fish Lake Valley, Southwestern Nevada, 
I found a place a few sores in extent, where innumerable 
