Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $i a Year. 10 Cts. a Copt. I 

 Six Months, $2. { 



NEW YORK, MARCH 29, 1888. 



1 VOL. XXX.— No. 10. 



I Nos. 39 & 40 Park Bow, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



E ditori al. 



Opening the Trout Season. 



To Destroy the Seals. 



A New Metropolitan Shooting 



Ground. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Rock Climbers.— xiv. 

 The Sportsman Toukist. 



Four Days on Upper Kennebec 

 Natural History. 



Ridgway's North American 

 Birds. 



A Little Girl on Sparrows. 

 As to Moose and Caribou. 

 American Skylark. 

 A Wolf's Crime. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 

 The Grouse and Squirrels. 

 Ontario Game Laws. 

 Shooting Fads. 

 Stocking Game Grounds. 

 Yellowstone Park Petition. 

 A Mountain Lion. 

 Turkeys and Deer in Missouri. 

 Game Notes. 



The Albany Game Law Mill. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Fly-Table Notes and Talk.-m. 

 Tackle. 



A Piscatorial Round-up.- 1. 

 Sunapee Trout Again. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Massachusetts Trout Season. 



The Coming Tournament. 



An Odd Fish. 



Angling Notes. ■ 

 FisHcrji/ruRE. 



The Menhaden Question. 

 The Kennel. 



American Kennel Register. 



Troy Dog Show. 



Poached Reports. 



Mange and Puppies. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Riele and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



A New York Sluntiug Ground. 

 Tri-State Championship Shoot 

 Yachting. 

 Exceptions Which Make the 

 Rule. 



Facts Against Wind. 



Felling and Preservation of 

 Timber. 



Yachting Notes. 

 Canoeing. 



Atlantic Division Meet. 



Tuckuns, Duckers and Canoes. 



On a Shallow Stream. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



PROTECT THE PARK. 

 All Readers who are interested in the protection of the 

 Yellowstone National Park are invited to co-operate with 

 this journal in the endeavor to secure needed legislation. 

 Petitions will be sent to all who will undertake to have 

 them signed and forwarded to Washington. 



OPENING THE TROUT SEASON. 



f~\N Monday next the trout fishing begins, by law, in 

 ^-^ many parts of the State of New York. It has al- 

 ready opened in New Jersey, but none but those who 

 never miss the first day will be likely to take advantage 

 of the legal opening, because the chances are all against 

 anything like decent weather in which an angler may be 

 free from the discomforts of chattering teeth and mittened 

 hands, in the raw winds left over from March. In most 

 parts of the State the streams are still covered with ice, 

 and there can be no sport on them. The Long Island 

 brooks arc not frozen, but the banks are covered with 

 snow in many places, and there is much snow water in 

 the streams, the effects of the great storm not having yet 

 disappeared. 



It is true that trout can be caught under such circum- 

 stances, and many anglers think that most of the big fish 

 are only to be had during the first ten days of the season, 

 but this is not always so, and, as so many of the craft 

 will wait for decent weather, it might be Avell to go back 

 to the old time of opening, May 1. There will, in all pro- 

 bability, be no good trouting in the streams of Sullivan 

 county, N. Y. , before the last of April, and it is only on 

 Long Island that there is a prospect of decent fishing be- 

 fore the middle of next month, at least. By making the 

 opening day May 1 the trout would have a longer time to 

 get in good flesh, although they are not really poor* now. 



and the angler would not look forward to the chances of 

 an east wind and rheumatic pains, while trying to believe 

 that he is enjoying one of the greatest pleasures of his 

 life. 



There will be a good display of trout in Fulton Market, 

 Mr. Blackford having been promised specimens from 

 many places, and eggs and fry from the Long Island 

 hatchery will also be shown. Lovers of trout who do not 

 care to tempt the chilling winds can thus look at the 

 trout which they are too wise to expose themselves to 

 catch. 



A METROPOLITAN SHOOTING GROUND. 



r pHE suggestion made by a correspondent that the city 

 of New York should have a shooting ground, is a 

 good one. He rightly nays that there are thousands of 

 men in and about the city owning guns and anxious to 

 shoot them, but who find it impossible, owing to the fact 

 that there is no ground easy of access, and where one 

 may be assured of finding opportunity at any visit, and all 

 appliances for an hour or more of practice. It could be 

 made the recognized locality for the shooting off of 

 matches, and by a division of the time, not a few clubs 

 could make it their regular resort for the shooting of 

 stated matches. 



It frequently happens that it is desirable to try a new 

 gun or to test some new ammunition, and it is difficult to 

 find a spot where one may go without fear of interrup- 

 tion and fire away to his heart's content. Our corres- 

 pondent thinks there are many who go out for field shoot- 

 ing in season and would like a chance at such shooting 

 from traps to keep the hand in, the eye sharp, and the 

 joints limber. 



At any rate, properly managed and discreetly run, 

 such a ground ought to find paying clientage among New 

 Yorkers who love the sport of trap-shooting. It must 

 not, when established, carry about it the least taint of 

 trickery, nor of low associations; nor should it be run in 

 the interest of any one make of artificial bird, nor of this 

 or that manufacturing concern of any sort. The news- 

 papers will give ample notice to the doings at such a 

 resort when public matches are indulged in. Yet a good 

 share of its revenue ought to come from catering to pri- 

 vate practice in a quiet way. At present there is no 

 system w r hatever. Clubs scurry away to some nook, 

 generally in the back yard of a country roadside hotel; 

 but this is unsatisfactory, and with the boom in trap- 

 shooting, the time seems appropriate for a new and more 

 systematic departure as suggested. 



TO DESTROY THE SEALS. 



A BILL providing for the destruction of seals in Mass- 

 achusetts waters was recently favorably reported 

 by the Fish and Game Committee of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives of the Commonwealth. It provides for the 

 payment of a bounty of $2 on each seal killed, the tails 

 to be presented as evidence of the killing, and all sums 

 disbursed on this account to come out of the treasury 

 of the Commonwealth. The reason for this bill, brought 

 forward by those who urge the adoption of the measure, 

 is that the seals found along the Massachusetts coast 

 destroy great numbers of food fish, which is no doubt 

 true. 



Without, at present considering the wisdom of pro- 

 curing the extermination of the seals of the New 

 England coast by such a step, it may be remarked, as 

 suggested by the Boston Herald, that the passage of such 

 a law would open wide the door for fraud, and would 

 make a market in Massachusetts for the tails of seals 

 captured far from her coasts. The sealing fleet of New- 

 foundland would, no doubt, be very glad to have such a 

 law passed, for it would add materially to the value of 

 its annual catch. It might cost Massachusetts some 

 hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. The Com- 

 mittee on Finance, to which the bill was referred, has 

 reported that it ought not to pass, and it may be pre- 

 sumed the Legislature will agree with this view. 



The offering of bounties without considering the results 

 which are to follow is too common among our State 

 Legislatures to excite much surprise. A recent example 

 occurred in Pennsylvania, where an ill-considered move 

 in this direction cost the State many thousands of dollars 

 in cash, and no doubt many thousands more in the in- 

 crease of grain-devouring small mammals whose most 

 efficient checks, the hawks and owls, were destroyed 



under the operation of the law. In Wyoming and Mon- 

 tana not very long ago, laws were passed offering a 

 bounty for the heads of gophers, ground squirrels, prairie 

 dogs, and other small burrowing rodents. The result 

 was that all the small boys and idle people in the Terri- 

 tories took to hunting these "small deer," and made good 

 wagess, nearly bankrupting several counties, while the 

 gophers seemed to be as numerous as ever. It will be 

 well, therefore, for the Massachusetts Legislature to con- 

 sider the subject carefully before passing any law offer- 

 ing a bounty on seals. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 O PORTSMEN, naturalists and all other people who are 

 ^ interested in the preservation of game and birds, 

 will be sorry to learn of the action of the Ontario Legis- 

 lature referred to in another column. It will be seen 

 that the bill as reported does not forbid the clogging of 

 deer, nor does it provide that the intending hunter must 

 procure a license. The provision that only five deer may 

 be killed by one or more hunters from one camp will be 

 a dead letter, since it can never be enforced. The sec- 

 tion requiring three months residence in the Province 

 before any person shall be at liberty to kill deer, or other 

 game, amounts to a practical barring out of all residents 

 of the United States from shooting privileges in Ontario, 

 and will seem a severe hardship to those clubs whose 

 members reside on this side of the line. Some of these 

 clubs have spent large sums of money in the purchase 

 of extensive tracts of wild and worthless land, and have 

 gone to considerable expense in putting improvements 

 on such property. A bill such as the one reported would, 

 if it became a law, mean little less than confiscation of 

 the property of these associations. The matter will no 

 doubt receive attention before long from persons inter- 

 ested. There can be no question about the wisdom of 

 absolutely prohibiting the killing of moose until 1895. 

 These grand animals are growing scarce in Ontario; in- 

 deed, by some they are said to be almost extinct. The fail- 

 ure of the bird protective bill is a misfortune, and empha- 

 sizes again the point which we have so often urged , that the 

 people at larg3 need to be educated as to the enormously 

 important part played by our small birds in the economy 

 of nature. If the people of America cannot be brought 

 to comprehend the value to agriculture of these indefati- 

 gable aids to the farmer, the United States and Canada 

 as well will ere long have to pay a heavy penalty for 

 their heedlessness. 



The constant demands received by us from clubs and 

 individuals for copies of the petition relating to the Yel- 

 lowstone Park bill shows how widespread and general is 

 the interest felt on this subject by people all over the 

 land. The plan which we have adopted with regard to 

 this petition puts it within the power of every one to do 

 something toward helping forward this good work, and 

 as every American citizen must feel a pride in this mag- 

 nificent possession of our nation, all should be willing to 

 lend their aid to the accomplishment of so desirable an 

 object as the protection of the National Park. We print 

 this week the names of a few of the signers to the earlier 

 petitions which went out, and shall continue the list each 

 week. 



A correspondent elsewhere implies that market-shoot- 

 ers are a selfish class, destitute of true sportsmanlike 

 feeling. This may be a general idea, but it is an errone- 

 ous one and does great injustice to a large class of men, 

 any one who has done much shooting knows. We 

 have found, among those whose circumstances obliged 

 them to sell their birds, as true-hearted men with as high 

 an ideal of sportsmanship as among any class with whom 

 we have ever shot. Pot-hunting is by no means confined 

 to people who wear shabby coats. 



The American Kennel Register carries the roll of the 

 dogs entered up to over 6100; a remarkable record. Since 

 its enlargement to twenty-four pages, the Register for 

 each month contains valuable material aside from the 

 record of registry and dog shows, which makes it indis- 

 pensable to any one who owns a dog. 



In view of the severity of the past winter, the prospects 

 for good fall shooting are not bright. It must be remem- 

 bered, however, that while the snows have been heavy 

 and continuous, they have not been crusted. 



