404 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[t)E0. 15, 1881 



kme §jug and §>mp 



Address aU communicatiom to the Forest and Stream Pub. Co. 



Antelope and Deer of America. By J. D. Caton. 

 Price $2.50. Wing and Glass Ball Shooting with the 

 Rifli. By W. 0. Bliss. Price 50 cents. Rifle, Rod and 

 Gun in California. By T. S. Van Dyke. Price $1.50. 

 Shore Birds. Price 15 cents. Woodcraft. By "Ness- 

 muk." Price 01. Trajectories of Hunting Rifles. Price 

 50 cents. The Still-Hunter. By T. S. Van Dyke. Pi-ice $2. 



SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM OF PROTECTION 



PATERSON, N. J., Dec. 12.— Editor Forest and 

 Stream: In your last issue you suggest that the New 

 Jersey Fish and Game Protective Association ought to 

 make a test case of the non-resident shooting law of this 

 State. This suggestion indicates to me a probable mis- 

 conception of the objects of our association or a limited 

 knowledge of the geography of this State, certainly a 

 mistake as to the association which tested the dog law. 

 The Passaic County Pish and Game Protective Association 

 tested the dog law for the benefit of many of its members, 

 and that association, existing in a county in northern 

 New Jersey, has nothing to do with the non-resident 

 shooting law enforced by an association in southern New 

 Jersey, nearly a hundred miles from here. Of course we 

 have under the laws of the State a right to collect fees 

 from men who shoot here in our county, for the law pro- 

 vides that hunters or anglers shall abide by the rules of 

 local associations formed under the State law, as ours is. 

 Our association has never done anything of the kind, but 

 has confined itself strictly to the objects for which it was 

 started, the protection and propagation of game, game 

 fish and song and insectivorous birds. It is true that 

 we have stocked the woods with quail and the streams 

 and other waters with fish, but sportsmen from New 

 York or any other place are welcome to enjoy their sport 

 in Passaic county as long as they do not violate the State 

 laws. We have added no additional burdens or restric- 

 tions to those imposed by the legislature and nobody has 

 ever suggested such a thing. Because we happen to live 

 in a county abounding with forests and streams we do 

 not wish to make money out of men who live in neigh- 

 borhoods so bountifully blessed by nature. Some New 

 York sportsmen recognizing our objects have become 

 members of our association and pay the trifling dues pro- 

 vided for in our constitution, but nobody is required to do 

 this, and in Passaic county all sportsmen, come they from 

 far or near, stand on an equal footing. 



While I am writing of protection, perhaps I might add 

 a few words on this subject which may be of encourage- 

 ment to others who would like to protect the game and 

 fish in their vicinity but are prevented from doing so for 

 various reasons. It is now nearly four years ago when I 

 was in conversation with a prominent lawyer on the sub- 

 ject of protection. I suggested the formation of an asso- 

 ciation, but he laughed at me and said, "That would not 

 work; I have tried it and so have others. Still, if you 

 think of doing so, go ahead; I will do what I can to assist 

 you, but I know it will be a failure." I did start the asso- 

 ciation by calling a meeting. About twenty responded, 

 and shortly afterward the organization was perfected as 

 prescribed by the laws of this State. We became a body 

 corporate of which every member had the right to arrest 

 violators of the law. Our membership increased until we 

 number nearly a hundred. Of course, that is not nearly 

 as strong as it ought to be, but it is strong enough to 

 accomplish a great deal of good. I met with the pro- 

 verbial lack of interest of sportsmen in protection, but 

 that had no deterring influence. Meetings of the associ- 

 ation were frequently held with very few present, but we 

 confined ourselves strictly to the business for which we 

 were organized. We indulged in no pigeon-shooting 

 matches, for which a great many "protective*' associations 

 are formed, and we had no elegantly fitted up parlors. 

 In fact, we pay no rent for our place 'of meeting. In all 

 prosecutions for violations of the law one-half the fine 

 goes to the county. We made the proposition to the 

 Board of Freeholders to see the laws enforced, thus adding 

 to the treasury of the county, and asked for the use of the 

 Freeholders' room in the Court House to meet in. The 

 request was gladly complied with, and the sums we have 

 turned into the county treasury have certainly been a fair 

 equivalent for the use of the room, fuel and light. 



The odium of being an informer frequently deters men 

 from enforcing the game laws, especially in cases where 

 the Legislature provides that half of the penalty shall go 

 to the informer. . Prosecutions are apt to be interpreted 

 into a desire to make money, and sportsmen rather than 

 be open to charges of this kind will look on while the laws 

 are being violated. This is avoided wh n an organiza- 

 tion makes a complaint as an incorporated body. The 

 constitution of our association provides that every mem- 

 ber shall at once inform the secretary of any violations of 

 the law he hears of. Such information is made in confi- 

 dence and is not divulged. Generally there is other evi- 

 dence besides that of the member to prove the offense. 

 It has also been my experience that violators of the game 

 laws are sneaks and men devoid of corn-age to face an 

 accusation when they know themselves guilty. Nineteen 

 out of every twenty plead guilty and are glad enough to 

 gat off with a fine. 



Again, some people object to making a complaint even 

 on the evidence of others. I do not propose to discuss the 

 question whether it is ungentlemanly to turn informer as 

 far as game laws are concerned or to make complaints; I 

 have my own opinion on that subject. I also know that 

 the State of New Jersey provides for the incorporation of 

 fish and game protective associations and that it makes 

 the officers and members of such associations officers of 

 the State. I am bound by the by-laws of our association 

 to make complaints upon being furnished with evidence 

 and I have unhesitatingly done so in every ca3e. It is 

 true that I have made a few enemies, but the world is so 

 full of good men who make good friends that I have no 

 desire to step into the ranks of pot-hunters and violators 

 of the laws to increase the number of my friends. I know 

 I have made more friends than enemies by my action, so 

 that as far as friendship is concerned my position has 

 bsen advantageous to me. 



It has been urged that the game laws are Btill being 

 violated m Passaic county. No doubt this is true enough. 

 We cannot catch all violators of the law any more than 



the police can catch all murderers and burglars. New 

 York has a fine police force, but a man who declared 

 that the laws were not violated in the metropolis would 

 be a fit subject for Bloomingdale. I have no doubt that 

 birds are snared in this county, that rabbits are trapped, 

 that song birds are murdered and that game is shot out 

 of season, but I also know that it is not done to the same 

 extent it was some years ago. Then violations of the law 

 were the order of the day, and game was openly sold out 

 of season in the markets of Paterson. Game could be 

 procured out of season almost as easily as in season. The 

 first year of the existence of the association there were 

 prosecutions every week until the open violation of the 

 law was stopped. _ I have no doubt that ninety-five per 

 cent, of the violations of he game laws have been stopped, 

 and that is certainly a large gain. 



Prosecutions generally pay for themselves, so that any 

 protective association can devote almost the whole of the 

 receipts of fees to stocking the woods and streams and to 

 other purposes in the interest of the gunner and angler. 

 I think that every State in the Union provides that por- 

 tions of fines imposed for violations of the game laws 

 shall go to the party making the complaint. Conse- 

 quently there is no reason why the fees of protective 

 associations should be lai-ge; our association charges only 

 fifteen cents per month, and we get along very nicely on 

 that. 



Of course no association can stop altogether the viola- 

 tions of the laws, but this should not deter any one from 

 engaging in the work of protection. Avery considerable 

 portion of it can be stopped by the very fact that it is 

 known that punishment will follow the crime if detected. 

 Take, for example, the men hi Passaic county who are 

 mean enough to kill song birds. I find that they are of 

 two classes. The first shoots birds for the market, for 

 millinery purposes. These fellows would rather work 

 somewhere where they know they will not be molested, 

 and consequently keep away from a county where they 

 know they are apt to be discovered and punished. The 

 other class consists of a number of foreigners, princi- 

 pally Italians, employed in dye works or on the railroads. 

 These fellows shoot birds, no matter how small, for the 

 purpose of eating them. Half a dozen were arrested; 

 some of them left" their guns as security, others went to 

 jail. I do not suppose that one per cent, were arrested, 

 but the business of killing song birds received a quietus. 



There is no doubt that the methods adopted here could 

 be successfully adopted everywhere, and with the increas- 

 ing number of hunters and anglers protection is an abso- 

 lute necessity. I have made this article longer than I 

 intended, but I am interested in protecting game and 

 fish, and would like to stimulate others to a similar pur- 

 pose, Chas. A, Shkiner, 



Sec'y Passaic Co. Fish and Game Protective Ass'n. 



A BEAR HUNT IN THE HIMALAYAS. 



OUR party consisted of S. , his wife, and myself, and 

 we had somewhere about forty servants and fol- 

 lowers to carry our impedimenta, which consisted of five 

 small tents, called Rowties or Pauls, besides all our bag- 

 gage, cooking utensils, canned provisions, and food for a 

 month's consumption. We started from Mussoovic on 

 one of the last days of September, as the open season for 

 game commenced on Oct. 1, besides the rainy season was 

 not properly over before that time, and marching and 

 camping in "the hills" is not pleasant in bad weather. 

 After a week or ten days, during which we got some 

 fairly good sport with deer, serow (mountain goats), 

 pheasants, etc., we got into the bear country. 



I may mention, by way of parenthesis, that our battery 

 consisted of two double-barreled 12-gauge shotguns 

 which carried ball, 13 to the pound, very well, my own 

 being a particularly good gun in this respect, being very 

 accurate up to 60 or 70yds. (it had a spare pair of full 

 choke barrels to interchange with the cylinder ones when 

 required), while as to rifles, S. carried a double-barrel 

 .50-135-150 Express by Bland, my own being a single shot 

 Winchester . 45-125-300 Express. Shotguns are frequently 

 used in this country for large game shooting at close 

 quarters, they are handy to use on account of their light- 

 ness, and are no'; much behind even Express rifles in 

 their effectiveness at short range; they are generally used 

 as reserve weapons. Some people even use explosive 

 spherical bullets with them (Meade's shells). 



S. and I, of course, did all the marches on foot, the 

 hills, when away from regular roads, being too difficult 

 going for ponies, while Mrs. S. was generally carried by 

 two men in a "dandy," a kind of fitter much used by 

 ladies in the hills in India. Our baggage, tents, etc, 

 were all carried on coolies' backs, and we appeared quite 

 like a small armv when on the march. The coolies, being- 

 natives of the hills, where we pitched our camp, hiyoa- 

 acked in the open air, under trees, if possible, out of the 

 cold wind, the thermometer was often under 30 at night, 

 and slept in batches of ten or a dozen, feet inward, in 

 circles round large camp-fires. Our marches were not 

 long, generally seven to twelve miles, but the steepness 

 of the hills, and the ruggedness of the paths, made them 

 more fatiguing than double the distances on the level. 

 Sometimes we came to places where our shikaris (hunting 

 guides) had to help us, and we had to use both hands and 

 feet to get along. We had adopted the foot gear worn 

 by the Cashmeris, "chuplies" or sandals, with thick 

 leather soles, and bars of leather screwed on to the soles, 

 worn over soft leather socks, much the same as moccasins, 

 covering our ordinary woolen socks, or we could not 

 have got over some of the slippery and dangerous places 

 at all. The hill men, with their naked feet, never make 

 a mistake, and the way in which thev went up and down, 

 carrying heavy loads of from 80 to lOOlbs. strapped to 

 their backs, was simply marvelous. 



The large number of coolies we had was an advantage 

 to us; they acted as beaters when we wished to ton out 

 a bear or any other beast, and being natives of the hill 

 country we were marching through, they thoroughly 

 knew the ground, and the habits and haunts of the game 

 to be found there. They were a merry and cheerful set 

 of men, and thought themselves very well paid at the 

 rate of four annas (about eight or nine cents) a day, as 

 they could live well, in their own way, at one-fourth of 

 that amount. 



I may mention that, early in October in the Himalayas, 

 the black bear is generally to be found among the oak 

 forests at elevations of from 7,000 to 9,000ft., as he lives 

 on the acorns which are then ripe. Later on he descends 

 into the valleys, which are generally from 3,000 to 



5,000ft. above sea level, and commits great damage to 

 the crops of "mundwa," a kind of grain, which is very 

 generally cultivated there. He comes into the fields 

 round the villages as soon as it is dark, and eats all night, 

 his traces being very plain by the state of the mundwa, 

 which is trampled down in all directions, and departs up 

 the mountains or lies quiet in some thick jungle close to 

 some water course in a shady nullah or ravine all day. 



One day, while we were on the march, going up a 

 forest-covered hill at an elevation of 9,000ft., our shikari 

 suddenly stopped and said, "Look up at those trees, bears 

 are about here." On looking we saw regular "machans" 

 or nests, constructed by bears, on which they sit among 

 the oak trees while eating acorns at night. These nests, 

 Kftilt of broken branches and boughs, roughly resemble 

 crow's nests, but of course on a large scale. He further 

 on saw more signs of bears, foot-tracks, droppings and 

 bushes trodden down in all directions near the top of the 

 hill. He advised us to have our guns handy, and sent 

 word back to the coolies, who were a mile or so behind, 

 not to make a noise, while we proceeded as silently as 

 possible and kept a sharp lookout. 



On passing the top of the hill we made our way down 

 a nullah or ravine, very thickly wooded, and through 

 which a water-course ran among rocks and boulders— a 

 beautiful spot— and while going along the shikari sud- 

 denly stopped and pointed with his finger. On looking 

 down we saw a whole family of bears, two large ones 

 and three or four small ones, playing about among the 

 trees and climbing up them, about 200ft. below us and 

 about ISOyds. off. We silently took up as good positions 

 as the difficult nature of the ground would allow on the 

 opposite side of the nullah, the shikari, with S.'s shotgun, 

 getting the nearest place, about 80yds. from the bears; but 

 the movements of the animals and their dark color ming- 

 ling with the dark shadows of the thick undergrowth and 

 trees, in which only an occasional glimpse of them could 

 be got, made them anything but easy marks. We all 

 opened fire about the same time, S. firing four shots, the 

 shikari one, and myself three. Nearly every shot told, 

 the bear being like a self-registering target, his own 

 marker. The succession of howls, grunts, growls and 

 barks which followed each shot made it pretty evident 

 that most of the shots were hits. As we saw the bears 

 disappear, we ceased firing and waited for the camp to 

 come up. Mrs. S., who had arrived at the top of the hill 

 just as the firing began, saw the whole affair, and natur- 

 ally was in rather a fright lest any of the bears might 

 escape up the mullah in her direction; but as that would 

 have brought them well into our view and under our fire, 

 there would have been little danger. They went away 

 straight down the nullah, which was very thickly wooded 

 and completely hid them from our view. 



On the coolies coming up we hurriedly had our mid- 

 day meal or tiffin and pitched our camp in the forest just 

 above where the bears had been and then we collected 

 all the coolies for a beat to drive out any wounded bears 

 that might have remained. The coolies formed a line, 

 3 or 4yds. between each man, at the top of the nullah, 

 while we posted ourselves about 20ft. above the water 

 course at its foot to command the road the bears would 

 be most likely to take. At the signal, a shrill whistle, 

 from the shikari the beat began, the coolies slowly com- 

 ing down the hill with most unearthly howls and beat- 

 ing the trees and bushes with axes and long sticks. 

 While they were coming down a wounded bear went up 

 hill and broke through them, luckily not touching one of 

 them, as a wounded bear fights desperately and it is 

 almost certain death, or at least a maiming for life to be 

 seized by one of them. On coming further down they 

 found one large she bear stone dead. One of S.'s Express 

 bullets hit her far back in the ribs and ranged into her 

 heart. We were rather disappointed at only finding one 

 dead bear considering the number of shots which had 

 told, so we resolved to make a halt the next day and 

 thoroughly beat the jungles in the neighborhood, as it 

 was getting dark. 



This we did and we got one more- bear, evidently 

 of the same family, about half a mile away from the 

 camp. He had evidently got separated from his com- 

 rades and had come back to look for them. A lucky 

 shot from a 12-bore shotgun at 30yds. hit him in the spine 

 as he was climbing up hill and came out of the V mark 

 in his breast, rolling him over stone dead down a ravine 

 some 60ft. or so deep. 



Some days afterward we were down in a valley, and 

 the inhabitants of the village close to our camp said they 

 were much troubled by bears, as their mundwa crops 

 were all spoilt. They said the bea s were to be found in 

 a dense patch of jungle lining the sides of a stream in a 

 ravine close by. We sent our coolies up in charge of a 

 l eal village shikari, who posted them while S. and I took 

 up our positions. I being on the left of the stream about 

 50ft. above it and seated on a stump of a pine tree which 

 gave me a fairly clear view of both the nullah and an- 

 other one joining it, while S. and his shikari were posted 

 on its right. We could not see each other on account of 

 the thick jungle. Soon after the beat began, a large bear 

 came trotting along the boulders at the bottom of the 

 stream, and as soon as he was about 120yds. off I fired, but 

 without effect, and the bushes immediately afterward 

 hid him from my view as ho continued his course toward 

 S. S. fired and there was a howl, and this shot was fol- 

 lowed by two or three others. In the meantime another 

 bear broke opposite me to my left and ran down hill past 

 me. I fired a shot at 40yds. with the Winchester .45 

 Express, and to my delight he rolled over stone dead, 

 falling some 30 or 40ft. down into the ravine. The bullet 

 entered the right side of the neck, and came out behind 

 the left shoulder. 



Soon after this I heard S.'s whistle, a signal for me to 

 join him, but as I knew there was a wounded bear some- 

 where in the jungle between himself and me, I did not 

 much care to do so. However, accompanied by the gun 

 bearer, who carried the spare gun, I went down most 

 cautiously, .gun at full cock, crossed the stream and 

 joined S., who to'd me he had wounded a very large bear 

 the first shot, and though he had several snap shots since 

 at the beast, he did not seem to be much the worse, and 

 had retreated into some very thick undergrowth in which 

 it was impossible to see him, or to get hira out of, though 

 he occasionally growled when a stone thrown in struck 

 him. We then decided to get all the beaters together to 

 ; throw showers of stones into the bush in which the bear 

 ! was, the shikari to put himself on the opposite side of the 

 nullah in case he broke out that way, while we guarded 

 ' a couple of tracks leading into the bushes on our own 



