Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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



Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, MARCH 10, 1887. 



I VOL. XXVIII.-No. 7. 



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



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



No Money for the Park. 



Maine Commissioner Charges. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



On the "West Coast.— m. 



Some Woods Characters.— I. 



Snipe Shooting on Horn Island 

 Naturad History. 



Is the Snrike a Mimic? 



Nomenclature of Colors. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



A Day at Goose Pond. 



Notes from Worcester. 



A Minnesota Game Region. 



About Penetration. 



Maine Commissioner Charges. 



The Georgia Law. 



Cheat Mountain Association. 



Bears, Dogs and Cubs. 



Ontario Notes. 



The New York Law. 



A Caribou Hunt, 



Game Notes. 

 Camp-Fire Fdickerings. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Bad Weather but Big Fish. 



Lake Trout, 



On the Rideau Canal. 



The Fly-Casting Tournament, 



An Alaskan Sea Serpent, 



Menhaden and Food Fishes. 



The Rainbow Trout. 



Angling Days on Lake Cham- 

 plain. 



Angling Notes. 

 Fishculture. 



Lobster Protection. 



Fishculture in England. 

 The Kennel. 



American Kennel Club. 



The Kennel. 

 Dog Reasoning. 

 Buffalo Dog Show. 

 Mr. G.R, Krehl and his Friends 

 Michigan Kennel Club. 

 Fox-Terrier Stud Dog Stakes. 

 Western Field Trials Associa- 

 tion. 



A Virginia Fox Hunt, 

 Hare Dogs. 

 Kennel Management. 

 Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 

 Range and Gallery. 

 Revolver Shooting. 

 Military Rifle Drill. 

 The Trap. 



Forest and Stream Decora- 

 tion Day Trophy. 

 Yachting. 

 Arrow and the Queen's Cup. 

 A Rig for Small Boats. 

 Biscayne Bay, Florida. 

 Delaware River. 

 Suggestion for an American 

 Sloop. 



Coronet— Dauntless Race. 

 Building Notes. 

 Death of an Eminent Designer 

 Canoeing. 

 A. C. A. Regatta Programme. 

 Mohican C. C. 

 A Norwegian Rig. 

 The "Flymg Pontoon." 

 How We Ran the Rapids. 

 Proposed Reduction of A. C. A. 

 Dues. 



Spring Meet on the Hudson. 

 Resistance Experiments. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 

 Pot Luck from Exchanges. 



The present issue contains four additional pages, or 

 thirty-two in all. 



THE MAINE COMMISSIONER CHARGES. 



CHARGES have been preferred against the Maine 

 Commissioners of Fisheries and Game. From the 

 Boston Herald's report, it appears that the prime instiga- 

 tor of this movement is George M. Harmon, some time 

 Adjutant-General of the State of Connecticut. The 

 Herald's summary of the circumstances which have 

 prompted Harmon to this action throws a flood of light 

 on. that individual's motives and the motives of the Jack 

 Darlings who are helping him. It appears that one 

 Sabbath morning in June Harmon and his guide 

 Thrasher, pursued a deer swimming in Rangeley Lake 

 Overtaking it, Thrasher, in true Adirondack style, be- 

 labored the creature with his oar, and, having stunned it, 

 at Harmon's command cut its throat. Thereupon Har- 

 mon on behalf of Thrasher, paid a $40 fine to Warden Hun- 

 toon. This, in the opinion of George M. Harmon, some- 

 time Adjutant-General of Connecticut, should then and 

 there have settled the matter. The Maine officials thought 

 differently. They held that both parties to the misde- 

 meanor should be punished, the oar-butcher Thrasher 

 and his accomplice Harmon as well; and the latter's fine 

 was collected. In a futile attempt to impose further 

 penalties for the Sunday law violation the Commissioners 

 may have displayed an excess of zeal, but it should be 

 remembered that the case was an aggravated one; the 

 deer was killed in the spring, in close season, on the Sab- 

 bath, and in a manner abhorrent to sportsmen. 



The movement against the Commissioners is instigated 

 and sustained by non-residents, Harmon and others who, 

 having violated the Maine game laws, have been duly 

 punished; by residents, water-butchers like the notorious 

 Darling and his tribe; in the Legislature by Talbot, from 



East Machias, who got into his seat by promising the 

 poachers of his district that he would fight the Commis- 

 sioners' appropriation; and in short, by all who are ene- 

 mies of game and fish protection and would gladly see 

 the laws and the Commission abolished. 



Unscrupulous men — selfish and cruel in the extreme- 

 have long desired to see these laws repealed. The hotel 

 and summer travel interest has done its best to repeal 

 them, or to so alter and amend them that they would be 

 of no effect as against their business. This hotel and 

 travel interest in one section alone, that of north Frank- 

 lin county, has caused the Commissioners more trouble 

 than all the rest of the State, with one exception, that of 

 the upper Machias region, the section where even murder 

 and arson have been rampant. Year after year these in- 

 terests have gone to the Legislature with this or that 

 scheme for letting in the "gentlemen sportsmen" who 

 desire to kill wet does in June, or dog-hunt deer in autumn, 

 but each time the better judgment of a good majority of 

 the Legislature has triumphed, and the laws have been 

 strengthened at each session. In the meantime the palms 

 of these hotel-keepers, stage-drivers and managers of 

 infant railroads have itehed for the thousands that were 

 out of their reach so long as the game laws were in the 

 ascendency. This winter, more than ever, that hotel 

 and travel interest has been determined that the game 

 and fish laws of Maine should succumb to the desires of 

 the vacationist and tourist, and the people of north 

 Franklin have gone to the biennial session of the Legisla- 

 ture with the determination that the stringency of the 

 laws that directly interfered with their interests must be 

 broken. They have united with them the element in 

 the eastern part of the State that has been guilty 

 of burning the buildings of game officers who 

 have tried to enforce the laws, and worse yet, 

 the very spirit that shot down two game wardens only a 

 few months ago, for attempting to take away dogs found 

 in use for hunting deer. But this winter these enemies 

 of wholesale game and fish protection have failed worse 

 than ever. They have failed in every particular. The 

 dog hunters have been sat down on with a will that has 

 killed their courage. The Phillips hotel keeper with his 

 proposition to allow "gentlemen sportsmen" to bring their 

 trophies out of the State has been given "leave to with- 

 draw." In fact not one crumb of comfort can these 

 gentlemen poachers and hotel keepers get; and now out 

 of pure revenge they have turned upon the unoffending 

 Commissioners, and propose to impeach them for doing 

 their duty faithfully. 



The cause of justice cries out against such action. 

 Every true sportsman in the country asks that Messrs. 

 Stillwell and Stanley be retained in the position where 

 they have done such noble work. The charges against 

 them cannot be sustained, except through fraud and a 

 bitter hatred — just such a hatred as thieves and hoodlums 

 always manifest toward constables and the officers of the 

 law. If there is a shadow of honor left in sportsmen who 

 live in or resort to Maine, let them turn and cry halt in 

 this persecution of these two men, who have staked their 

 all and served out the best of their years that the fish and 

 game of Maine might be perpetuated. Their success has 

 already been the wonder of the rest of the world. Shall 

 their usefulness be cut off now, when success has just 

 begun to dawn? 



NO MONEY FOR THE PARK. 

 \ S was expected, Senator Vest's bill to protect the 

 National Park failed to pass the House of Repre- 

 sentatives. So, for the present, all hope of having a 

 form of government for the Park may be laid aside, and 

 the reservation for another year will be under the care of 

 the troops. 



The session which has just closed has not been alto- 

 gether one of doubt and despair to the friends of the 

 Park. One distinct gain has been had in the defeat of 

 the Cinnabar and Clark's Fork Railroad. This measure, 

 notwithstanding its strong backing, and the moral sup- 

 port of favorable reports by committees of both Houses, 

 received a crushing defeat in the House of Representa- 

 tives. In this contest issue was joined not so much 

 on the question as to whether this particular road 

 should have a right of way, as on the general question of 

 the advisability of permitting any railways in the Park. 

 The vote on this measure indicated very clearly the 

 temper of the people's Representatives on this subject. 



The vote by which the Vest bill passed the Senate is also 

 an encouraging feature of the session's work, and there is 

 little doubt that if the measure had been brought before 

 them in time the House would have passed the bill by a 

 large majority. 



"We announced several weeks ago that the Sundry Civil 

 Service Bill had been amended in the Senate so as to pro- 

 vide the sum of $40,000 for the care and management of 

 the Park. The members of the House Conference Com- 

 mittee were Messrs. Randall, Forney and Ryan, three 

 men who are decidedly hostile to the Park. When these 

 men went into conference, there was no hope for the 

 measure, for it was impossible to convince them, and the 

 time was too short to make a fight over the matter in the 

 Senate. The House conferees certainly did not represent 

 the feeling of any considerable portion of the body from 

 which they came. Randall is an obstructionist and a 

 cheeseparer, and Ryan has a soul devoted to com and 

 hogs, and is unable to see importance or beauty in any- 

 thing except these products of the State which he repre- 

 sents. However, they ruled the appropriations with a 

 strong hand and succeeded in killing the amendment 

 providing for the Park. These three men are responsible 

 for that. They oppose the interests of the Park, and 

 thus bid defiance to the widespread better sentiment 6f 

 the House, which, as shown by the vote on the railroad 

 scheme, is emphatically that the Park shall be preserved 

 for the purposes for which it was originally set aside in 

 1872, namely, the benefit and enjoyment of the citizens 

 of this country. ^_ 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 TT^LSEWHERE we print a statement of reasons on which 



is based the proposed restoration of July woodcock 



shooting in New York. The considerations urged are (1) 

 that the birds are then sufficiently mature, (2) that the 

 birds bred here go southward in July not to return, and 

 therefore, if killed at all, must be taken in July; (3) that 

 if sportsmen do not then take them lawfully, pot-hunters 

 will bag them unlawfully; (4) that July is not too hot for 

 the shooting. In respect to these given reasons for the 

 change it is enough to say that sportsmen who have had 

 the most experience in woodcock shooting and have en- 

 joyed the best opportunities to learn facts and form intel- 

 ligent opinions, are practically agreed that a large pro- 

 portion of the birds are not sufficiently mature for any- 

 body but the pot-hunter in July; and that birds bred in 

 our swamps do no not go south in July not to return, but 

 that if not killed in July they will be found in the vicin- 

 ity in October. The suggestion that July shooting mxlst 

 be legalized because pot-hunters now break the law has 

 in it not enough of reason to justify any serious discus- 

 sion; and the final consideration of the pleasure or lack 

 of pleasure in July shooting has no essential force one 

 way or the other. To legalize July woodcock shooting 

 would be a serious error. 



This is a great and glorious country, so great and so 

 glorious that there is room in it for all classes of fox- 

 hunters, and abundant opportunity for each class to hunt 

 its own foxes in its own way. Last week we printed an 

 account of the Massachusetts way; this week there is an 

 account of the Virginia way. Which is the correct style? 

 Perhaps the Massachusetts style in Massachusetts and the 

 Virginia style in Virginia. At all events, there is room 

 for both and half a dozen more. 



The Maine legislative committees on fish and game are 

 deserving of all credit for their sensible treatment of 

 certain bills. They have summarily squelched Jack 

 Darling's bill to permit deer hounding, and the bill to 

 permit salmon netting in the Penobscot above tide water. 

 There must be among these committeemen some who ap- 

 preciate, as they should be appreciated, the wisdom and 

 sound public policy of the State's fish and game laws now 

 on the statute books. 



The May deer hunting clause has been abandoned in 

 the New York game law bill submitted at Albany by the 

 New York city and other societies. The July woodcock 

 shooting clause is retained, together with the repeal in 

 part of sorig bird protection and of the game protector law. 

 The proposed seasons are noted in our game columns. 



The Audubon Society now numbers more than 23,000 

 members. The membership is growing at a rapid fate. 

 The March number of the Audubon Magazine more than 

 fulfills the promise of its initial issue. 



