Forest and Stream 



< A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, I 

 Six Months, $2. ) 



NEW YORK, JANUARY 16, 1890. 



< VOL. XXXIII.-No. 26. 

 I No 318 Broadway, New York. 



correspondence. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 

 Wild Turkey for Massachu- 

 setts. 



British Columbian Butchers. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



"Pawnee Hero Stories and 

 Folk-Tales" (poem). 



Winter Glimpse?. 



Hunting the Horse-Head Seal. 



Mixed Feathers. 

 Natural History. 



The Snowy Owl. 



An Article of Luxury. 



El Carpi ntero. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Quail in Roanoke and Wythe. 



Forest and Stream Tests. 



Game Birds of the Plains. 



Chicago and the West. 



Maine Big Game. 



Mississippi Notes. 



Wyoming Big Game; 



Aiming the Shotgun. 



Ganae Protective Societies. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Florida Fishing. 



New England Trout and .Sal- 

 mon Club. 



Texas Bass in Christmas Week 



Angling Notes. 

 Fisbculture. 



Our Annual List of Commis- 

 sioners. 



The Kennel. 



Another Phase of Coursing. 



Inter-State Field Trials. 



Eastern Field Trials Club 

 Meeting. 



Dogs of the Day. 



The Pointer Club. 



A Tragedy of the First Snow. 



New York Dog Show. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Chicago Trap Shooting. 

 Yachting. 

 Seawanhaka Corinthian Y. C. 

 The Cape "Catboat" Magic. 

 The New York State Naval Re- 

 serve. 



Corrected Length and "Canoe 

 Type." 



The Limitation of Spinaker 



Booms. 

 Uniform Racing Rules. 

 Corinthian Mosquito Racing 



Rules. 

 Waterproofing Fabrics. 

 Club Elections. 

 Canoeing. 

 A 15x3B£ Racing Canoe. 

 1,500 Miles in an Adirondack 



Boat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



WILD TURKEYS FOR MASSACHUSETTS. 

 "VTOT many Aveeks ago we printed several notes on the 

 former occurrence of the wild turkey in Massachu- 

 setts. The bird has been known and hunted there within 

 the memory of men still living; and one of our contributors, 

 Mr. Milton P. Peirce, suggested that if the turkey should 

 be introduced into the State wilds and duly protected, 

 the supply might again be permanently renewed. This 

 scheme of restocking the woodlands of Massachusetts 

 with wild turkeys and other game birds has been a pro- 

 ject long cherished by some of the more enterprising 

 and public-spirited members of the Massachusetts Fish 

 and Game Protective Association. As reported in our 

 shooting columns to-day, the subject came up for re- 

 newed consideration at a meeting of the Association last 

 week, and it was decided to undertake the work. The 

 members have raised a fund for purchasing live wild 

 turkeys, and a special committee will have in charge the 

 task of securing the birds. 



It is quite clear that in this thing the Massachusetts 

 sportsmen have undertaken what is not at all child's 

 play. They will have many difficulties to overcome, 

 from procuring the live game to its putting out and pro- 

 tection; but there are brains and money in the Associa- 

 tion sufficient to carry the enterprise through. Tf the 

 Boston society shall succeed in restoring to the Bay 

 State this magnificent species, it will deserve a large 

 share of public gratitude. 



All these endeavors to increase the game supply of a 

 section are admirable in purpose; and such enterprises 

 are watched with keen interest. A correspondent re- 

 ported in our issue of Jan. 2 the success that has crowned 

 the importation of Chinese pheasants into the Northwest. 

 California has just contracted for 200 dozen quail from 

 Texas to be put out at San Mateo, Menlo Park and else- 



where; and it is possible that part of the money appro- 

 priated by the Legislature for increasing the game sup- 

 ply may be devoted to the purchase of wild turkeys. 



Here and there all through the country local clubs are 

 engaged in stocking the quail covers. The gun club of 

 Passaic, N. J., has just received a consignment of birds 

 from the South. 



BRITISH COLUMBIAN BUTCHERS. 



A NOTE concerning the destruction of large game on 

 the newly opened line of the Chicago and North- 

 western Railway system up the North Platte River in 

 Wyoming appears in our columns to-day, and is very 

 suggestive. Men who hunt large game in the mountains 

 of the West know how swift and sure is the extermina- 

 tion of the game in any region reached by a new railway 

 or which is at all accessible. We have seen this process 

 of destruction take place in many localities, and though 

 it occurs less frequently now than in former years on ac- 

 count of the practical extinction of the game in many 

 sections where it was once abundant, we expect to see it 

 happen again and again. Wyoming, once one of the best 

 game countries in the West, has been especially the 

 scene of such wholesale destruction. We well" remem- 

 ber the time when in the Shirley Basin it would have 

 been possible for an ordinary hunter to kill in one 

 day to his own gun from fifty to seventy-five elk 

 and as many deer, besides scores of antelope, while 

 seven or eight years later one might have hunted for 

 months without seeing an elk, deer were almost un- 

 known, and the only game to be seen were a few wild 

 antelope on the sage brush prairie. The same thing has 

 taken place in Colorado, which, however, as a more 

 thickly settled State, has passed laws protecting its game, 

 though these laws were not enacted until the large game 

 had been exterminated almost everywhere except in the 

 rough mountains. Wyoming, with a small population, a 

 population which consists largely of stockmen, has been 

 careless of its game, and has attained a bad eminence as 

 a scene Of wholesale butchery. 



We are accustomed, and very naturally, to deplore the 

 destruction of the game within our own borders, and to 

 think that this is more important than game destruction 

 elsewhere, yet there are hunting grounds in Her Majesty's 

 Dominion accessible to sportsmen of the United States, 

 where game slaughter for a year or two past has gone 

 on in a brutally wholesale fashion, which has not been 

 known in the United States except among the skin hun- 

 ters, who exterminated the buffalo over the whole country, 

 and the elk over a large part of it. 



On certain tributaries of the Smilkameen River, deer, 

 sheep and white goats have in the past been quite abund- 

 ant. In winter these auimals are driven down into the 

 valleys by the deep snows, where they are slaughtered 

 by whites and Indians for their meat, for their hides, for 

 their heads and for food for the settlers' hogs. One white 

 man killed a year or two ago in the beginning of the 

 winter ninety-three deer. The weather was cold, the 

 carcasses froze, and the man taking his horse into the 

 mountains snaked down the frozen carcasses to his house 

 a dozen at a time. These deer were used to feed and 

 fatten his hogs that winter. Hide hunting goes on with- 

 out let or hindrance. It was begun by white men and has 

 been taken up by the Indians. A few years ago the latter 

 killed only what meat they needed to eat fresh and to dry 

 for winter supplies, but now, having been taught by the 

 whites, they have become as bad as they. 



A year or two ago somebody residing in this section 

 thought that he had found an easy road to fortune by 

 shipping the heads of mountain sheep to a London taxi- 

 dermist. He made a contract to deliver a lot at a certain 

 price, and in the beginning of winter announced to the 

 Indians that he would pay $3 per head for them. Before 

 spring over one hundred had been delivered to him. He 

 was careless, however, and neglected to prepare the 

 heads, feeling sure that they would take no harm while 

 the cold weather lasted. One day it became warm, and 

 before he knew it the whole lot had spoiled on his hands. 

 He probably learned a lesson. 



The country in which this extraordinary and wholly 

 inexcusable destruction of game takes place is sparsely 

 settled, and contains but few white people. The land 

 produces little, and the rough mountains are not known 

 to contain precious metals in paying quantities. The few 

 old mining camps are most of them "busted" ones. Very 

 little money is brought into the country except by hunt- 



ing parties, who come to it in search of game. Every 

 such, party pays out, at a moderate estimate, for horse 

 hire, packers, guides, provisions and outfit from $500 to 

 $1 ,000. If the game is all killed off, as it seems likely 

 that it has been or soon will be, such hunting parties 

 will speedily find out the fact, and will certainly not 

 come into the country to look for game that is not there. 

 The section therefore will be deprived of a revenue which, 

 if not enormous, at least amounts to a respectable sum 

 yearly, and which is divided up so that it benefits a con- 

 siderable part of the population. 



British Cohimbia has* game laws which are good 

 enough, but they are not enforced. Worse than this, 

 there is no strongly expressed public sentiment on these 

 matters. If men like Mr. John Fannin, Mr. Corson, Mr. 

 J. Wardel, Mr. Allison and others, would explain to the 

 white and Indian population of this district that the 

 game preserved means money in everybody's pocket, 

 and that the game destroyed means that a revenue, 

 which at present is steady and regular, will be cut off, 

 we venture to say that Indians and whites would become 

 a very effective body of unorganized game keepers, and 

 that skin hunting, head hunting and wanton butchery of 

 all descriptions would be so frowned upon that before 

 long they w r ould altogether cease. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



WE publish elsewhere two letters called out by our 

 suggestions in the issue of Dec. 26 in relation to 

 inclosed coursing and its possible tendencies. The only 

 pertinent comment on these two communications is that 

 the reader of them will do well to refer again to the edi- 

 torial remarks to which they allude. It will there be 

 found that there was no good basis for any implication 

 that our expressed opinions were prompted by sectional- 

 ism: and that we did not "in the least reflect on the 

 managers as gamblers," nor suggest even remotely that 

 those who had introduced this mode of coursing had any 

 intention of turning it into a gambling machine. What 

 we did mean to say, and to say very clearly, was that 

 inclosed coursing, because it is dependent for its support 

 on gate money, which implies a crowd of spectators, was 

 in its future development more likely than open coursing 

 to be adapted to the purpose of gambling. This was say- 

 ing not one whit more than Dr. Royce concedes in his 

 letter, when he writes, "That the exhibitions may yet be 

 controlled by dishonorable parties we will admit, and 

 then be run ha the interest of the pool seller." As to the 

 possibilities of inclosed coursing, as thus expressed by 

 Dr. Royce, there is no difference of opinion between him 

 and ourselves. If our inclosed coursing friends will 

 eliminate the personal equation, disabuse their minds of 

 the notion that our remarks were an attack on them- 

 selves, and consider this subject dispassionately and 

 philosophically, they will perhaps assent to all that we 

 have said about the possible future tendencies of the 

 sport, 



There is everything in the standpoint. And the stand- 

 point from which the shooting man looks at things is 

 that of shooting. Does a gale rage, it is good weather 

 for ducks; does the October frost bite, it is just the day 

 for the partridge cover: does an ice storm enshroud the 

 earth, it means that the quail supply will be diminished. 

 In these days of extraordinary mid- winter mildness the 

 professors of woodcraft are telling us that it is a great 

 year for the birds. The wet summer and autumn gave 

 a big crop of weeds, and the supply of seeds on which 

 birds feed was unusually heavy. The quail and grouse 

 have been well fed and strong; they have had little ice 

 and snow to contend against; and even if hard weather 

 should set in before spring, the birds will be in excellent 

 condition to withstand hardship. All this gives reason- 

 able ground for anticipating a large game supply next 

 season. 



In striking contrast with the prevailing reports of a 

 warm sun in January, comes the story of two Rock 

 Springs, Wyoming, men who went hunting in the moun- 

 tains last Sunday. Overtaken by a snowstorm, and the 

 weather turning bitterly cold, both became greatly ex- 

 hausted; one managed to make his way back to the town 

 and a searching party went out for his companion, who 

 when discovered was so badly frozen that he died before 

 he could be carried home, 



