Apbil 8, 1891,] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



209 



done and hearing what was said before the better class of 

 ■visitors had arrived, so that I can speak from my own 

 knowledge on some points where I speak most strongly. 

 The information obtained from these sources, the fact 

 also that the people of this section, for the reasons given 

 above, must be practically of one mind upon game ques- 

 tions, and that 1 am heart and hand, by birth and educa- 

 tion, one of them— lead me to suppose that I can represent 

 their views, Do not misunderstand me as doing more 

 than presenting these, explaining their origin and to what 

 they will lead : as I have purposely shown you in the pre- 

 ceding series, T am too prejudiced to be able to sit in judg- 

 ment on the laws, audi' shall not attempt it. But by 

 reason of this very prejudice I am able to get at facts 

 vsrhich you could not, and I can reflect public opinion in a 

 way that your critical and judicial povs^er, which fits you 

 for discussing what I am debarred from, could not arrive 

 at. It will be done solely for the sake of producing a 

 better understanding between you and those for whom I 

 am speaking. When you reflect that the people here are 

 the natural game wardens of this great forest region and 

 that the very existence of the game depends on their good 

 pleasure, the unportance of your knowing how they think, 

 feel and talk about these matters will be self evident— a 

 sufficient reason for my saying what I have to tell you, a 

 sufficient excuse for giving some good advice, which must 

 be heeded if sportsmen would like to come here and enjoy 

 the privileges they have had heretofore. 



I have already' told something about the commonest 

 claim here — that the game laws are enforced so as to 

 favor sportsmen — and that many say the laws themselves 

 warrant this. On the former of these two points I have 

 given some evidence, the other I will illustrate briefly in 

 my next paper, with some other claims of a similar 

 nature. It should be stated that the latter of these two 

 opinions i^ more prevalent among farmers and those less 

 likely to be well-mformed on the subject, that the former 

 is held by guides, hunters and others who have had better 

 opportunities for studying the printed statutes. And 

 here let me state unequivocally that whatever the indi- 

 vidual opinions quoted hereafter may seem to claim, to 

 my best knowledge and belief the people as a whole do 

 not ask to have the game commission abolished, do not 

 ask to have visitors excluded from the State, nor more 

 rights given to residents than to non-residents, nor to 

 have the laws changed. Some localities would like to 

 have one change made and some another, but they are 

 not agreed upon any unless it is the law regarding winter 

 fishing. The laws, "they say, are good enough; let them 

 be enforced. Or, we have plenty of law on the statute 

 books, we would like to see some of it in the woods. Or, 

 give us good oflScers and we will see that the law is re- 

 spected, for the law is good. Fannie Peaeson Hardy. 



Bhetwek, Maine. 



HUNTING AND KILLING. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Mr. Geo. H. Wyman, in his interesting paper on the 

 Virginia cleer in your issue of March 19, brings up the 

 old question of still-hunting vs. hounding, and expresses 

 his opinion in favor of the latter method in very decided 

 terms as least destructive and more sportsmanlike. This 

 is largely a matter of opinion, of individual taste, and 

 depends almost entirely on early imi^ressions and educa- 

 tion. 



As it happens, I have killed only two deer ahead of 

 hounds, while I have secured many by still-hunting; and 

 my preference as to these two methods is altogether in 

 favor of still-hunting as much the higher form of sport. 



It is, I think, an axiom that the more skill there is re- 

 quired in any form of sport, the higher that sport is. 

 Thus, by as much as it is more difficult to cast a fly for 

 a salmon and successfully play and land the fish than it 

 is to take and land a trout, by so much is it a nobler 

 sport. So fly-fishing for trout is higher sport than catch- 

 ing bullheads in a mill pond. To kill the swift-winged 

 quail or ruffed grouse on the wing is more difiicult, and 

 so finer sport, than to pot sparrows along a hedgerow. 



It is, I believe, generally admitted that to kill a deer 

 before dogs is easier work than to still-hunt. A corres- 

 pondent of yours writing from St. Lawrence county a 

 few weeks ago complained in substance that but few deer 

 would be killed in his county if neither jacking nor 

 hounding were permitted, thus admitting that still- 

 hunting could not be successfully practiced by most 

 hunters. It is a matter of common knowledge, I believe, 

 that deer are often killed before hounds by men, women 

 and children who have not the slightest knowledge of 

 the habits of the animal, and are no more competent to 

 practice still-hunting than they are to fly. 



If I understand the methods pursued in hounding, all 

 that is required of the hunter who is successful by this 

 method is that he shall be able to stop a deer on the jump 

 and shall have patience to remain quiet at his stand. 

 The successful still-hunter, on the other hand, must know 

 the habits of the deer, and must match his skill and cau- 

 tion agaiust the acute and ever-alert senses of one of the 

 most wai-y of animals. 



Granting that there is a great charm in the meUow 

 music of the hound, and a vast deal of excitement in 

 the uncertainty as to whether the game will or will not 

 come toward the hunter, I cannot help thinking that the 

 difficulties of still-hunting raise it far above the sport of 

 hounding. 



It may be that still-hunting is more destructive than 

 hounding, though I cannot think this is the case. Take 

 the Adirondacks, for example; how many deer would be 

 killed there annually by the visitoi-s to the woods without 

 the aid of dogs? Not many, I fancy. 



There is one point on which I am thoroughly in accord 

 with Mr. Wyman. That is, that it is not the kilhng that 

 constitutes the sport of hunting. It is the meeting the 

 wild animal on its own ground, finding it in its own home, 

 and then proving that you are m ore watchful and wise that 

 it is; that, notwithstanding the fact that it is always on the 

 alert, that its eyes, ears and nose have been trained through 

 centuries of inheritance and years of practice, your cau- 

 tion and your senses— though dull by comparison — yet 

 enable you to circumvent it, and approach within the 

 killing distance. 



Many and many a time have 1 spent half an hour or 

 half a day in watching, waiting and creeping to get up 

 within easy range of deer, elk, antelope, buffalo or other 



fame, and then when I have reached the point of vantage, 

 ave lain there with my loaded rifle and watched the 

 aotions of the graceful oreaturee, feeling that they were 



in my power and yet with never a thought of killing what 

 I did not need, 



I think that among old hunters this feeling ia quite gen- 

 eral, and that very few of them care to kill merely for 

 the sake of shedding blood. The triumi>h of their hunt- 

 er's skill over the animal is the only satisfaction which 

 they seek, and for them this triumph needs no visible, 

 tangible proof, such as would be furnished by the carcass 

 of the slaughtered game. The old himter knows perfectly 

 well whether he could have killed if he had wished to, 

 and he has killed enough in the past to make the addition 

 of another victim or two a matter of no moment to him. 



It seems to me that those of us who have passed the 

 stage where we kill simply for the sake of killing, can do 

 a little good by explaining to those who are yoimger, or 

 have had less experience than we, just how we look at 

 this matter. Aside from its value as food, game is use- 

 ful for the hunter to practice his hunter's skill on, not his 

 shooting. It should not be killed unless required for 

 camp use, or possibly when an unusually fine head is seen. 



The Silent Man. 



REPLY TO "SPECIAL." 



rWISH to thank "Special" for stating that he believes 

 me to be honest. It is what I have always endeav- 

 ored to be. 



His statements as to who he is occasion no surprise, as 

 I know far more about him than he supposes. It is on 

 account of this knowledge, corroborated by the state- 

 ments in his last, that I have wiitten. I do not question 

 his knowledge of Boston markets, or that he visits Maine 

 occasionally, or that he sees many from there. I said he 

 was a stay-at-home correspondent, and I still say so. I 

 do not question his good intentions, but I do say that he 

 gives statements as authoritative on many points of which 

 he has a very limited knowledge. That he intends to 

 state facts is no excuse for stating things to be so which 

 are not so. T did not question the many correct state- 

 ments; I challenged the incorrect ones regarding our 

 land owners. By an official report to the Boston Jotirnal, 

 March 17, our wild lands are given as containing 9,^60.836 

 acres, valued at over $19,000,000, and the tax for 1891 is 

 $52,743. Is it wise to antagonize the owners of this prop- 

 erty by making statements about them which cannot be 

 proved? "Special" stated that they were "obstinate to 

 pig-headedness" and would oppose a certain measure 

 "with all the power they could bring to bear." In his 

 article of March 19 he says truthfully, "There was not 

 much opposition to the amendments," and his silence 

 regarding land owmers shows he was mistaken. I asked 

 him to quote any article a land owner had ever written 

 proposing_ to curtail the privileges of sportsmen. He has 

 not done it. Instead of this he speaks of one who wished 

 that hunters and fishermen could be kept off their lands 

 for fear of fires. This, I think, is no unreasonable wish, 

 If "Special" Were a land owner he would wish the same. 



He mentions a praiseworthy case where a gentleman 

 tried to extinguish a fire which "some camper had left 

 burning." If there had been no campers there, there 

 would have been no fire. He complains of land owners 

 because "they can see no difference between the real 

 sportsman who would as deeply regret a forest fire as 

 they would themselves and the worthless, thieving 

 poacher of their own State."' Now, the fact is that it is 

 the guides, who belong to the class "Special" calls names, 

 who really preserve our lands from fires. They choose 

 the camping places, they build the fires for the sports- 

 men, whether real or sham, and they put them out on 

 leaving; were it not for our guides the State would have 

 been burned over long ago. A man may be a perfect 

 gentleman and obey all laws, and yet be very careless 

 with fire. I can give names of three Bangor men who 

 set three separate fires in past years — all first-class men, 

 but careless. To imply that a gentleman will not care- 

 lessly set a fire, and that those who do are poachers and 

 thieves is absurd. 



"Special" says that I object to "true sportsmen," That 

 is his statement, not mine. I object to no man, white 

 man or Indian, who kills no game and catclies no fish to 

 waste. A good many such come here to fish ; a very few 

 to hunt. All such men are welcome. What I do object 

 to is having any one calling the men who leave our trout 

 in piles to rot on the banks, as I have often seen them, 

 and who kill our game in summer and waste it, "true 

 sportsmen," and calling other as good men "thieves and 

 poachers," if later they kill what they need to eat. I do 

 not believe in calling any one hard names. It never 

 does any good to the cause of the one who uses them; 

 but I believe in fair play. "Special" says in the Forest 

 AND Stream, Jan, 13, 1887, page 487: 



"I have heard a gentleman say within a couple of days, 

 and I know him to be a true gentleman, notwithstanding 

 he has been in disgrace in Maine for shooting game out 

 of season, for which shooting he has paid his fines — I 

 have heard him say that if Maine changed her game laws 

 so as to give September as part of the open season on her 

 larger game, that he should do all in his power toward 

 helping the Commission." 



Now if he means to say that a man who has killed game 

 in close time is a true gentleman because he has paid his 

 fines, why is not Jonathan Darling, after he has settled 

 his fine, as much a gentleman? Darling wants Septem- 

 ber opened for dogging deer, and this man wants it opened 

 to kill them after his own fashion. Wherein is the dif- 

 ference? What I wish him to see is that by making class 

 distinctions, by keeping silent about the rich who come 

 to waste and berating those of our State who kill to eat, 

 such a state of feeling has been made to exist as 

 "Special" at his distance knows nothing about. He heai-s 

 one side and gives that as he hears it; there is another 

 side of which he knows little and which I feel would 

 modify his tone were he morefuUy informed. My daugh- 

 ter is writing a series of papers on Maine game which 

 may place some things in a different light from what 

 they have been viewed. "Special" doubtless knows more 

 of the Rangeley region where he visits than I do; I 

 make no pretensions to knowledge of that country ; but 

 of the country east of the Kennebec from the sea to the 

 boundary lines, I have a knowledge such as he will never 

 have. 



"Special" asks me to find a line he haa vrritten defend- 

 ing the killing of game out of season. I have never 

 stated that he defended it; what I do say is that he con- 

 demns one class and keeps silence about the other. He 

 will remember that our close time extends to Oct. 1. He 

 knows that fully tbree-fouyths of our hunting visitors 



have finished their hunting before that; of the remainder 

 T think a fair statement wou.ld be that at least half go to 

 different points, where deer are dogged to hunt in this 

 way. I think "Special" would be fair if he knew the 

 facts, but our local papers rarely expose visitors, while 

 they do give some cases of violations by our own people, 

 and at his distance he repeats what he reads. 



As to shooting cases, "Special" says: "Note where I say 

 in substance that if anybody does this and gets shot, why, 

 I am simply glad of it." I freely acquit him of partiality; 

 but how any man can say he ie glad when a man is killed 

 or wounded and a home is left desolate, is beyond my 

 comprehension; but that is his funeral, not mine. 



A large part of his article is given to "submitting a 

 proposition to my judgment," and to bring it down to 

 my comprehension he has kindly restated it in simpler 

 form. When I first read it over I thought it sounded 

 familiar and at once tui'ned to Mark Twain's first inter- 

 view with Artemas Ward. I quote a part of it, as I think 

 any one reading the two will at once see the similarity in 

 directness of style: 



"Now, what 1 want to get at is— is, well, the way de- 

 posits of ore are made, you know. For instance: Now, 

 as I understand it, the vein which contains the silver is 

 sandwiched in between casings of gi'anite, and runs along 

 the gromid and sticks up like a curbstone. Well, take a 

 vein 40ft. thick, for example, or 80 for that matter, or 

 even a hundred — say you go down on it with a shaft, 

 straight down, you know, or with what you call 'incline,' 

 maybe you go down oOOft., or maybe you don't go down 

 but 200— anyway you go down, and all the time this vein 

 grows narrower, when the casings come nearer or ap- 

 proach each other, you may say — that is, when they do 

 approach, which of course they do not always do, particu- 

 larly in cases where the nature of the formation is such 

 that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, 

 and which geology has failed to account for, although 

 everything in that science goes to prove that, all things 

 being equal, it would if it did not, or would not certainly 

 if it did, and then of course they are. Do not yon think 

 it is?" 



And then I said aloud: "I — I— that is— if you don't 

 mind, would you— would you say that over again? I 

 ought — " 



* * # * * « 



"Now, don't you be afraid, I'll put it so plain this time 

 that you can't help but get the hang of it. We will begin 

 at the very beginning. You know the vein, the ledge, 

 the thing that contains the metal, whereby it constitutes 

 the medium between all other forces, whether of present 

 or remote agencies, so brought to bear in favor of the 

 former against the latter, or the latter against the former 

 or all, or both, or compromising the relative differences 

 existing within the radius whence culminate the several 

 degrees of similarity to which — " 



1 said, "Oh, hang my wooden head, it ain't any use — 

 it ain't any use to try — I can't understand anything. The 

 plainer you get it the more I can't get the hang of it." 



"Special" sums up his proposition by asking me 

 "squarely to tell the readers of Forest and Stream 

 whether if Maine people stood by their own game laws 

 and refused to assist 'sportsmen' from other States in 

 illegal killing of game, if the whole work would not be 

 done." I answer squarely, no. Only the year before 

 last a New York gentleman whose name I have, left here 

 threatening to bring his guides and boats from the Adir- 

 ondack county. I say that if our people all stood by the 

 laws to a man, these men would come as long as they 

 knew that by paying a fine, light to them, they would 

 still be considered gentlemen in other States. They care 

 no more for our laws or our State than the Boston liquor 

 dealers do; what they wantis the game. "Special" has im- 

 wittingly showed where his sympathies are. He has pro- 

 posed for the whole people of a State to keep the laws 

 and to keep any of their number from being hired by out- 

 siders to help them break the laws, before he proposes 

 to help us. Did he ever know any State, city or town, 

 where no one could be hired to break laws? If that is the 

 only condition on which he proposes to give us any moral 

 support, we will "paddle our own canoe." To expect the 

 people who own the game and the land it is on, to stand 

 by year after year and see it wasted, with rewards oft'ered 

 by outsiders for their conviction if they break their own 

 laws, and no rewards for non-resident violators, and no 

 word of encouragement for those who do well, but only 

 opprobrious epithets hurled at those who follow bad 

 examples, is too much to expect even of Maine. 



Manly Hardy, 



Chicago and the West. — Chicago, March 21. — John 

 Gillespie is back from Florida, the better for the trip, it 

 is hoped, though suffering from a very bad trouble with 

 his eye, the lid of which seems temporarily paralyzed. 

 March 23, — At the close of last week thousands of geese 

 wore reported, so Mr. Low tells me, at the Kankakee 

 marshes at Cumberland Lodge, the most seen there in 

 any late years. Ducks are said to be in all over the 

 marshes now, as the thaw is well on. There seems little 

 doubt that the flight of this spring is exceptionally heavy 

 though no steady shooting has yet been had. A number 

 of parties went out last Friday and Saturday, but at this 

 writing no word is yet obtainable from them. They have 

 doubtless met the birds this time,— E. Hough, 



Duck Shooting on Great South Bay, — New York, 

 March 16.— I rigged my decoys on the windward shore, 

 but only secm-ed four ducks. Then, determined to do 

 better, I rigged on the following day on the leeward 

 shore, where I bagged seventeen. After a stay of five 

 days I took thirty ducks home with me, and bethonght 

 myself that leeward shooting is better than windward, 

 when the wind blows a reef gale. — D. M. Hare. 



Spring in the Adirondacks.— North wood, N. Y,, 

 March 25. — Spring is certainly here. Robins, bluebirds, 

 woodchucks, ducks, snakes, blackbirds, song sparrows, 

 yellowhammers, and some of the smaller hawks have ap- 

 peared. The snow has nearly gone, and the ice is out of 

 the West Canada Creek at this point. The pheasants ap- 

 pear to have wintered well. — ^Woodchuck. 



What tte harness manufaottirers use and praise should eer- 

 taiuly be just the thing for private and livery stables. Harness 

 manufacturers consider the dressing produced by Frank Miller &, 

 Sons to be the hest ever used on a harness, new or old, for it is not 

 only a beautifler but a preserver to tbe leather, while giving It a 

 perfect finish. It does not jjeel, crack or smut, nor will it harden 

 the leather, and may he used on buggy tops, fl.y nets, travellne 

 bags and trunks. It is a general favorite because it can be relied 

 upon,— .Adv. 



