Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, 



A A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, JUNE 8, 1893. 



j VOL. XL.— No. 23. 



( No. 318 Bboabway, New Tobk. 



The Record is Also a CleaB One. 

 The Alligator Satchel. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



California Spring Time. 



My Chance Acquaintance.— yi. 

 Back to the Old Home. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



Wild Goose Shooting in Kansas. 

 The Mainf Association and Non- 

 Residents. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Niagara County Anglers' Day. 



On the North Shore — vir. 



The Kingfishers in Canada.— iv. 



Chicago and the West. 



Forest and Stream Fishing 



Postals. 

 Connecticut Black Bass Law. 



The Kennel. 



American Pet Dog Club's Show. 



Homing Instinct in Dogs. 



Dog Chat. 



Kernel Notes. 



Answers to Correspondenta. 



COSTTENTS. 



I Yachting. 



Memorial Day Races. 

 The June Regattas. 

 Minnetonka Regatta and Carni- 

 val. 



The Corinthian Schooner Race. 

 Corinthian Y. C. of Philadelphia. 

 News Notes. 



Canoeing. 



. Atlantic Division Meet. 

 Errors in Rule I. 

 Brooklvn C. C. 

 News Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



Miller Rifle Club Shoot. 

 Zettler Rifle Club. 

 Rifle Club Doings. 

 Rifle Notes. 



Trap Shooting. 



The Iowa State. 



The Kansas State. 



Norristown. 



A Battle of the Giants. 



Decoration Day Events. 



Western Traps. 



Drivers and Twisters. 



Answers to Queries. 



J^(?r Prospectus and Adveriising Rates see Fage ^og. 



THE RECORD IS ALSO A CL^Al^ ONE. 



In our issue of May 25, commenting on the amount of 

 advertising contained in that number, we wrote: 



With this issue the Forest anu Stream breaks the advertising 

 record of twenty years. It carries more advertising announcements 

 than have been contained in any previous issue since the establish- 

 ment of the paper in 1873. This breaks the record not only of the 

 Forest and Stream, but of all journalism m this particular field. No 

 other sportsman's journal has to-day, or has ever had, an equal 

 amount of bona ^ide paid advertising. 



This was a calm, temperate and not at all exuberant 

 statement of facts, which appeared to us to be well 

 worthy of note. We, are pained to observe that an 

 esteemed contemporary criticises the concluding asser- 

 tion of the quoted paragraph as containing an error. 

 There is no error there. The amount of advertising, it is 

 true, may have been exceeded, but the amount of "bona 

 fide paid advertising" has never been. 



Moreover, since the critic appears to invite a compari- 

 son, we may point out, as we thought it unnecessary to do 

 on the occasion referred to, that the Forest and Stream's 

 advertising pages are clean. They are devoted to the 

 announcements of respectable people, advertising the 

 business of respectable people, for the patronage of re- 

 spectable people. There is not a single indecent "medi- 

 cal" advertisement in them, There has never been. 

 There never will be. The line is drawn rigidly; the rule 

 of exclusion is as immutable as the laws of the Medes and 

 Persians. This is so well understood by those whose sup- 

 port we enjoy, that there would be no occasion ever to 

 allude to it, except as in this instance for purposes of 

 comparison. 



A journal which mingles with the advertisements of 

 sportsmen's goods those so-called "medical" advertise- 

 ments which are on their face quack and fraudulent, and 

 in w^ording and purpose are indecent and filthy, puts an 

 insult not only upon respectable advertisers but upon 

 every man as well who is confronted by the objectionable 

 announcements or into whose home they are unwittingly 

 admitted. 



No man need ever scrutinize with apprehension the ad- 

 vertising pages of the journal which goes out from No. 

 318 Broadway, New York. 



Our advertising space record has been broken this year. 

 The record of clean advertising will never be broken. 



byways. In those times he was sought as a curiosity, or 

 fell a victim to the sportsman thirsting for renown as an 

 alligator slayer; but since then, the commercial import- 

 ance of his pursuit ha.ving been demonstrated, he has 

 been hunted systematically for market. 



In the recently issued "Report of the Fisheries on the 

 South Atlantic States," by Dr. H. M. Smith, of the United 

 States Fish Commission, are given some interesting and 

 suggestive sta.tistics of the Florida alligator industry. The 

 business has already reached and passed the point of 

 highest development, and is now on a decline, not be- 

 cause of a lessened demand for the products, but because 

 the warfare has been waged so extensively and so relent- 

 lessly that the supply has been diminished to a point 

 where the pursuit is no longer profitable. It is estimated 

 that in the decade from 1880 to 1890 not less than 2,500,- 

 000 alHgators were killed in the State; and the supply 

 could not stand this tremendous drain. The alhgator 

 has been "killed out" and the alhgator hunter has gone 

 into other occupations. 



Alligators are killed chiefly for their skins; the teeth 

 also have a commercial value. A large trade is still 

 carried on in alligator curiosities; in 1890 about 8,400 

 alligators were disposed of to tourists in Jacksonville. 

 Most of these are very small ones, for which the hunters 

 receive only from $10 to |30 per hundred. In no branch 

 of the industry are those who gather the raw material 

 well paid. Marketable skins from three to twelve feet 

 in length bring only sixty cents on an average, and 

 most of this is taken out in trade— provisions and am- 

 munition — so that the hunter appears to earn all 

 that he receives. The hunter combines with his pursuit 

 of the alligator that of deer, bear, wildcat, opossum and 

 raccoon for the skins; and in 1890 in the Kissimmee and 

 Lake Okeechobee region about a thousand otters were 

 killed. Formerly, too, the plume birds contributed an 

 important share to the profits, but the supply has failed 

 and that branch of the business has been discontinued. 

 In like manner, unless there shall be a change in present 

 methods, the alligator industry must fail. 



THE ALLIGATOR SATCHEL. 

 If the feather-bedecked hat imiilies the destruction of 

 bu-ds of plumage, the aUigator skin hand-bag means the 

 passing of the 'gator; and vsdth all his ugliness the Florida 

 alligator bids fair to follow the Florida plume birds with 

 all their beauty into the limbo of wild species destroyed 

 for commercial pm-poses. One tmfortunate feature of the 

 case is that the alligator has no friends. He is universally 

 regarded as an ugly customer. His ways are the reverse 

 of winning. No Audubon Society espouses his cause. 

 The sentiment evoked in behalf of the feathered 

 singers in the trees has no regard for the alli- 

 gator bellowing in the swamp. The alligator must 

 go. The statistics show that he is going; indeed, that 

 from large areas of Florida he has gone. In the early 

 days of pleasure travel in that State, a quarter of a 

 century ago, on all the great highways the alligator 

 was as ubiquitous as he was novel and interesting. To- 

 day one xavist seek him, if to be found at aU, in the remote 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 If all other records of the introduction of the Mon- 

 golian pheasants were destroyed it would be practicable 

 to gather reasonably complete data from the game laws. 

 The Oregon statute, for instance, would tell not only 

 when the birds were first brought into the country, but 

 also that America owes to Judge Denny this splendid 

 addition to its feathered game resources. And as one 

 State after another — ^Washington, California, Idaho, Col- 

 orado, Wisconsin, New York (in a Livingston county law), 

 Vermont and Alabama— have prescribed periods of pro- 

 tection, one may note from this legislative record the 

 distribution of the birds over the Union. A similar his- 

 tory might be made out for the European partridges, 

 pheasants and hares which have been brought to us; and 

 now at the request* of Dr. W. O. Blaisdell of Macomb, 

 111., the Legislature of that State has provided for the 

 protection of the Chukor partridges imported by him from 

 far away India. 



No one can foretell, at this "stage of the game," what 

 will be the outcome of this introduction of foreign birds 

 and their protection. There, is another story embodied 

 in the bird legislation of this country, that of the English 

 sparrow. It records first the stringent protection of the 

 defenseless stranger; next the repeal of protective statutes, 

 when it was discovered that the newcomer was abtmdantly 

 able to care for himself; and then the ofi'er of a bounty 

 on his head, when he had become an intolerable pest. 

 There are not wanting those who pose as alarmists to tell 

 us that similar chapters ^vill be added to the legislative 

 history of these newly imported species of game birds. 

 To which the reply may be that the pheasants and par- 

 tridges are good to eat. Had the sparrow been fit for the 

 table, the markets would have taken good care of the 

 surplus. 



One of the problems to be solved is that of the ability 

 of these newcomers to withstand the unaccustomed 

 enemies they will encounter here. That they are abund- 

 antly able to make shift for themselves in the cold of 

 winter has already been demonstrated; but it has been 

 quite as clearly shown that in some latitudes they cannot 

 stand up against the vermin, great and smaU. The Jekyl 

 Island's experience with English pheasants showed that 

 in Georgia it was a simple matter to breed the birds by 



the thousand, but the enterprise failed ingloriously and 

 the pheasants succumbed when the snakes and fleas and 

 ticks came down upon them. 



The sheep ranchers of the Southwest, who have suf- 

 fered great losses by the depredations. of panthers, wolves 

 and coyotes, have been conducting exhaustive experi- 

 ments to test various remedies, and as a result of their in- 

 vestigations have developed the plan of propagating the 

 disease known as mange, which has been shown to be 

 destructive of the pests. In the annual convention of 

 the Texas Wool Growers' Association in San Antonio last 

 Tuesday, it was recommended that "mange pens" should 

 be established in every county of the State. This is fight- 

 ing the devil with fire. 



Note, as another illustration of the changing shooting 

 conditions in this country, the scheme of the Shocco 

 Game Association of Baltimore, which has just bought a 

 thousand acres farm in Warren county, North Carolina, 

 and is converting it into a game preserve after European 

 models. The preserve will be stocked with thousands of 

 American quail and with European pheasants and par- 

 tridges. A gamekeeper has been imported from one of 

 the game preserves of the Rothschilds. By a contract 

 with the proprietors of adjoining farms the property under 

 control will compose fifteen thousand acres; this arrange- 

 ment wiU hold for ten years; by the terms of the contract 

 the club undertakes to stock the leased farms, and to pay 

 a fair price for the game killed by its members; the owner 

 of a leased farm may himself shoot over it and may invite 

 his friends; but outsiders are to be warned off. The 

 Warrenton Record, speaking for the Warren county 

 people, says: "We would be glad to welcome a dozen 

 other clubs to the county, for whom we have plenty of 

 room, and to whom we can offer equal advantages." 



Tennessee has established an unique system of Fish 

 Commissioners. By a recent enactment, the county courts 

 are empowered to elect in each county a Commissioner, 

 whose duty it shall be to investigate and report upon the 

 fishing interests of his district, and to report upon 

 them to the Governor of the State and to the United 

 States Fish Commission. For this service he is al- 

 lowed an annual salary not in excess of |25, with 

 a like sum for expenses. It stands to reason that what- 

 ever shall be done by the Commissioners must be a labor 

 of love; but if the agitation for fish and game protection, 

 which we have commented on from time to time, proves 

 anything, there is abundant ground for confidence that 

 in some counties at least decided steps will be taken 

 toward wiser methods of preserving and using the fish 

 supply. 



By the resignation of Mr. E, M. Dawison, who until a 

 few days ago was chief clerk of the Interior Department, 

 that branch of the Government service loses an efiicient 

 and faithful official. Mr. Dawson has been long in the 

 Department, and years ago when the affairs of the Yel- 

 lowstone Park first came under his administration he 

 showed a keen appreciation of their importance, and 

 proved himself an alert and faithful guardian of the 

 reservation. It must be a matter of sincere regret to all 

 friends of the National Park that Mr. Dawson has seen 

 fit to tender his resignation to the Secretary of the 

 Interior, for his long famiharity with Park matters and 

 his deep interest in them made him one of the most 

 efficient of its protectors. 



Writers of anonymous letters often mean well but are 

 mistaken in their method of trying to do good. We are 

 frequently in receipt of anonymous communications re- 

 porting violations of the game or fish laws and usually 

 asking "Where is the protector?" Usually we forward' 

 such letters to the protector, but that experienced oflacial 

 has learned by experience tnat the anonymous guide is 

 likely to lead him into a ditch. The manly, sensible and 

 practical course for one who has knowledge of violations 

 is to give information in a straightforward way to the 

 protector, sign his name to it and stand ready to back it. 



President Cleveland has been fishing at Hog Island. As 

 usual, when a President of the United States goes fishing, 

 the papers have made a great to-do over it. Mr. Cleveland 

 had good luck, enjoyed the outing, and has gone back to 

 his work. Many another fisherman, whose going and 

 coming the papers will not trouble themselves to chron- 

 icle, may have just as good a time, enjoy the fun just as 

 much and go back to work just as rested. 



