Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 18 94. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copt, 

 Six Months, $2. 



( VOL. XLII.-No. 5. 



j No. 318 Broadway, New Yohk. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page v. 



A PLANK. 



This is 1894. "We have just been celebrating the four- 

 hundredth anniversary of the coming to this continent of 

 men equipped with firearms. For four centuries, from the 

 time of Christopher Columbus to that of Charles Delmon- 

 ico, we have been killing and marketing game, destroying 

 it as rapidly and as thoroughly as we knew how, and 

 making no provision toward replacing the supply. The 

 result of such a course is that for the most part the game 

 has been blotted out from wide areas, and to-day, after 

 four hundred years of wanton wastefulness, we are just 

 beginning to ask one another how we may preserve the 

 little that remains, for ourselves and our children. 



With all the discussion of the subject in the columns of 

 the Forest and Stream from 1873 to 1894, there has been 

 and is a general consensus of opinion that the markets 

 are answerable for a larger proportion of game destruc- 

 tion than any other agency or all other agencies com- 

 bined. The practical annihilation of one species of large 

 game from the continent, and the sweeping off of other 

 species from vast regions formerly populated by them, have 

 not been brought about by the settlement of the country, 

 but by unrelenting pursuit for commercial purposes. The 

 work of the sportsman, who hunts for the sake of hunt- 

 ing, has had an effect so trivial, that in comparison with 

 that of the market hunter it need not be taken into con- 

 sideration. The game paucity of to-day is due to the 

 skin hunter, the meat killer, the market shooter. 



From the beginning wild game has played an import- 

 ant part in the development of the country. It has sup- 

 plied subsistence when there was no other food for the 

 pioneer and the settler. Buffalo and elk and deer and 

 grouse and quail and wild goose and wild duck have 

 sustained the men who first cut into the edge of the 

 unbroken forests of the continent, who blazed the trails 

 westward, and pushed their way, directed as mariners at 

 sea by note of sun and stars, across the billowing prairies". 

 Many a halt would have been made by these advancing 

 hosts, had they been compelled to depend upon sutler 

 trains, instead of foraging on the abundant game re- 

 sources of the country as they took possession of it. For 

 generations, then, it was right and proper, and wise and 

 profitable that game should be killed for food; that every 

 edible creature clothed in feathers or in fur should be 

 regarded as so much meat to be spitted or potted or 

 panned. 



But times have changed. Conditions are not what 

 they were. Game still affords food for the dweller in the 

 wilderness, for those who live on the outskirts; and for 

 people in such situations venison is a cheaper commodity 

 than beef. But for the vast and overwhelming multi- 

 tude of the people of the continent game is no longer in 

 any sense an essential factor of the food supply. It has 

 become a luxury, it is so regarded, and it Is sold at prices 

 which make it such. With the exception, perhaps, of 

 rabbits or hares, the supply of wild game as marketed is 

 not such as to reduce the cost of living to persons of mod- 

 erate means. The day of wild game as an economic 

 factor in the food supply of the country has gone by. In 

 these four hundred years we have so reduced the game 

 and so improved and developed the other resources of the 

 country that we can now supply food with the plow and 

 reaper and the cattle ranges cheaper than it can be fur- 

 nished with the rifle and the shotgun. In short, as a 

 civilized people we are no longer in any degree dependent 

 for our sustenance upon the resources and the methods of 

 primitive man. No plea of necessity, of economy, of 

 value as food, demands the marketing of game. If every 

 market stall were to be swept of its game to-day, there 

 would be no appreciable effect upon the food supply of 

 the country. 



Well, then, why not recognize this, and direct our 

 efforts, in line with such a recognition, toward the utter 

 abolition of the sale of game? Why should we not adopt 

 as a plank in the sportsman's platform a declaration to 

 this end— That the sale of game should be forbidden at 

 all seasons? To share and express the sentiment is one 

 thing, to put it into execution is quite another. Perhaps 

 the time is not ripe for such stringent measures. Yet 

 this very rule of no game traffic holds in certain county 



laws in this State; and one of these days it will hold in 

 every State, East and West, North and South. It may not 

 be brought about in our day, but the present moment is 

 ncQ..«v too soon to adopt the plank as a working principle 

 and to work for it. 



That which stands in the way of the present prohibition 

 of the sale of game in the larger cities is the magnitude of 

 the commercial interests involved. The traffic is one of 

 large proportions, much capital is invested , and the busi- 

 ness not one which would readily be sacrificed. No one 

 of these considerations, however, can withstand a cam- 

 paign of education and the creation of a public sentiment 

 which will surely follow when that education shall have 

 taught the community the true place of wild game in the 

 economy of the civilization of the present. 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 



The Governor of North Carolina might say to the Gov- 

 ernor of South Carolina: "We do things differently here." 

 For, while in South Carolina they now tax the non-resident 

 shooter $25 and put him into jail for thirty days if he 

 goes gunning without a license, in North Carolina they 

 welcome the sportsman from abroad, lay open their hotel 

 registers for his name, point the way to their quail fields, 

 and send him home with an invitation to come again. 



Just now the citizens of Southern Pines, in North Car- 

 olina, are doing their best to make happy a company of 

 visitors from the North and the South, who have gath- 

 ered in response to their invitation to join in a "week of 

 old-time Southern sports." The fun began last Thursday, 

 Feb. 1, with a quail hunt; Friday there was another quail 

 hunt with an opossum hunt at night; to-day the pro- 

 gramme calls for a rabbit chase; Monday it will be a 

 squirrel hunt; Tuesday a wild turkey hunt, with a coon 

 hunt at night; and on Wednesday a deer hunt by day 

 and a fox chase by night. Just how the commitlee in 

 charge has arranged with the game for this programme 

 is not explained; but every self-respecting coon, mind- 

 ful of the honor of the Tar-heel State, doubtless remained 

 closely at home on the night put apart exclusively for the 

 opossums, and the foxes will keep out of the way when it 

 comes the turn of the coon. In addition to the hunting 

 there are set down a barbecue, a possum supper and other 

 festivities, not to mention speech-making, which of course 

 will not be up to the mark of that heard over Asheville 

 way in Buncombe county. 



Altogether this is a very agreeable way for Northern 

 and Southern men to come together; and such meetings 

 cannot but promote friendlier feelings between the 

 residents of different sections, who participate in them. 

 The exchange of courtesies between the sportsmen of the 

 North and the South has been going on ever since war- 

 time picket lines were abandoned; they will continue and 

 multiply and exert their blessed influences, even in the 

 non-resident license fee districts. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 In his interesting story of the last wild turkey hunt of 

 western New York our correspondent, Mr. J. L. Davison, 

 tells us that being asked why he had not killed one of 

 the birds, he replied, "I have not lost any turkeys." In 

 the West "I have not lost any bears" is the conventional 

 retort when one is rallied for not hunting the grizzly. It 

 is a retort which has been cm-rent for hundreds of years. 

 In an old-time volume entitled "Epigrams both Pleasant 

 and Serious, written by that All- Worthy Knight, Sir 

 John Harrington, and never before Printed," London, 

 1615, is the rhymed version of it: 



A Gallant full of life and void of care, 



Asked his friend if he would find a hare. 



He that for sleepe, more than such sports did care, 



Said, Goe your waies, and leave me heere alone; 



Let them find hares that lost them, I lost none. 

 If the sportsmen of the seventeenth century were as 

 much given as are those of the present day to putting into 

 type hunting stories "never before printed," it would be 

 reasonable to assume that this one had been going the 

 rounds for a hundred years or so before. 



There are more old stories than new ones under the sun. 

 For instance, that familiar anecdote told by "Antler" and 

 others, of the genius who was taken out by his hoet to 

 hear the music of the hounds. When the pack was in 

 full cry, he was asked how he liked the music. "The 

 dogs make such a confounded racket that I can't hear 

 any music," was the response. This was in Tennessee. 



As told in. "Wit and Mirth," in the works of John Taylor, 

 the Water Poet, printed at London in the year 1630, the 

 story runs: "A Mayor that was on hunting (by chance) 

 one asked him how hee liked the Cry. 'A curse take the 

 Dogs, 11 saith he, 'they make such a bawling, that I cannot 

 heare the Cry.' " 



Speaking of bears, we have all heard the story of the man 

 who was wrestling with the bear and prayed, "Lord if 

 you can't help me, don't help the bear, but stand one side, 

 and you'll see the all-firedest bear fight you ever did see." 

 Well, this is old too, older than the oldest settler; for away 

 back in the days of the Leshes, their chief once prayed 

 before going into battle: "Be on our side! An' gin ye 

 canna be on our side, aye lay low a bit, an' ye'll see thae 

 carles get a hidin' that must please ye." 



Gen. Peter Turney, Governor of Tennessee, seventy 

 years old, is an enthusiastic deer hunter and rider to fox- 

 hounds, and has the credit of being able to stand as much 

 hard work in the field as any other man of the State, old 

 or young. "Uncle" Tim Dyer, of Vinal Haven, Me., is 

 twenty years older than Gov. Turney, and, according to 

 the Lewiston Journal, he has celebrated his ninetieth 

 year by taking alone and unaided, fishing in an ppen 

 dory, a halibut weighing 3321bs. This teaches us that 

 while there is life there is hope of catching a bigger fish 

 than we have ever caught before. Our frequent con- 

 tributor, Mr. J. G. Eich, of Bethel, Me., is seventy-three 

 years old, and has to his score as hunter a credit of 

 seventy-three dead bears, equivalent to one for each year. 

 Perhaps Mr. Lew Wilmot of Washington may tell us of 

 some one in the Northwest who can equal this record, or 

 "Coahoma" may find an equally redoubtable bear hunter 

 in the Mississippi swamps. The lists are open to all — 

 "Podgers" alone barred. 



Some years ago after the first stories of "Uncle Lisha's 

 Shop" had found their vast and appreciative audience, 

 Mr. Robinson suggested that some of the future chapters 

 might be illustrated with portraits of Uncle Lisha, Sam 

 Lovel and others of the Danvis folk; and he sent down 

 what he averred was a faithful likeness, done by his own 

 hand, of Lisha Peggs. No doubt it was, but the face and 

 the figure there sketched were so at variance with the 

 portrait we had conjured up while reading the Shop 

 papers, that we told Mr. Robinson that his sketch must 

 certainly disillusionize a multitude, destroy at one fell 

 swoop unnumbered hosts of the Uncle Lishas'of individ- 

 ual fancy, and find but a sorry welcome for this new one 

 — even though the true one — with which he sought to 

 supplant them all. So the portrait was not printed, and 

 to-day Uncle Lisha is known to Forest and Stream 

 readers as a personage of a thousand forms an< I faces, 

 and never two of them the same. 



Hill City is a town of Kansas in the jack rabbit belt. 

 The Mayor and the Council sent out a frantic wire the 

 other day offering to contribute 10,000 of their jacks to 

 the poor of large cities, if only a prize fight arranged for 

 a Florida city could be transferred to Kansas and set 

 down in Hill City's "midst." Here is a precious band of 

 iphilanthropists for revenue only. Having 10,000 rabbits 

 to give to the poor, they yet refuse to ship them, unless 

 two bruisers can be induced to maul one another in Hill 

 City in the sacred name of charity. 



A novelty in game protective schemes was a measure 

 under discussion, and rejected the other day, in the Ohio 

 Legislature, to make every alternate year a close season 

 on quail. This would be a capital plan, if only due care 

 were .taken to put it into effect so that the close time 

 should follow the hard winters; and to insure this, the 

 Legislature might call in the help of the weather sharps to 

 predict the cold years, as Joseph foretold the seven years 

 of famine in Egypt. 



It is an old saying that we must have our winter some 

 time, meaning that if the cold weather be not prolonged 

 during the usual term it will come with intensified rigor 

 before the opening of spring. Nevertheless, this is prov- 

 ing to be so far a season of unusual mildness, and in con- 

 sequence of marked advantage to game, over a wide area 

 in this latitude. If the favorable weather conditions 

 shall continue in corresponding degree through the 

 winter, the result-will be manifested next autumn in an 

 increased supply of quail and other game. 



