Forest and Stream, 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Teems, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy l 

 Six Months, $2. j 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 1894. 



( VOL. XLIL— No. 10. 



| No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Fathers and Sons. 

 Opportunity. 

 A Snake Up a Tree. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



California Notes. 

 Danvis Folks, -xxiv. 



Natural History. 



Men and Snakes 

 For Anatomical Material. 

 Lead-Poisoned Wildfowl. 

 Domestication of Wildfowl. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



Dixie Land —J. 

 Midwinter Ducking 

 Stop the Sale of Game. 

 Old Scenes Revisited. 

 The New .25-Cal. Shell. 



Camp-Fire Flickerings. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Early Fishing Experiences, 

 Ouananiche. 



The Mohican Rod and Gun Club. 

 Boston and Maine. 

 California Fly-Casting Tourna- 

 ment. 



The Vermont Trout Law. 

 The Kennel. 



Columbus Dog Show. 



The Kennel. 



Spaniels at New York. 

 A. K. C. Meeting. 

 Spaniel Club Dinner. 

 Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Hunting and Coursing. 



Altcar Coursing Meet. 



National Beagle Club Meeting. 



Hunting and Coursing Notes. 

 Canoeing. 



Reforming the A. C. A. 



A Simple and Ingenious Inven- 

 tion. 



News Notes. 



Yachting. 



A Cruise on theMiramlchi. 

 International Racing. 

 Model Yachting about New York 

 News Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



The Drift of Bullets. 

 Rifle at San Antonio. 

 Club Doings. 



Trap Shooting. 



Drivers and Twisters. 

 Forester G. 0. Tournament. 

 Opening Jersey League Season. 

 Texas and the Southwest. 

 Matches and Meetings. 



Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page vii. 



The Forest and Stream is put to press 

 on Tuesdays. Correspondence intended for 

 publication should reach us by Mondays and 

 as much earlier as may be practicable. 



A SNAKE UP A TREE. 

 Far-reaching effects often follow the most trivial 

 happenings. A celebrated English preacher ascribed 

 his conversion to a train of thought prompted by hearing 

 the distant barking of a dog. One day last autumn, in 

 Missouri woods, a blacksnake climbed a tree. It was a 

 common snake, an ordinary tree and an every-day climb; 

 but it has been read of and thought about and written 

 upon from Missouri to Maryland, from Mississippi to 

 Massachusetts, and from New Jersey to Michigan. And 

 all because Mr. Horace Kephart, of St. Louis, happened 

 to see the snake on the tree trunk and wrote about it to 

 Forest and Stream. 



For one thing this shows, as numerous other discussions 

 in our columns of the ways of snakes have shown, tbat 

 snakes are a popular subject. People like to talk and to 

 write about them. Most persons actually know very 

 little truth about snakes. They imbibe false notions 

 from infancy up. What they think they know is often 

 error. Even the children's papers deal out snake lies; 

 and more's the pity, in pretended good faith, like the 

 hideously silly story in Harper's Young People of a link 

 snake which, when broken to pieces and scattered about, 

 collects itself together again. Before the average man 

 may know the truth here he must divest himself of error; 

 he cannot learn the facts of snake life until he shall have 

 unlearned tbe fables. This is emphatically true as to the 

 popular notion of the harmful character of all snakes. 

 We feel very sure that the letters which we have printed 

 in response to Mr. Kephart's inquiry must have their share 

 in influencing those who may read them to entertain a 

 more sensible regard for harmless snake life. It may be 

 that the killing of tbis blacksnake on a tree trunk in Mis- 

 souri woods will thus be the means of assuring to some 

 others of the serpent tribe, from the human beings who 

 encounter them, immunity from revolver balls, stones and 

 clubs. 



nature. Whether the effect of his interference in any 

 particular case may be beneficial or injurious must for 

 the most part depend upon circumstances and conditions 

 of which he is ignorant. But whatever the result, the 

 individual prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner never 

 wavers in his conviction that he has done something to 

 help run the universe on better business principles. 



NUISANCES TO BE ABATED. 



Judge Houghton has handed down a decision in Sara- 

 toga county, N. Y. , in the case of Harvey Cook against 

 State Game and Fish Protector C. H. Barber. Cook had 

 set-lines in Lake Lonely; and the protector destroyed 

 them. Thereupon Cook brought suit to recover the value 

 of the apparatus, on the claim that the law under which 

 the protector had summarily destroyed the lines was 

 unconstitutional and repugnant to that clause of the 

 United States Constitution which forbids the taking of 

 private property without due process of law. Cook 

 claimed, morever, to have secured permission from the 

 riparian owners to fish as he pleased. Judge Houghton 

 disposes of both of these contentions, holding tbat for 

 protective purposes the State has jurisdiction over all 

 waters tributary to the navigable streams; and that the 

 law in the case is not unconstitutional. 



It will be recalled that this same question of the right 

 of protectors summarily to destroy nets as nuisances has 

 been passed upon by the Court of Appeals. This was in 

 a Jefferson county case reported in our issue of Feb. 27, 

 1890. Suit was brought against Protector Steele to 

 recover the value of unlawful nets destroyed by him. In 

 the lower court Judge Williams found for the plaintiff, 

 but the General Term reversed the decision and the Court 

 of Appeals also sustained the law. The case was then 

 carried to the Supreme Court of the United States, where 

 it yet awaits decision. We believe that the end will be 

 to affirm the constitutionality of the statute. In the mean- 

 time, netters and set-liners may not hope to rob the public 

 and escape punishment by any question of the integrity 

 of the law which declares their unlawful contrivances 

 to be public nuisances and as such subject to summary 

 abatement. He does not read the signs of the times 

 aright who deludes himself with the notion that the pub- 

 lic is not growing every year more intolerant of the use of 

 nets and set-lines and all like contrivances for game fish 

 in the inland waters of the State. They are regarded as 

 nuisances to be abated, and even if the present law should 

 be overthrown by the United States Supreme Court, an- 

 other statute would be devised to accomplish the required 

 end. The nets must go, the set-lines must go, the fish 

 pirates must go. 



There are few tasks to which the average man addresses 

 himself with more cheerful alacrity or more buoyant 

 complacency than to the regulation of the universe by 

 decreeing and executing the death penalty upon certain 

 forms of animal life, which he is pleased to condemn as 

 noxious or superflous. If he happens to come upon a 

 hawk with a game bird in its talons, incontinently he 

 kills the hawk and exhorts all sportsmen to kill all hawks 

 that the earth may be rid of them. If he surprises a 

 snake making a meal of bird's eggs, he stamps it to death 

 and condemns the entire ophidian tribe. If he sees the 

 birds making away with his small fruit, he runs for his 

 gun to kill them. Thus man constitutes himself an unrea- 

 soning factor in disturbing or maintaining the balance of 



one moose in a season. The limitation is proper, and no 

 reasonable man will object to it. One moose, fairly 

 hunted, brought down after a long expedition into the 

 woods, as the winning of an arduous and skilled pur- 

 suit, is reward enough. But where Quebec makes a 

 mistake is in not putting some limitation upon the de- 

 structive propensities of its own residents; for there are 

 not many moose in the Province, and the supply should 

 be drawn upon with discretion. 



OPPORTUNITY. 

 The old saw runs that opportunity makes the thief. 

 It makes the "game hog" too. One moose may suffice 

 for the sportsman, who because he is a sportsman goes 

 through toil and fatigue and patient waiting to secure 

 it; but no one has yet determined how many moose 

 must be slaughtered to satiate the killing propensities of 

 those pseudo sportsmen, who because they are not sports- 

 men are led into moose yards and given opportunity to 

 fire into game under conditions closely simulating the 

 taking off of the family cow, when she has gone dry 

 and the country butcher has dickered for her as so much 

 tough beef on the hoof. One day this winter some In- 

 dians discovered a moose yard about seventy miles from 

 Quebec, and repairing to the ancient city made their find 

 known to two individuals who had in them the making 

 of game butchers when opportunity should offer. In 

 due time the savages— Indian and white— were upon 

 the stalled game; and when the white contingent re- 

 turned to Quebec, they boasted of having "brought 

 down" seven of the snowed-in creatures. They had im- 

 proved their opportunity. They had improved it in their 

 own way. Their way is not the way of the man who 

 hunts his game. The impelling motives of the moose 

 hunter and the moose yarder are as radically different 

 as the two methods of getting the game. It would be 

 quite as difficult to conceive of the one "downing" the 

 helpless game in the snow, as of the other undertaking 

 a real moose hunt man fashion. The hunter may have 

 reason to exult in his exploit and to relate its doing 

 with pride, but why anyone should boast without shame 

 the killing of seven moose found in a yard by Indians, 

 is a question which will puzzle most white men. 

 The Province of Quebec limits non-resident huntera to 



FATHERS AND SONS. 



The time has long since gone by when one might go 

 into the field taking thought of himself alone and making 

 no account of those who are to come after him. As we 

 of to-day are given opportunity of shooting and fishing, 

 so must we see to it that the blessed heritage is passed 

 on unimpaired to those who shall justly hold us to ac- 

 count for our stewardship. 



Among the Forest and Stream amateur photographs, 

 of which reproductions have been given, there was one 

 which pictured two deer hunters watching on an Adiron- 

 dack runway. The hunters were a man and a boy — 

 father and son; and the picture had a special and peculiar 

 interest when it was received at this office, for it recalled 

 and gave point to a declaration which had been made 

 years before by the man, when his boy was a babe: "I 

 intend to do what I can, so that my boy may have just as 

 good hunting in the Adirondacks as I have had." It is 

 this spirit which should animate and control not only the 

 individual sportsman for his own blood alone, but the en- 

 tire body of sportsmen for those who are to take then- 

 places. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 The Florida Citizen makes a sensible plea for the pro- 

 tection of birds of plumage. Its demand for their preser- 

 vation is not based upon sentiment, but upon the hard 

 business fact that the birds add to the attractiveness of 

 the State for winter tourists; and it cites as a case in 

 point the pelicans of Port Tampa, which were formerly 

 so harried by shooters that it was impossible to get 

 within 200yds. of them. Subsequently "shooting was 

 prohibited, and the pelicans have since become so tame 

 that they gather upon the bars only a few feet away from 

 the docks and hotel, and visitors find real pleasure in 

 watching their awkward and grotesque antics, and in 

 observing their methods of fishing." This recalls the 

 tame pelicans which frequented Mr. Kirk Munroe's wharf 

 at Biscayne Bay, and about which he once wrote in our 

 natural history columns. It is a condition which might 

 exist at all tourist-frequented points in Florida if com- 

 mon sense could only have sway. 



We learn with a regret which will be shared by others 

 of the death of Dr. Nathan G. Daggett, of Schenectady, 

 N. Y., who for many years was a contributor to our 

 columns over the pen name "Dorp." Dr. Daggett was 

 one of the unnumbered multitude of those who seek in 

 pursuit of game and study of wildwood creatures the 

 upbuilding which comes of life in the open air. He was 

 a close observer of nature, and few readers will fail to 

 recall his frequent studies of the ways of the ruffed 

 grouse. 



A bill has been introduced into the New York Legis- 

 lature providing that county supervisors' ordinances re- 

 lating to game and fish "shall apply alike to all citizens 

 of the State of New York;" and repealing all ordinances 

 already passed by boards of supervisors discriminating 

 in favor of or against citizens of any county or counties. 

 This is sound to the core; but is it possible that such a 

 statute is required to prevent these churlish measures? 

 Something is wrong with the constitution of the State 

 if under it citizens of one county may cut off those of 

 another from the common privileges of all citizens of 

 one State. Non-resident fish and game laws ai - e not in 

 keeping with the spirit of the age. They ought every- 

 where to be abolished. 



Few persons realize the rapidity with which the choice 

 portions of the Adirondacks have been acquired by private 

 parties, and the extent to which they have been converted 

 into preserves, from which the public are excluded. 

 Something like 565,000 acres of Adirondack lands are 

 now fenced or posted as game and fish parks. And the 

 end is not yet. 



