Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Tekms, $4 a Ykar. 10 Cts. a Copt. 1 

 Six Months, $2. J 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 5, 1894. 



( VOL. XLH.— No. 18. 



| No. 318 Broadway, Not Yobk. 



CONTENTS. 



Sdltorlal. 



Racing Prospects Abroad and at 

 Home. 



Commercial Fishermen Unite. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



Forest and Stream Yellowstone 



Park Game Exploration. 

 Rambling in Wyoming 

 Watching the Brant Grow Big. 



Natural History. 



"The Birds of Ontario." 

 Jaguars and Dogs. 

 Lynx and Wolverine. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



Pennsylvania Association. 

 Mr. Luther's Long Bow. 

 English Pheasants. 

 In Florida Flat Woods. 

 Caring for Quail. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



On the North Shore of Lake 



Superior. 

 Angling Notes. 

 News Notes from the Wa' ers. 

 Ouananiche and Trout. 

 Baits for White8sh. 

 Hudson River Salmon, 

 New York Game Laws. 



The Kennel. 



Los Angeles Dog Show. 

 Spaniel Judging. 

 Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



Canoeing. 



Away "Up North." 

 British Racing Canoes. 

 News Notes. 



Yachting. 



Dacotah. 



Steam Yacht Dungeness. 

 Two Extremes of Yacht Racing. 

 Racing Rules and the New York 

 Y. R. A. 



A New Watson Centerboard 



Yacht. 

 News Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



Zettler Winter Gallery Shoot. 

 Club Doings. 



Trap Shooting. 



South Side Gun Club Tourna- 

 ment. 



Mans^n's First Annual. 

 Live Bird Week in Jersey. 

 Drivers and Twisters. 

 Matches and Meetings. ■ 

 Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page vii. 



OUR PARK GAME EXPLORATION. 



We announced in our issue of April 14 the Forest and 

 Stream's enterprise of sending a staff expedition into the 

 Yellowstone National Park. It was an enterprise with a 

 purpose. This purpose was actual, definite and import- 

 ant, and its occasion pressing. It was nothing less than 

 to make real to the sixty-five million people of this coun- 

 try and to their agents in Congress the Yellowstone Park 

 of to-day; to awaken them to the perils which threaten it; 

 to arouse them to the necessity of immediate action to 

 rescue it from these perils. 



This was the undertaking, and it was one which might 

 well challenge the enthusiasm and high endeavor of 

 those to whom it was intrusted. To explore the Park in 

 winter was an achievement of woodcraft; who shall say 

 that it was not also a work of patriotism? 



The event has proved that the enterprise was well 

 timed. The course of events has been what we foresaw. 

 The results of the expedition have been secured at a 

 moment when they are certain to be of the highest pos- 

 sible utility. 



The first chapter of the report is given to-day. It is a 

 story of big-game destruction, an illicit, selfish, brutal 

 raid on the remnant of a rare species — the very choicest, 

 most highly prized game of the Park. To tell the story, 

 as it is told by Forest and Stream to-day at first hand, 

 is to perform a service which rarely comes within the 

 province of a sportsman's paper. It is an achievement of 

 journalism, and a worthy achievement because done in 

 the public interest. 



But this recounting of the work of a buffalo butcher is 

 not the sole end of the Yellowstone Park Game Explora- 

 tion. To give this dark tale was necessary. But pleas- 

 anter relations are to come— the story of the winter 

 enchantments of the wonderland. To demonstrate the 

 danger which imperils the Park, to show the need of 

 immediate action, this is only the one result of the ex- 

 pedition. It yet remains to picture the Park with so 

 graphic a pen that they who read shall be incited to a 

 more jealous regard for these priceless possessions and to 

 providing a more adequate preservation of them. 



caught killing elk or beaver, was taken to the Fort, shut 

 up in the guard house for a few weeks and then set free, 

 his horses, guns and other property being confiscated. 

 There was no punishment for an offender. 



Whatever may be said of those who invade the Park — 

 however bad they may be — they are not fools. It took 

 them only a few years to realize that the regulations were 

 a dead letter, that the scarecrow was powerless to harm 

 them, that however earnest and sincere the officers of the 

 Government might be in their efforts to protect the treas- 

 ures that had been given in charge to them, they could do 

 nothing, for their hands were tied by the inaction 

 of Congress. When these men fairly realized this, 

 it was inevitable that they should do just what 

 Howell did. The great reward which success prom- 

 ised justified them in taking the small risk of cap- 

 ture, to be followed by a short confinement, and 

 in order that, if captured, they might lose little, 

 they took into the Park the lightest outfit possible. 

 Howell boasted that his captured property was worth 

 only $26.75, while if he succeeded in getting his spoils 

 beyond the reservation lines he stood to make $2,000. He 

 was perfectly frank about it, and evidently thought it a 

 fair business risk. He knew as well as any one how en- 

 tirely powerless his captors were to punish him, and 

 talked about the matter with a cynical boldness which 

 showed clearly enough that he was well aware that he 

 had violated no law — that he had merely infringed a 

 regulation, which was only a form of words, useful 

 enough, perhaps, for the purpose of scaring tourists into 

 good behavior, but hopelessly ineffective actually to ac- 

 complish anything against a determined man who knows 

 what his rights are. 



Howell was taken to the guard house and confined 

 there, to be released at some future day and then no 

 doubt — unless some law shall be enacted for the Park — to 

 recommence his work of slaughter. 



The orders from Washington are that offenders shall be 

 held and their arrest reported to the Department of the 

 Interior. But a man in the guard house for a few weeks 

 must eat, and yet there is no fund from which he can be 

 supported. He is not a soldier and cannot be rationed, 

 and so some one must pay his board or he must starve. 

 So it has often happened in the past that the commanding 

 officer has had to pay out of his own private pocket for 

 weeks at a time for the food consumed by the prisoners 

 that he had taken and was holding by the order of the 

 Government. Could anything be more absurd? 



Owing to the failure of Congress to enact the neces- 

 sary laws and to provide the necessary moneys for the 

 administration of the National Park, this great reserva- 

 tion, this unequaled possession of the people, has been 

 managed in a way that is contemptible and disgraceful. 

 With every disposition on the part of the Secretary of 

 the Interior and the Superintendent to guard and cherish 

 it as it should be guarded and cherished, it has been 

 and is still managed in a way that must make each 

 man who knows what it is and what it ought to be, 

 blush for Congress, which in the past has been so care- 

 less of the best interests of the public. Happily there 

 is now a prospect that the blunders of the past may be 

 remedied by the bill which is now under consideration. 

 The fate of this measure will depend on the action of a 

 conference committee, whose members it is believed 

 will be Messrs. Vest, Carey and White (of California) 

 from the Senate, and Messrs. Lacey, Hoar and McRae 

 from the House. 



The account of the capture of Howell, the buffalo 

 butcher, is given in full on another page and proves a 

 story of far more than common interest. In the full- 

 ness of its detail, in the faithfulness with which it pic- 

 tures the wintry solitudes where the butcher was ply- 

 ing his bloody trade, and in the statements made by all 

 who took any part in the capture, the story is complete 

 and will hold the attention of every reader. It is full 

 of interest, but in nothing more so than in the empha- 

 sis which it puts on the lack of law in the National 

 Park, and it is this point which is the most remarkable 

 feature of the whole affair. 



^ Congress had enacted that the Secretary of the Interior 

 should make regulations for the protection of the Park, 

 and such regulations had been published; troops had been 

 stationed in the Park to enforce these regulations, and 

 for a time the regulations and the troops acted as a scare- 

 crow and prevented anything like general violation of 

 he rules, Every now and then, however, a man was 



ture now employed tend to decrease the fish food supply; 

 and generally to advance the interests of all the commer- 

 cial fisheries." 



RACING PROSPECTS ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



There are now on the Atlantic three racing yachts, all 

 bound from New York to Glasgow, with a good chance 

 that a fourth will soon follow. On April 19 Dacotah, the 

 new Herreshoff 10-rater, left on board a steamer fpr the 

 Clyde, where she will meet half a dozen of her class, 

 including several new cracks; on April 21 the 90ft. 

 schooner Lasca sailed, also for Glasgow, for a season in 

 British waters, with some racing, if any be possible, and 

 by the time this is read Valkyrie will be under Way in her 

 wake. If all reports be true, Vigilant is likely to follow 

 in a few weeks, or in time, if her new owners desire, to 

 take part in the Clyde regattas early in July. 



All of this is very promising for the British season — 

 and correspondingly depressing for the sport at home. 

 On the other side there will be some good racing between 

 Britannia, Valkyrie, Satanita and very probably Vigilant. 

 The 20-rating class will also furnish plenty of sport, with 

 half a dozen new boats. And the effort to beat Dacotah 

 will keep the 10s busy on the Clyde; while a good season 

 in small craft is promised in the south. 



On this side of the ocean a very different prospect pre- 

 sents itself; the ^absence of Lasca will be felt in the 

 schooner class, further weakened by the loss of Volun- 

 teer; the 90ft. class is likely to muster only Volunteer and 

 Navahoe. neither Jubilee nor Colonia fitting out; and the 

 smaller classes, 70, 53, 46, 40, 30 and 21, are practically 

 extinct so far as racing goes. There is a chance of a 

 little racing of the 46 or 40-footers, but that is all. Of 

 new boats, or of live racing classes, there is nothing but 

 the new limited class of the Larchmont Y. C, and this, 

 with the racing boats of about 25ft. l.w.L, will have to 

 provide the most of the racing in the Sound. 



Such a sequel as this to the activity of last year is any- 

 thing but gratifying, and forcibly suggests the necessity 

 for determining if possible the cause and cure for a state 

 of depression which is in every way bad for American 

 yachting. The immediate need, in our opinion, is for 

 more racing, no matter in what size or type of yachts or 

 under what conditions, so long as a keen interest in the 

 sport can be maintained at a cost that is not prohibitive. 

 The efforts of the leading clubs have always been directed 

 mainly if not entirely to the maintenance of racing in the 

 larger sizes of yachts, with what results is now evident. 

 From present appearances, if there is to be a steady con- 

 tinuance of yacht racing, with building from year to 

 year, it must be in sizes which have thus far had little aid 

 or encouragement from other than the smaller clubs. 



COMMERCIAL FISHERMEN UNITE. 

 An outcome of the coast fishery conference held in this 

 city last December is the formation of a Commercial 

 Fisheries Association. The movement has been put 

 through chiefly by the activity.of Mr. C. H. Augur, of the 

 American Net and Twine Co. The membership is drawn 

 from the menhaden fishermen, pound fishermen, fish 

 dealers, net manufacturers and other allied interests of 

 the Atlantic coast. The officers are: President, Capt. 

 Joseph W. Collins, editor of the Fishing Gazette; Secre- 

 tary, Stephen A. Coombs, of Brooklyn; Treasurer, A. A. 

 Adams, of the American Net and Twine Co. The objects 

 of the association are declared to be "to collect from all 

 portions of the Atlantic coast complete and reliable 

 statistics, and general information concerning the move- 

 ments and abundance of the ocean fishes, and to dissemi- 

 nate such information; to defend the commercial fisher- 

 ies in every proper way against unjust interference by 

 those who erroneously assume that the methods of cap* 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 There is in this town a man named Byrnes who keeps 

 an oyster saloon and restaurant on Sixth avenue near 

 Forty-sixth street. At this establishment something 

 over a year ago they were in the way of serving wood- 

 cock and quail out of season, and they did it so openly 

 and so vociferously that Game Protector Kidd found not 

 the slightest difficulty in catching them at it. The Pro- 

 tector got his evidence and undertook to bring Byrnes to 

 book by instituting suit through the District Attorney's 

 office in this county. More than a year has gone by and 

 the case is yet untried. Dr. Kidd and his witnesses have 

 been made to dance attendance time and again, only to 

 be dismissed by the postponement of the case. Now it is 

 high time that this Byrnes case should be disposed of. 

 District Attorney Fellows has been known to procrasti- 

 nate, in years gone by, in the prosecution of close-time 

 game dealers, and perhaps it would be asking too much 

 of the New York District Attorney's office to look for 

 dispatch in such affairs. But what does Byrnes expect 

 to gain by the delay? If he has a foolish notion that he 

 can give Dr. Kidd a tired feeling, he would do well to 

 study up the history of the Delmonico case. 



The New York Legislature adjourned last week. It 

 did not do all that it might have done toward wreck- 

 ing the game and fish laws, but it went far enough. 

 It left things in a snarl. The Senate committee has 

 been authorized to make an inquiry as to what fish and 

 game legislation may be required, and to report next 

 February. Now if Gen. Bruce, the president of the 

 State Association, will instruct his committee on legis- 

 lation to present the facts to the Senate committee, the 

 opportunity may prove a valuable one. 



