Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Yeah. 10 Cts. a Copt. I 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1894 
I VOL. XLHI. — No. 20. 
| No. 318 Broadway, New York. 
CONTENTS. 
Editorial. 
A Form of Buck Fever. 
End the Joke. 
The Hew ell Case. 
Snap Shots. 
The Sportsman Tourist. 
Another Moose. 
Natural History. 
Do Foxes Climb Trees? 
Was it Suicide? 
Some Unnatural History. 
A Peculiar Partridge Trap. 
Game Bag: and Gun. 
A Maine Hunting Trip. 
Wisconsin WanderiDgs. 
Chicago and the West. 
Texas aad the Southwest. 
A Floating Battery Taken in. 
The Long Island Deer Season. 
Boston Shooters. 
Sea and River Fishing. 
Trout in Colorado Springs. 
Taking Salmon with a Spoon. 
Angling Notes. 
Rainbow Trout iu the South. 
The Big Pike-Perch. 
Fish Culture. 
The Vermont Commission. 
A Greenwood Lake Poacher 
Taken In. 
The Kennel. 
The U. S. Field Trials. 
Brunswick Fur Club Trials. 
International Field Trials. 
Altcar Club Meeting. 
Dog Chat. 
Yachting. 
Model Yacht Building.— II. 
Lord Diinraven's Letter. 
American Model Y. C. 
Yachting News Notes. 
Canoeing. 
A. C. A. Executive Committee 
Meeting. 
Rifle Range and Gallery- 
Cincinnati Rifles. 
Champion Match of 1894. 
Trap Shooting. 
Live Birds at Carteret. 
Williams— Brokaw Match. 
Cofleyville Tournament. 
Drivers and Twisters. 
Answers to Queries. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page iii. 
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. 
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A FORM OF BUCK FEVER. 
Some time ago when one of the accident insurance 
companies was introducing the coupon system of free 
insurance, there was some talk of providing a thousand- 
dollar policy to be given to every holder of a copy of the 
Game Laws in Brief. The plan w as abandoned for good 
and sufficient reasons; yet we are inclined to believe that 
such a policy attachment of the Brief would have filled a 
long felt want for the Long Island deer hunters. 
The conditions of hunting down there are peculiar. 
The available area is restricted to a ridiculously small 
territory. The open season is extremely short, and the 
hunters come in droves. The man who goes deer hunting 
on Long Island veritably takes his life in his hands, and 
before setting out he should arrange his business affairs, 
make his will, take leave of his family, provide himself 
with an accident policy for a good round sum, and aban- 
don hope. If the hazard attendant upon the sport shall 
be augmented during the next five years as it has been in 
the last five seasons, and the New York law shall remain 
which makes attempted suicide a crime, the lawyers will 
have to determine whether the sportsman who volun- 
tarily goes deer hunting on Long Island does not thereby 
render himself subject to the penalty for intended sui- 
cide. When a member of the Forest and Stream; staff 
went down to Long Island last Saturday he made the 
perilous trip purely as a performance of duty, and when 
he returned thanked his stars that he had come back 
whole. 
On the following Monday a fatal accident occurred on 
the Long Island deer grounds. A hunter was mistaken 
for a deer and mortally wounded by one of his compan- 
ions. The man fired without knowing what he was 
shooting at, and a cry of agony told him the result. 
It is the old story of reckless shooting that comes up 
again and again, and than which there is no class of 
shooting accidents more to be blamed — not even the 
"didn't know it was loaded" class. Of course the man 
who did the shooting is overcome with grief, and the 
genuineness of his sorrow has no doubt brought public 
opinion over to his side and exonerated him so far as 
public opinion can, but nothing will ever undo the work 
of that one rash moment. A human life has been sacri- 
ficed with less than trivial excuse. It is hard to imagine 
what in the realm of sanity can prompt a man to shoot 
at something not seen and not perfectly recognized. 
Such disregard of all laws of common sense and pru- 
dence can only be accounted for by the theory that this is 
a sort of temporary insanity produced in certain minds 
by excitement, which overpowers and annuls their better 
judgment. It is as a fearful and fatal phase of "buck 
fever;" and one that is all the more horrible because the 
victim of the malady is not the individual who is himself 
possessed of devils, but some other innocent and unsus- 
pecting person upon whose devoted head the subject's 
temporary aberration wreaks its woe. We have recorded 
now and then an instance of the ordinary type of "buck 
fever" so severe that the afflicted person has died of heart 
disease. These cases are extremely rare; but this form 
whose victim is another is distressingly frequent; we have 
noted its occurrence scores of times; we shall have 
occasion to record new cases so long as deer hunters shall 
lose their wits. In large assemblages of hunters, such as 
those which annually come together on Long Island dur- 
ing the deer season, there will always be found some irre- 
sponsible and criminally foolish individuals who are a 
menace to the safety of all others. 
THE HOWELL CASE. 
The case of Edgar Howell, who killed the buffalo in 
Yellowstone Park last winter, was to have come before 
the court in Cheyenne this week. 
When Howell was arrested by Scout Burgess, it will be 
remembered, he was taken to Mammoth Hot Springs and 
put into the guard-house, where he was kept for a period 
and then escorted out of the Park with an admonition 
from Capt. Anderson not to come in again. Subsequently 
he did go into the Park, and was arrested, confined sev- 
eral days in the guard-house, and then taken before Com- 
missioner Meldrum, and tried upon the charge of having 
disobeyed Capt. Anderson's order not to enter the Park. 
Of this he was found guilty and was sentenced to confine- 
ment for thirty days in the guard-house and to pay a fine 
of $50 and costs. He took an appeal to the United States 
District Court of Wyoming, giving bail for his appearance 
at Cheyenne. Subsequently entering the Park he was 
again summarily ejected. 
In the present stage of the case the original offense of 
killing buffalo in the National Park is not involved, ex- 
cept in so far as this was the occasion of Howell's con- 
finement and expulsion. The point to be determined — 
and a very interesting point it is — relates to the interpre- 
tation of the regulations made by the Secretary of the 
Interior providing for the expulsion of offenders from the 
Park. Under this rule Howell was expelled. What did 
that expulsion mean? Capt. Anderson, on the one hand, 
has held in practice that when a man is expelled he must 
remain without the Park limits. Howell, on the other 
hand, bases his appeal upon the contention that once put 
out of the Park he had in being expelled paid the pen- 
alty; and was then free to go back. The precise language 
of the regulation reads that an offender shall "be sum- 
marily removed from the Park." As to whether he may 
turn right around and come in again with the guard that 
escorted him out, or whether he must stay out for a year 
or for all his life, there is absolutely nothing in the regu- 
lations. 
One who is described as an "active, thoughtful shooting 
man and a thorough sportsman withal," relates that on 
three occasions within the past dozen years he has ob- 
served hawks in full and fierce pursuit of grouse, and he 
therefore wants the State to provide a bounty which shall 
encourage the destruction of the hawk tribe. That was 
once the accepted attitude of hostility to the hawks, main- 
tained and justified by most people. It is no longer held 
by intelligent and well-informed people. Careful and 
systematic study of hawks has demonstrated the fact that 
their services are of decided usefulness to mankind. They 
may kill some game but they destroy vermin as well, and 
could ill be spared: by the farmer and fruit grower. 
END THE JOKE. 
The Forest and Stream has nothing to do with poli- 
tics, that is to say, it should have nothing to do; and as a 
matter of fact it would let politics alone, if politics would 
let alone those special interests with whose promotion 
this journal is concerned. When a fish commission is 
made the sport of political schemers, and when a game 
protective force is controlled in any degree by considera- 
tions of party or factional advantage, it is high time for 
some one — even if he be not a partisan — to speak out. 
We will not go into the recent history of the New York 
Fish Commission. Most people who know anything of it 
will recall that a few years ago the most intelligent and 
efficient member of the board was ousted from his place 
because he did not train with the political adherents of 
the Governor then in office. And it is a familiar piece of 
history, too, that the places once filled by men interested 
in the work of increasing and protecting the fish supply 
have been filled in one instance at least by men who took 
their appointment as a huge joke and have so regarded it 
ever since. A commission constituted of joke commis- 
sioners is a joke commission. The fisheries and game 
interests of the State of New York are of altogether too 
high importance to be intrusted to the joeular adminis- 
tration of jokers. 
Is it not about time to have done with the New York 
Joke Fish Commission? Now that there is to be a change 
of administration in the State, and that numerous commis- 
sions are to be made over new, would it not be well to give 
some attention to this board? There ought to be some 
new timber in it. Whether the new material be Repub- 
lican or Democrat or Prohibition does not matter, so long 
only as it shall be sound and serviceable. But for one 
thing give us no more joke. 
There are too many members in the board now. The 
work is done practically by one man. A single-headed, 
responsible, accountable, paid commission would be more 
efficient than any other. If we cannot have that, reduce 
the number to three. 
It will require legislation to institute such a new order 
of things. The Legislature of 1895 will deserve public 
gratitude if it shall rid us of the jokers. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Dr. Willett Kidd, of Newburgh, N. Y., tells us that 
in September of this year he saw a flock of some forty 
wild pigeons just west of Orange Lake, in Orange county. 
Several flocks have been reported as seen this year in 
Sullivan county, and it is said that the birds were so 
numerous in the neighborhood of Eome, N. Y., that the 
netters set about netting them. Is the wild pigeon com- 
ing back, even in feeble numbers, to the old-time Eastern 
haunts? If there is any probability of this, we should 
lose no time in adopting measures to give it protection. 
The American Ornithologists' Union held the twelfth 
annual congress at the American Museum of Natural 
History, in this city, Nov. 13 to 15. Fifteen active mem- 
bers were present. The officers chosen for the new year 
are: President, Dr. Elliott Coues; Vice-Presidents, Wm. 
Brewster and Dr. C. Hart Merriam; Secretary, John H. 
Sage; Treasurer, William Dutcher; Council— Dr. J. A. 
Allen, C. F. Batchelder, C. B. Cory, D. G. Elliott, Frank 
M. Chapman, R. Ridgway, Dr. L. Stejneger. 
The assertion by Gov. Woodbury in his letter accepting 
the resignation of Fish and Game Commissioner John W. 
Titcomb, is not a whit exaggerated. Mr. Titcomb's retire- 
ment from the office will be a decided loss to the Commis- 
sion and to the State; he was one of the most intelligently 
interested, active and enthusiastic men of the day hold- 
ing such office. Together with all who have noted the 
progress of the Vermont fishcultural and protective in- 
terests under Mr. Titcomb's admihistration, we regret that 
he should have given up active direction of the work. 
We need more Titcombs in our fish commissions. 
About the jaybird and his Friday trips to the infernal 
regions — have any of our Southern readers other versions 
of the tale than those already given by correspondents as 
current among the negroes of Florida and Louisiana? In 
Florida one story has it that the birds carry with them 
each a grain of sand; and in another version they carry 
corn. In Louisiana the sand story is told, while others 
aver that the bird carries bits of wood to add to the fires. 
It would be interesting to compare the varients of the 
story as told in different parts of the South, 
