Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 A Yeah. 10 Cts. a Copt. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1897. 
[ VOL. XLVm.— No. 24. 
! No. 946 Beoadwat, New Yokk, 
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS. 
Attkntion is directed to tbe new form of address labels on the 
wrappers of subscribers' copies. The label shows the date of the 
close of the term for which the subscription is paid. 
The receipt of the paper with such dated address label constitutes 
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tion of subscription; and to remit promptly for renewal, that delays 
may be avoided. 
For prospectus and advertising rates see page iii. 
Hunting: and fishing: parties, usually in their 
eagerness to g-et to hunting: or fishing-, are apt to 
neg:Iect the comforts of the camp; don^t make 
tfiis mistake. First of all, put your camp in order, 
that full enjoyment of the expedition may be real- 
ised, for you are just as apt to g:et g-ame in sig^ht 
of camp, in a g:ame country, as by an all-day 
tramp in the -woods. There is an old saying with 
the hunters, that the man that keeps camp usually 
fciUs the most game. Horace Park. 
ARIZONA'S HUMPED GAME. 
A HUMP is not a thing of beauty, nor the creature that 
bears it graceful. Moose and buflfalo are ungainly beasts, 
and the mountain goat, with hump and horns, has the 
contour of a fiend incarnate. But the oddest, homeliest, 
ugliest game animal in this country is found in the wilds 
of Arizona. It is a conglomeration of humps and bumps 
on four legs; and moreover, is quite as ugly in temper as in 
looks, a surly, savage and malicious brute. As with many 
unlovely creatures, it is hardy and tenacious of life, and 
manages to live in deserts where other animals would 
starve or die of thirst, for nature has endowed it with 
wonderful powers of endurance. The humps on its back 
are masses of fat, which it stores up when food is plenty 
and draws upon as a reserve of nourishment in 
seasons of privation. More extraordinary still is the 
formation of its stomach which is provided with a series 
of little pouches or water cells wherein is stored water suf- 
ficient to last from three to five days. As for food, when 
hard put to, it can live on next to nothing, and of the 
coarsest at that; and when all else fails it draws on its 
humps. Most suggestive in illustration of its hardy nature 
and tenacity of life is the fact that while the other game 
animals of Arizona, although protected by what protection 
there may be in the game law, have steadily diminished 
to remnants, this hardy fellow with the hump, although 
preyed upon by man and beast alike, has from a small 
stock in the beginning maintained itself through wander- 
ings in the wilderness for forty, years. There is no 
more grotesque creature included among the game animals 
of America than the Arizona camel, and its naming in the 
new law of the Territory may be reckoned as qiie of the 
curiosities of game legislation in this country. - '. 
The Arizona camel belongs with the earliest game im- 
ported into America from' abroad. It was put' out at about 
the period mentioned in our notes last week, when the 
Government was urged to restock Pennsylvania and New 
York wilderness regions with elk. The intention of those 
who imported the camel was hot to make of it a game 
animal. It was brought to this country during the admin- 
istration of President Pierce. By an act of Congress of 
March, 1855, of that year the Government was empow- 
ered to purchase in Arabia a herd of camels, for which 
$30,000 was paid, to be used in the West for crossing the 
Great American' Desert. It was thought that the adapta- 
bility which had made this beast of burden so useful in 
the Old World would make it suitable for trans- 
portation purposes in the barren stretches of the 
Southwest. The experiment proved a failure, and the 
camels were abandoned to their fate. Left to their own 
devices, they must have found in Arizona a country suited 
to them, for they increased and multiplied, and have from 
time to time furnished numerous specimens with which to 
stock circus and menagerie. As the camel is long-lived, 
living from forty to sixty years, it may be that among the 
wilds of Arizona there is a venerable patriarch whose frol- 
icsome youth was spent in the desert of Arabia. 
A creature which has held on so tenaciously in a strange 
land deserves the tardy recognition now given it by the 
framers of the new Arizona game law. May the same 
kindly fate which has preserved the apes of Gibraltar as 
sole representative of their race in Europe look out also 
or the camel, an Old World type in the Arizona desert. 
THE 8ALT-LI0K, 
A Vermont correspondent sends us a circi lar issued hy 
a hotel in the White Mountains, in which is set forth, as 
an inducement for sportsmen's patronage, a statement that 
deer hunting is good at the salt-licks in the vicinity. The 
attraction may appeal to some, but our correspondent 
doubtless expresses the common sentiment when he 
writes: "I should dislike to be seen at this house for fear 
other sportsmen might think me a pot-hunter and a 
butcher." 
A salt-lick is a saline spring, or deposit of salt, to which 
wild animals resort to satisfy their craving for salt. Some- 
times it is called a deer-lick, and whfen theie were buffalo 
these were buffalo-licks. Both terms have been adopted 
into our American place-names; the Post Office Directory 
shows a Deer Lick in Ohio, and another in West Virginia; 
there is a Buffalo Lick in Arkansaw, another in Missouri, 
and a third in West Virginia; while Big Bone Lick, in 
Kentucky, is a salt-lick, deep down in the soil of which 
have been found the bones of animals which were extinct 
long before the buffalo passed away. 
Every country boy who has spread salt on a flat rock in 
the pasture for the cattle or the sheep, knows with what 
avidity the treat was received; and not less familiar to the 
old-time hunter was the deer's craving for salt, which it 
satisfied by resorting to these natural stores. The pioneer 
hunter who required venison counted himself lucky if 
there was a salt-lick in the vicinity; for then, instead of 
the long still-hunt, there was only the lying in wait at the 
lick, to which the game was sure to come. In the days 
when deer were many and hunters few, this was regarded 
as a legitimate way to put meat into the pot; it was expe- 
ditious, certain, and not fatiguing, and these considerations 
counted.and counted rightly then. With changed conditions, 
fewer deer and more deer hunters, the art of lying in wait 
for deer at a salt lick has generally been put under the 
ban as unsportsmanlike, and in some States it is forbidden 
by law. It is looked upon as unsportsmanlike because 
taking a mean advantage of the game in its necessities, 
and is outlawed because of its certain destructiveness. 
Systematic watching at salt-licks would exterminate the 
game in a district, for first and last every deer would come 
to the ambush. 
THE BOY AND THE BOD. 
Give the boy a fishing rod. Let it be one he will joy 
in possessing, as you in yours. This does not mean 
that it must cost an extravagant sum, but a price suf- 
ficient, as your experience and common sense tell you, 
to insure a really good article, and in measure with 
your means. Some people have a notion that any- 
thing is good enough if it is for a boy — even depart- 
ment store tackle. Department store fishing rods, it 
is true, are astonishingly low-priced; but more aston- 
ishing than the price is the utter worthlessness of the 
truck after it has been unloaded upon the unwary victim. 
Give no such trash to the boy you would make an angler; 
equipped in that style, he will be disgusted at the start, and 
you will have spoiled a good fisherman in the making. 
Give him rather an outfit he can take pride in. This is a 
part of angling: to respect one's self for the possession of 
reliable tools. 
Instruct the boy in the use of the rod. Induct him 
into the mysteries of the art. Teach him to cast the fly 
and the frog". It is a part of his education which will come 
into play when he shall have forgotten all about 
logarithms and cannot tell a preterit from a rhomboid j 
and for which, you may be sure, he will ever be grateful 
to his instructor. When you teach a boy the art of 
angling you, equip him with an accomplishment for which 
he will thank you as long as he shall have opportunity to 
indulge it or memory to recall its indulgence. In making 
him an angler you are fitting him more fully to get the 
good out of life — for angling is one of the good things the 
world has to give us. 
Make the boy your fishing companion. It is marvelous 
how an angling companionship of father and son promotes 
that comradeship which is the most beautiful relation they 
can sustain toward one another. As angling is the delight 
of youth and age alike, so the trout stream has a magic to 
lesson disparity ol years and experience, and to bring old 
and young into closer sympathy and brotherhood. 
Thus it is that in making your boy an angler you are 
assuring for him resources for pleasure in after life; and in 
making yourself his angling comrade you are endowing 
him with a priceless gift of blessed memories in the years 
to come. This present companionship of the stream, dear 
as it is now in the experience, will be dearer then in the 
long looking back. How often and with what feeling have 
the columns of the Forest and Stream given expression 
to the satisfaction which is felt in reminiscence of the 
angling days of one's youth; and all the more precious are 
such memories, if in the picture of lake or river or stream 
are seen the faces whose lineaments all the long, long 
years of man's life, though they be perchance fourscore, 
cannot dim. 
SPRING SHOOTING. 
EoR many years thoughtful men have protested against 
the evil of spring shooting, a practice so particularly im- 
provident that it seems unnecessary to present an argu- 
ment against it. 
Yet with every annual recurrence of the northern 
migration of water fowl and waders, reports come in and 
are published, without comment or condemnation^ of the 
great bags made of geese, ducks, plover and snipe. 
There can be no argument advanced in its favor but the 
one stated long ago, without approval, by Frank Foresterj 
that without spring shooting there will be no shooting 
from midwinter till fall, unless we except that which 
should not be — summer cock shooting. For no such rea- 
son would any right-minded man think of shooting quail 
that have survived the rigors of winter, nor the ruffied 
grouse when he is summoning his harem by beat of drum, 
nor the returning woodcock when he woos his mate in the 
spring twilight. 
Yet why not these as well as the migrant fowl, the 
plover or snipe, on their way to breeding grounds, or in 
some instances even arrived there? Why inveigh against 
egg-hunters when we are doing our utmost to destroy the 
birds before the eggs are laid? 
Let our charity begin at home in giving these wanderers 
safe conduct through our country in their northward jour- 
ney. Let us, like nature, take on gentler moods in these 
spring and summer days, or if we would still be killing 
and making a noise in the world there are fish and clay- 
pigeons, and a clear conscience withal. We may be virtu- 
ous and yet have cakes and ale. 
Then in jocund ^autumn, when the replenished hordes 
come down from the north, we may enjoy a full feast of 
good things, yet tempering zest with moderation, so that 
those who come after us may not find the meager wel- 
come of an empty board. 
SlfAP SHOTS. 
In the meeting of the Illinois State Association last week 
President Felton and other officials declared With some 
warmth of emphasis that the Association was not a trap- 
shooting body, but a game protective society. Then the 
rest of the members put on their sv^'eaters, called pull, and 
did their level best to show that the convention was prac* 
tically and actively a trap-shooting tournament, and 
nothing else. Actions speak better than words. It is 
vain for the officers to claim game protective purposes 
and activities, when the performance of both rank 
and file have to do only with making scores, win- 
ning prizes and dividing purses. But there is noth- 
ing under the sun to prevent the Illinois Associa- 
tion from achieving success in both these fields, 
if it really wishes to do so, and will go about it in the right 
way. The first thing is to' divorce the trap-shooting tourna- 
ment from the game protection convention, following the 
example of the New York Association. Let there be one 
meeting for trap-shooting and another meeting for con^ 
sideration of law enforcement and the interests of proteti-; 
tion. By such an arrangement one interest will not confllicit 
with nor absorb the other. Each will have the fullest op- 
portunity for development and achievement. iTntil this 
shall be done the game protective function can be nothing 
more than the farcical pretense it has always been. 
The President signed on June 4, the Sundry Civil bill, 
which suspends until March 31, 1898, President Cleve» 
land's setting aside of forest reserves, in March last* 
