Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1897, 
Terms, $4 a Yeae. 10 Cts. a Copt. ) 
Six Months, $2. f 
J VOL, XLVIX.— No. 10. 
I No. 346 Beoadway, New Yoek, 
Headers are invited to send us the names of fnends who 
might he interested in a current coiiy of the Forest and Stream. 
We shall he glad to forward a specimen iiumher to any address 
which may he furnished us for that purpose. 
There are wntefs of great distmction who have 
made it an argument for Providence that the 
whole earth is covered with gree% rather than 
with any other color, as being such a right mix- 
ture of light and shade that it comforts and 
strengthens the eye, instead of weakening or 
grieving it. Addison. 
THE JACKSON'S HOLE ELK SCANDAL. 
We publish to-day some further statements sent us by 
County Attorney J. W. Sammon, of Uintah county, Wyo., 
respecting the elk captured last winter and now held in 
captivity in Jackson's Hole. Apart from the corrections 
that the elk are not in the corrals of the Moose Head 
ranch, but in those of the adjoining ranch owned by Mr. 
Joshua A. Adams, and a discrepancy as to the number of 
animals, the circumstances of the case now presented are 
practically as they were related in our issue of July 3. In 
this new representation we find no reason for modifying 
the opinion then expressed, that the elk were illegally cap- 
tured and are unlawfully held, and that the attitude of the 
oflBcials in relation to the matter constitutes a public 
scandal. 
The three papers submitted by County Attorney Sam- 
mon consist of a letter and a sworn statement by Deputy 
Game Warden Manning and a statement by Mr. Adams, 
giving his version of the affair. Deputy Warden Man- 
ning writes that he thinks the law should be so modified 
as to, permit the taking of live elk in the snows. Whatever 
the warden may think the law should be is entirely irrel- 
evant; his business as an officer is not to suggest improve- 
ments in the statute, but to enforce the law as it stands, 
and to enforce it against all persons impartially. If deputy 
game wardens in Uinta county, Wyo., go through the for- 
mality of taking the oath of office they undertake thereby 
to execute the laws of the State; they are not empowered 
to grant indulgences to intending violators on the ground 
that they think that the law ought to be something else, 
or that the violations will be for the good of the game and 
the country. 
The bald facts as here made plain are these: The law of 
Wyoming forbids the trapping of elk. Adams contem- 
plated a violation of the law by shutting up a band of elk 
in his corral; he applied to the deputy game warden for an 
oflicial sanction of the contemplated violation, and the 
warden told him to go ahead. Adams then did take the 
■elk, has held them ever since unlawfully and still holds 
them to-day, and Warden Manning reports this to the 
County Attorney and cheerfully adds that "the game laws 
are being well observed in this region." In view of War- 
den Manning's letter and affidavit, we take this first opr 
portunity of correcting an expression in our issue of July 
3, when we said: "The most scandalous feature of the 
case is the apparent connivance of the county officers, who 
by their refusing to act in the matter are violating their 
oaths of office." The word "apparent" should have been 
omitted. 
The opinion rendered by Game Warden Manning to Mr. 
Adams being wholly gratuitous, merits little consideration. 
He advised Adams that for him to take and retain in cap- 
■tivity a band of wild elk would not be a violation of the 
law forbidding the trapping of wild game. Either this 
must mean that Adams is a privileged character, above the 
law and not subject to it, but permitted to do what other 
citizens are forbidden to do; or else, Adams being just an 
every-day ordinary man and amenable to the law as the 
rest of us are, it means that it would not have been a vio- 
lation of the law for the other ranchmen to have corraled 
other elk, nor for any number of ranchmen in the State to 
have corraled any number of elk, nor for all the ranchmen 
to have corraled all the elk, and so to have made 
an end of them; and if the law did not per- 
mit this, it should . have permitted it; and since 
it did not do so, no attention should be paid 
to it. If we are to accept the validity of Warden Man- 
ning's dispensation as to elk, we may get other dispensa- 
tions, if we go at it in the right way, from other game 
wardens with respect to antelope and all other animals; to 
take ^hem in any way one can get them, and jerk the 
meat and tan the hide, and so to save the game from the 
mountain lion and grizzlies and coyotes. The Manning- 
Adams philosophy teaches that all these creatures must 
perish some time, and that it were better "in a spirit of 
sorrow and pity" to do for them now, and so forestall a 
harsher fate, as moved by maternal instinct the she-ele- 
phant sat down on the motherless partridge to protect it 
from the cold, or as the Spaniards in South America saved 
the heathen babies — by first baptizing them and then 
dashing their brains out. This would be carrying out the 
Manning-Adams code of game protection to its legitimate 
operation, It is highly improbable,however, that the people 
of Wyoming will consent to have their statutes so honored 
in the breach by contumacious ofi"enders backed up by 
bumptious game wardens. 
What Mr. Adams intended or intends to do with ^^xn 
■ captured elk has nothing to do with the case; it does not ; 
affect the unlawfulness of his act. He tells us that he was 
moved by "sorrow and pity," but admiration of his charity 
is somewhat lessened when the generous toll he took for 
himself is considered. Moreover, it is demonstrable by 
the testimony of old inhabitants that the Wyoming elk 
survived through many winters before Mr. Joshua A. 
Adams migrated to Jackson's Hole and set up hayricks. 
The statute forbidding the taking of elk alive was en- 
acted to correct a growing abuse, the wholesale capture of 
game for export from the State, and it was adopted in 
direct response to a demand for it from this very same 
Jackson's Hole country, whose dwellers were vehement in 
their complaints of the live elk shippers, as our columns 
of that date will show. 
As a plain proposition, if it is the right of one citizen 
under the law to corral a band of wild elk, it is the equal 
right of all. Conversely, if it is not the equal fight of all, ; 
it is not the right of one. This is the very simple point , 
involved in the Jackson's Hole elk case, and we commend , 
to State Game Warden Gustave Schnitger the expediency 
of his promptly acting upon some legal advice derived 
from a higher authority than that of Deputy Game War- 
den Manning, upon whose opinion County Attorney Sam- 
mon appears to have rested the case. 
imagine that they can evade the officers of the law. The 
Rhode Island Association was organized for the express 
purpose of putting some limit, if not an entire stop, to this 
unlawful killing of game for summer residents. If the 
"men of the world" who resort to Rhode Island during the 
season would discountenance the serving of illicit game on 
their own tables and the tables of their hostesses, the 
work of protection in one State at least would practically 
be settled. 
As the sooner is always with us everywhere, Ms sup- 
pression is one of the ever present and ever pressing prob- 
lems of game protection. The only solution ever found, or 
eveiSikely to be found, is to get ahead of him by sooner 
protective societies, sooner wardens, sooner detectives, and 
sooner fines. 
TEE SOONER. 
In the expressive speech of the prairie chicken country, 
the sooner is the gunner who gets out into the field before 
the law is ofi' and pots his own share of the birds, and as 
many as he can steal of the shares of the other fellows 
who are mindful of the law. For several weeks, now in. 
the period prior to the lawful season, we have heard much 
of the performances of the soonersin various sections. As 
usual, in many localities they have cleaned up the bird 
supply, and in some instances have been cleaned up them- 
selves, thanks to the activity of the authorities and the 
executive agents. 
The tribe is not by any means confined to the prairie 
country; the sooner is found over the entire continent; his 
range is as limitless as was the original habitat of the wolf 
before him; he is as ubiquitous as that personage who, 
as a raging lion, walketh about seeking whom he may 
devour. He preys on all game in its immaturity— the 
quail cheeper, the chicken partridge and the wild duck 
flapper. He represents various grades of social, profes- 
sional and official life; witness the doctors and sheriff's and 
other sooners, whose arrests are noted in our Western cor- 
respondence. An Eastern type is described in the chap- 
ter published on another page, relating the arrest of a Nar- 
ragansett Pier society leader for sneaking out into the 
cover and potting young partridges in close time. The 
social circles of the Pier are said to have been agitated 
by the arrest and taking in of this particular sooner, and 
we are told. by one authority that "the character of the 
offense with which Mr. Randolph is charged is unique 
among those claiming to be men of the World, -who, 
according to the code of that class, would look upon one 
of their number who knowingly broke a law for the pre- 
servation of game, as fully equal in enormity to the re- 
fusal to pay a debt of honor or cheating at cards." 
It would be a sincere satisfaction to believe that this was 
truly spoken, but the fact is that the summer residents of 
Narragansett Pier, Newport, and other fashionable resorts, 
have always encouraged, as they do to-day, the killing of 
immature game out of season by market-hunters for con- 
sumption at dinner parties; and it is fair to assume that a 
class which habitually devours illicit game cannot lay 
claim to any particular squeamishness about capturing the 
game themselves by similar sneak methods when they 
THEN AND NOW. 
The signs are right. In the neglected pastures the feathery 
stems of the tall weeds are beginning to be tipped with the 
gold that gives them their name, and the rowen crops of the 
hay land are thickly dotted with withered brown clover 
heads and with the white panicles of the wild carrot. The 
pale yellow of the shorn lye stubbles is overtopped and hid- 
den by the abundance of the tall ragweed, green as yet, on 
which later the quail and the brown sparrows may feed. By 
the roadside asters are blooming, and the tangled blackberry 
vines that creep over the old stone walls and up the weathered 
and rotting fence posts bear a rich fruitage of red and black. 
Daily the apples in the orchard are growing larger. As yet they 
have taken on no color , but the peaches have begun to borrow 
the hues of the setting sun and give promise that ere long 
they may be gathered. The chestnut burrs have formed and 
are beginning to fill. Down along the river the wild rice 
seeds are hardening. 
The time of singing of birds is past and gone. Only 
the alarm notes of the robin, woodthrush or catbird are 
heard. All have finished their season's work, have reared 
their broods, and now are gathering strength for the long 
journey on which before long they must start. Birds are 
.fltill to-be seen, but they are busy, restless, uneasy. Swal- 
lows are gathering on the telegraph wires; loose flocks of 
kingbirds are standing on the tree-tops and making swift 
dashes after the passing insects; mottled bobolinks flyover 
the marshes, and rarely_a belated family of crows wings its 
silent way across the fields. But bird time is over, and from 
now until another spring, those which we see will be only 
our native hosts assembling for the journey or loiterers mov- 
ing along southward, or hardy winter residents, which 
ply their busy tasks in field and woods all through the season 
of bitter cold. 
The signs are right, let us try the rail. 
Twenty- five years ago many of us went rail shooting with 
our muzzleloaders. Breechloaders were not too common 
then. On the thw:art before the gunner were often boxes con- 
taining his powder, his shot, bis wads and his caps. In the 
first two were the measures, and a stiff hickory loading 
rod, almost as stout as the bore of his gun, rested beside 
them. 
As he was roweli from the landing to the grounds hia 
pusher discoursed on the shooting of the past. "Twenty 
years ago," he would say. "Ah, them was the times 1 James 
Smith got all bu ds to a tide and Johnny Jones got 194," and 
so he would go over the big scores that had been made in the 
good old days, and lament over the present scarcity of birds 
and the lesser skill of the shooters of his time. Then when 
they reached the grounds and the gunner had arranged his 
ammunition, and they shoved into the rustling grass and the 
first bird rose, there would be heard the call "Mark!" the 
flat crack of the lightly loaded gun, 'the splash of the block 
thrown to mark where the bird fell, the squeak of the wads 
in the barrel, and finally the tick of the locks, which signi- 
fied that the gun was loaded. Then the boat would move 
forward again through the swishing grass. 
In those days eighty birds was a good bag, and 100 about 
the top score. What is it to day ? A recent report from a 
rail ground, where in those days 500 or 600 birds were not 
infrequently boated by all the boats out during a tide, gives 
on the opening day in the year of our Lord 1897 just nine 
rail. Over most of the ground not a bird was raised. On a 
certain piece, which in old times often gave two boats shoot- 
ing for a whole tide, there were found two rail. 
As it is with rail, so it is with most other birds. It is not 
strange that the men of this day have to a large extent given 
up field shooting and have taken to shooting at saucers 
thrown into the air by means of a spring. It is not strange, 
but, m truth, it is exceeding pitiful. 
