ST AND STREAM. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
} NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1897. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
( VOL. XLIX— No. 31. 
( No. 846 Broadway, New York. 
In the long- catalogfwe of honorable anglers are 
the names of apostles, kings, princes, priests, poets, 
bishops, statesmen and philosophers — men who 
made history, ruled nations, honored the chttrch, 
dignified humanity, and left the impress of their 
scholarship upon all the centuries. And what 
they did they did all the better — more wisely, 
more humanely, and with a higher conception of 
the sacred character of the work assigned them — 
because they had the contemplative habit, pro- 
verbial patience and gentle spirit of the simple 
wise men who love to go a-fishing. 
George Dawson. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Me. Dearborn'.s notes on the direction signs, which the 
I woodman may read in tree and moss and grass, give per- 
! haps the most complete exposition of that branch of wood- 
craft we have ever printed. In these days of brief trips 
into the woods under the guardianship of guides, not one 
out of a thousand pays much attention to such secrets of 
nature. But in woodcraft, fas in every other art, by as 
much greater as one's attainment in it may be, so much 
' the more keen and rich will be his enjoyment and satis- 
f faction. The more a man knows of the woods and the 
more closely his attention is engaged, the more varied will 
be his interest, the fuller his reading of nature's open book 
and the more generous the store of material which he will 
bring home for reminiscence and reverie as he reviews his 
outing. It is true that for the most part the average vaca- 
tionist in the woods has no time to acquire the fine points 
of woods lore; but much more might be done in this direc- 
tion, if men would only teach themselves that the sole end 
and reward of hunting do not lie wholly in the actual kill- 
ing of the game or the bagging of a score of birds. One 
who is intent only upon slaughter can have no eyes, even 
if he may have the opportunity, to observe the written 
records of bark and rock and fern. 
This is a gun age; the factories have been turning out 
sporting firearms year after year until it would appear 
that there must be enough to provide every man and 
every man-child in the land; and the ammunition manu- 
facturers have made their part of sporting equipment so 
simple and abundant and inexpensive that every new 
possessor of a gun is on the instant a ready-made gunner. 
There are no longer any masterful details of loading to be 
acquired; nor does the beginner think it necessary to 
undergo a novitiate. If his gun is of rapid fire and his 
machine-loaded shells are in good supply, he ranks him- 
self as a competent sportsman and is impatient to get into 
the cover to shoot something. Thus it is that while the 
hosts of shooters have multiplied, the ranks of the real 
sportsmen have increased more slowly. 
As for men with guns, the woods are full of them; but 
the sportsman may go far and not meet up with a master 
mate. Indeed, things have come to such a pass in more 
;han one hunting district that the prudent sportsman will 
remain at home, and keep himself out of the woods, for 
very fear of having his head shot off. The woods and 
swamps and canebrakes are now practically free from 
dangerous varmints that go on four legs, but a new terror 
is the biped armed with a deadly weapon and from 
whose noddle common sense flies when a gun comes into 
his hand. The explanation of the multiplicity of casual- 
ities and fatalities with guns and rifles, of which we read 
lists in the press day after day, is found in the fact that 
an army of greenhorns has taken to the woods and fields, 
svery man-jack of them frantic to shoot something, and 
Bach one ready to shoot on the instant before he can 
mow what the something is, whether it may be game or 
mother man-jack or a man. It is these gunners — with- 
jut experience, and wanting in that caution with a gun 
which experience alone can give— who get their names 
,nd names of their victims into the press reports of gun- 
alng "accidents." They should be chained up at home, 
jhatthey may be saved from themselves, that others may 
36 saved from them, and that the woods may be secure 
or the use and enjoyment of the sportsman. 
fisherman lives by catching fish; and it is the business of 
the Commission to increase the supply of fish for the fish- 
erman to catch; The two parties in interest should be 
united in harmonious cooperation and mutual support. 
The Commission's opposition to certain modes of fishing is 
based only upon the real or reputed destructiveness of 
those methods. If the forbidden contrivances are not un- 
reasonably destructive, the Commission should withdraw 
its opposition to them; and if, on the other hand, they are 
ruinous, common sense should prevail upon the fishermen 
to abandon them. There can be here no legitimate dif- 
ference of opinion nor subject of disagreement. The intel- 
ligent friends of fish protection may find in Mr. Meehan's 
call for cooperation "the better way" to accomplish what a 
foolish antagonism can never secure. 
The Members' Stake of the Eastern Field Trials Club, 
last Saturday, was an event of unusual note in its effect 
upon the club and its promise for the future. We take 
decided satisfaction in publishing the report of the meet- 
ing by one of our staff; and all the more, as this is the only 
first-hand report printed. Mr. Waters was the only press 
representative at the meeting, and his is the only record 
of the work written by one who actually followed it. 
Now as always in our Kennel columns, field trial interests 
have and will have intelligent, competent and adequate 
treatment. 
Eev. Myron W. Reed, of Denver, who has preached 
some strange doctrines before now, last Sunday announced 
to his congregation a determination to see that Game War- 
den Wilcox and his deputies should be tried for the mur- 
der of the Ute Indians they killed the other day. Mr. 
Reed's declaration created a sensation, as well it might; 
for the notion that a white man, whether game warden or 
private citizen, should be meddled with for shooting down 
an Indian hunting off his reservation is something to make 
a Colorado range horse laugh; and no wonder the congre- 
gation did not know what to make of it. 
The renewed enterprise of stocking Atlantic waters with 
Pacific salmon will be watched with much interest. The 
experiment was made some years ago on an extensive 
scale, thousands of fry having been planted in Pennsyl- 
vania and other streams, only to disappear and leave no 
trace to tell the tale. The new plantings have been of 
yearlings, and the more mature strangers may prove their 
ability to take care of themselves. 
The latest development in the Jackson's Hole, Wyo., 
elk case is just what we had anticipated from the first, 
the exportation of the elk to Eastern game preserves by 
the Eastern agent of the Adams elk-catching enterprise. 
In response to an inquiry, County Attorney Sammon ad- 
vises us that Governor Richards has given a permit for the 
shipment of forty of the elk out of the State. TJ\is rounds 
out and concludes this cunningly contrived raid on the 
Wyoming game supply by men engaged in the enterprise 
of supplying Eastern preserves with Western game. Inas- 
much as the Wyoming law explicitly forbids the taking of 
elk for export, except by permission of the State Game 
Warden, and then "only for the purpose of supplying pub- 
lic parks, zoological gardens, or places of public amuse- 
ment," the Jackson's Hole raiders could not have exported 
their booty except by favor of a special executive dispensa- 
tion; and Wyoming is probably the only State in the Union, 
whose constitution permits individuals to secure for them- 
selves immunity from the statutes by gubernatorial writ 
of indulgence. 
Mr. W. E. Meehan's suggestion of a conference of the 
jommercial fishermen of the Susquehanna and other 
Pennsylvania waters with the Fish Commissioners, is one 
l^hich should be put into practical effect. The commercial 
Some of the duck shooters of Colorado express themselves 
as disgusted with the provision of the game law which 
restricts an individual shooter to the killing of twenty 
ducks in a day; and they have set on foot a movement 
to have the law tested for constitutionality. A subscrip- 
tion paper for the purpose sets forth this declaration : "We, 
the undersigned, believing that ducks and waterfowl are 
migratory and belong to no particular State, and that no 
State has a right to enact unconstitutional laws to limit 
the proper killing of such game, by means of a shoulder- 
gun in the proper season, and further, that all sportsmen, 
as a rule, who kill such game in excess of their own wants, 
distribute them among their friends who are unable to 
shoot. And further, as no other State has such a law of 
limitation in regard to the killing of birds, there is no log- 
ical reason why this State should."J 
Now the word "unconstitutional" is rotund, sonorous 
and impressive, and has taken the force out of many an 
obnoxious and wicked law; but sometimes it means noth- 
ing more than some other words beginning with "un," as 
unwonted, unwelcome, or unacceptable. That is its true 
significance here, and the Colorado duck shooters will do " 
well to button up their purses and lay by their spare 
funds for new supplies of loaded ammunition. They will 
not overthrow the ducking law on the score of unconsti- 
tutionality. Wildfowl are legitimately subjects of legisla- 
tion by the several States, nor can the law be expected to 
draw a fine distinction between birds bred in a State and 
those resorting to it. The assertion that no similar limits 
obtain in other States is incorrect. Minnesota limits to 
twenty-five the birds of any species any individual may 
kill in a day. North Dakota makes a like limit of twenty- 
five. Maine puts the limit at thirty, Washington at ten. 
Other States have similar laws prescribing the lawful 
number of woodcock — another migratory species — one 
may kill in a day. 
However unwelcome such limitations may be to the 
sportsman who has been long deprived of shooting and 
has come at last to a favored time and place, the Colorado 
law is right in principle and is in line with the recognition 
everywhere growing that as sportsmen we of the several 
States owe something to our fellows beyond our own indi- 
vidual State lines. Colorado human nature, as human 
nature ^in California and Connecticut, may protest against 
the staying of one's hand bn wildfowl, that the birds may 
fly to their destruction in another clime, but it is certain 
that unless in this matter of game protection we do restrain 
our shooting and do have regard for others as well as for 
ourselves, there will be no migratory game to pro- 
tect on our own account or that of others. The 
common refuge of selfishness is in the plea, "If 
we don't, some one else will;" and this is a 
stronghold from which it has been impossible to dis- 
lodge the defenders of spring shooting. If the prohibition 
of spring shooting or the placing of a limitation upon the 
numbers of wildfowl to be killed should be deferred by 
each State until every other State should have attended to 
the proposition, nothing of the sort would ever be accom- 
plished anywhere. Those sportsmen are deserving of the • 
highest credit who have taken the initiative. The inter- 
ests of game protection to-day demand not that the pio- 
neers shall recede from the advance, but that others shall 
imitate their example and follow in their footsteps. In- 
stead of overthrowing the laws on migratory game, the 
sportsmen of Colorado might better be urging their fel- 
lows in sister States to join them in the adoption of simi- 
lar restrictions. 
The annual banquet of the Cuvier Club, of Cincinnati, 
was celebrated on Tuesday evening of this week, and as 
the arrangements had been made under direction of Presi- 
dent Starbuck, we may be sure that the occasion was a 
most enjoyable reunion of the redoubtable hunters and 
fishermen who make up the club membership. 
Through inadvertence on the part of those who were 
watching the amendments of the deer law last winter, no 
provision was made for extending the close term on deer 
in Sullivan, Ulster and Green counties, where the game 
had been put out some years ago by the Commission. 
The five years close time lapsing this season, deer hunting 
has been lawful in 1897. This fact, however, was not gen- 
erally known; and the game protectors astutely kept silent 
on the subject, so that there has been little hunting. Now 
that the season has gone by, no harm can come of pub- 
lishing the facts relative to these introduced deer. A new 
five years close time should be provided for them. 
President Gavitt has sent out a cordial invitation to all 
interested clubs and associations to be represented at the 
meeting of the New York State Association for the Protec- 
tion of Fish and Game, in Syracuse, on Dec. 9. This 
Association stands for protective interests in New 
York, and it should have the warm support of local 
clubs. As President Gavitt says, "It is the medium 
through which all right-minded organizations should seek 
and give counsel." Only by united and harmonious en- 
deavor, and with the strength that comes of a large repre- 
sentation, can the Association achieve its purposes. If the 
sportsmen of New York can ever unite they here have the 
opportunity. 
