Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW York; SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1898. 
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j VOL. L.-No. 9. 
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THE CHANGING WA YS OF^ GAME. 
Facts in support of the principle that the fittest must 
survive have never been wanting since the great natural- 
ist announced it. We all recognize that the strongest, 
the most cunning, the swiftest and the most wary of 
any species are the ones most likely to procure food or 
to escape from their enemies, and so to survive and to 
transmit to their offspring those qualities which have 
prolonged their lives. Like many other great truths, 
the principle is so simple that we may well wonder that 
the world waited so long for its announcement and its 
demonstration. Even the most unlettered hunter or gun- 
- ner accummulates facts which bear on it, and though he 
may never have heard of Darwin or Wallace, will relate 
to you matters which might well enough have found a 
place in their writings. 
The fitness which gives advantage to any creature is, 
of course, mental as well as physical. That experience 
teaches is just as true of wild creatures as it is of men. 
Alexander Selkirk, whose adventures gave us the boy's 
great classic, told of the dreadful tameness of the birds 
which he found on the desert island where he was cast 
away, and the early voyagers in unknown seas relate the 
same tale of tameness in birds, seals and other animals 
when these first saw man. To-day there is no animal on 
this continent more cunning than the much-hunted deer 
that lives in a settled country. But twenty years ago there 
were many places in the farther West, seldom or never 
visited by the white men, where the deer would long 
stand and stare at the hunter, at least falling an easy prey 
to his rifle. No animal in this country is shyer or mare 
(vary than the mountain sheep of to-day, yet fifty years 
ago it was considered, except the buffalo, the easiest ani- 
mal to kill on all the plains. Even the stupid buffalo, in 
the few scared individuals that last survived on the north- 
ern plains, learned at length the terrible lesson of experi- 
ence and became as wild as an antelope. A speck upon a 
distant hill was enough to start them in flight; a horse- 
man miles away made them frantic with terror and drove 
them to the most remote and rugged fastnesses of the 
^ waterless Bad Lands. This wildness and its resultant 
flight reacted on the physical characters of the buffalo 
there, and led to changes in its aspect to which we long 
ago called attention. 
The lesson of experience which these animals learn 
about man is not merely that he is a dangerous creature, 
and one to bea voided. They are as readily taught the 
opposite, and under certain circumstances become as 
tame and as confident in his presence as under other 
conditions they become wild and fearful. With equal 
readiness they learn lessons of danger and of safety. 
Nowhere is this shown better than in the Yellowstone 
National Park, where, under absolute protection, elk, 
deer, mountain sheep and even bears — wildest and wari- 
est of all our game — have learned that there man is for 
them no more dangerous than any other animal. A few- 
years ago if any one had predicted that the time would 
come in the Yellowstone Park when the bears would 
make a practice of coming up to the hotels to be fed,, he 
would have been laughed at for a lunatic. Yet at the 
present time this is seen daily during the season by 
crowds of astonished tourists. In the Gardiner caiion 
mountain sheep in winter are daily seen feeding and rest- 
ing within a few yards of the wagon road, along which 
pass the Iqaded teams going to and from the post. Many 
other examples might be cited of the way in which con- 
tact with civilized man modifies the habits of our larger 
animals. 
Coming down to our times and to matters which are 
within the range of experience of large numbers of older 
sportsmen, mention is to be made of the change in habit 
of the quail, or Virginia partridge. It is not so many 
years since the habits of these birds were pretty well 
fixed. In the autumn, after they had settled down to 
their winter feeding ground, it was usually not difficult 
to find them. The gunner familiar with the ground could 
usually locate them without much loss of time. Nowa- 
days this is no longer true. In districts where they are 
much hunted the birds seem to have learned that there is 
no safety for them on the stubbles. They appear to 
venture out from the swamps to feed only for a little 
while in the morning and at night, and then take the 
wing, flying — whether to the swamps again or in some 
other direction — so that a dog cannot follow them, and 
the finding them becomes a matter of pure accident. If 
by chance approached while on the stubble they rise 
wild at the sight of dog or man; the sound of a distant 
gun puts them all on the wing. Manifestly birds pos- 
sessing such caution are likely to survive. 
It is well known that on Long Island, in Connecticut 
and in other places where quail have for many years 
been persistently shot, they often alight in trees instead 
of on the ground, thus escaping the danger of being 
scented by the dog. This habit appears to be growing 
much more general with the birds in the sections men- 
tioned, and is being taken up in parts of the Sputh where 
we are told it was formerly very rare. It is obviously 
a very great protection. It has been observed also, as a 
matter of common occurrence at field trials in the South, 
that when a bevy of quail was flushed wild in the open, 
another bevy within hearing would also flush and ga 
to cover, presumably concluding that the danger which 
caused their fellows to seek safety was sufficiently seri- 
ous to prompt them to do the same. 
It has also been noted that birds do not lie to the 
dogs's points so well as formerly, but show a disposition 
to run, and to run fast and far. In Mississippi, in a 
region where the birds have been frequently disturbed, 
it has been observed that after a bevy had been flushed 
and followed into cover, the birds, though they flew 
together, would when they came to the ground run 
singly in every direction, thus breaking up their identity 
as a flock, and of course making the work of finding 
them much more difficult. In some parts of the South 
most of the birds keep in the woods or close to them 
all the time. 
In recent years the habits of the pinnated grouse on 
the Western prairies have undergone marked changes. 
This species was formerly distinctively a bird of the 
open, but of late years it shows, when alarmed, more 
and more a disposition to seek cover — by which we 
mean underbrush and timber. The young prairie 
chickens, once most unsuspicious and gentle birds, have 
become wilder and far better able to take care of them- 
selves than in the past. Nowadays the birds not only 
show a disposition to take to cover when alarmed, but 
to pass much of their time in or close to it, thus sug- 
gesting the habit of the Eastern heath hen, which is a 
bird of the woods and not of the open ground. 
The ways of wildfowl in localities where they are con- 
stantly gunned have undergone changes in the same di- 
rection. Where once they flew low they now fly high; 
where formerly they decoyed readily they nov^^ often 
avoid decoys, except in weather which is such as to ob- 
scure the character of the lures. In some places where 
point shooting used to be practiced with great success 
it has now become almost obsolete. The more the fowl 
are gunned the wilder and less accessible they become. 
In certain territories where the numbers of birds are 
still very great the annual destruction grows yearly le.ss, 
notwithstanding the great increase in the number of 
gunners. 
Not only do these wild animals learn by experience 
and thus manage to escape the dangers with which their 
lives are beset by man's pursuit, but it cannot be doubted 
that the offspring of to-day have inherited from their 
parents a cunning and wariness which the individuals of 
years ago did not know. It is a well-recognized fact 
that the young of bears, wolves and deer, even if they 
have had no experience of man, are at present nearly 
as difficult to capture as the old ones. In other words, 
they have either been taught wisdom by their parents 
or have inherited it. Probably both elements have con- 
tributed to their education. 
All these facts, and many others which might be 
gathered, tend to show that man in his destruction of 
jthese wild creatures is not forever to have m^atters ill his 
own way. la -the constantly increasing cwaning of 4eer 
and quail which in small numbers are still enabled to 
survive, even where continually hunted, we have hints 
of a time when the inherited intelligence of the game 
will in a measure — if not in large measure — compensate 
for the universal diffusion of rapid-firing arms of pre- 
cision, and for the increasing numbers of the hunters. 
THE LIBERTY OF THE FIELDS. 
Shooting conditions in this country are changing in 
no respect more rapidly than with those which govern 
the privilege of entering upon fields for shooting and 
fishing. In the old days — and they were not so long ago, 
either — ^the gunner who sought shooting privileges was, 
for the most part, a resident of the vicinity, known by 
sight at least to the proprietor of the land, his neighbor 
in fact; and the same neighborly feelings prevailed here 
as in other affairs. To go at will upon a farm and into 
woodlots for birds or squirrels was a matter of course. 
No one ever expected to ask for any special permission 
to do this, nor to have it asked. There were even then 
posted lands, but these were the exception and not the 
rule. The notion of forbidding free entry upon one's 
field was not by any means commonly held nor com- 
monly sympathized with. The land owner who treated 
shooters as intruders and trespassers was himself quite 
likely to be looked upon as a bit cranky ;'^ and when 
some one got the better of him the community took it 
good-naturedly and appreciated the humor of the situa- 
tion. 
Moreover, the same neighborly feeling which opened 
fields and meadows and woodlands freely to shooters 
and fishermen governed those to whom the privileges 
were extended. Thoughtless boys who tore doWn stone 
walls for woodchucks or rabbits might not stop td 
repair the damage done, but the elders were as regardful 
of the property of their neighbors as of their own, and 
the proprietor whose lands were hunted over had no 
reason to interpret the booming of guns in his field.^ 
as so many signals that his property was being destroyed, 
fences torn down, stone walls demolished and horses and 
cattle disturbed. He knew that the sportsmen were 
neighbors, and that they were to be trusted. In their 
excursion upon his lands he found no cause of alarm, 
no more than they themselves would have when he 
returned the compliment and went armed and equipped 
upon their fields. 
In some happy lands the old conditions still prevail; 
but in very many sections a decided change of senti- 
ment and of practice has been wrought, It was inevi- 
table that this should be so. The hosts of shooters haVe 
been multiplied by tens and hundreds. They constitute 
in season, and sometimes out of season, an army of in- 
vasion. They are no longer one's neighbors nor the 
sons of neighbors. They come from distant towns and 
cities and States. The railroads unload them upon the 
commvxnity for all the world like bodies of troops for 
war. The booming of guns, instead of being an inci- 
dent of autumn days, is continuous for weeks and 
months, not omitting Sundays. And when the farmer 
hears the reports he may no longer say to himself, as 
formerly; "That is Tom Smith's gun. I hope he'll drop 
in and see us on the way home." For it is not a neigh- 
bor who is shooting, nor any one with a neighbor's 
claim to the privilege of shooting without permission; 
it may be an entire stranger, devoid of the courtesy 
which should prompt to a polite request for permission 
to shoot, and one who, having invaded the fields without 
so much as "by your leave," assumes to have a natural 
right to be there, and resents any interference or protest 
from the proprietor as a manifestation of "popocracy." 
Most questions have two sides. This one of shooting 
privileges and trespass laws will never be settled by de- 
nouncing the farmer as unreasonable when he seeks by 
statute to control his own lands and to forbid or permit 
entrance upon them for shooting. If the land owners 
in any given district are actually unreasonable in their 
demands, investigation probably will show that their pa- 
tience has been exhausted by the impositions put upon 
them by unreasonable gunners; and there are as y^et, 
. we believe, few game districts where the sportsman who 
treats others as he would himself be treated if in their 
, place may not find in that considerate regard for others 
Jan open sesame to hospitality and good shooting. The 
^game interests of the country have nothing to ^ear fronj 
rigorous trespass law?- 
