Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
BRMS, $4 A YE»R. 10 CTS. A Ci.PY. / 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1898 
{ 
VOL. Ll.-No. 7. 
No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv„ 
Cbe Tomt and Stream s Platform PlanK. 
"The sale of game should be prohibited at all seasons." 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1898.— No. 2. 
OHIO. 
Act of April 12, 1898.— Sec. 6964. Whoever shall at any 
time catch or kill any quail wild turkey, ruffed grouse or 
pheasant, prairie chicken, woodcock, squirrel, Mongolian 
pheasant, or English or ring-neck pheasant, for the purpose 
of conveying the same beyond the limits of this State, or for 
sale in the matke s of this State, or shall transport or hav« 
in possession with intent to procure the transportation be- 
yond the limits of this State, or f jr sale in the markets of 
this State, auy quail, wild turkey, ruffed grouse or pheasant 
prairie chicken, woodcock, squirrel, Mongolia pheasant, i r 
English or ring-neck pheasmt, killed within th's itate, shall 
be fined as provided in Section 6968, and in addition thereto 
shall b a liable to a penal'y of twemy-five dollars for each 
bird trapped or possessed contrary to. the provisions of this 
i ct. 
PRIZES FOR AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHS, 
The Forest and Stream offers prizes for meritorious 
work with the camera, under conditions which follow: 
The prizes will be divided into three series: (i) for 
live wild game; (2) for game in parks; (3) for other sub- 
jects relating- to shooting and fishing. 
(1) For live game photographs three prizes are of- 
fered, the first of $50, the second of $25, and the third of 
$10. 
(2) For live game in parks, for the best picture, a 
prize of $10. 
(3) For the best pictures relating to Forest and 
Stream's field — shooting and fishing, the camp, camp- 
ers and camp life, sportsman travel by land and water, 
incidents of field and stream — a first prize of $20, a sec- 
ond of $15, a third of $10, and for fourth place two prizes 
of $5 each. 
There is no restriction as to the time nor as to where 
the pictures have been made or may be made. 
Pictures will be received up to Dec. 31 this year. 
All work must be original; that is to say, it must not 
have been submitted to any other competition or have 
been published. 
There are no restrictions as to the make or style of 
camera, nor as to size of plate. 
A competitor need not be a subscriber to the Forest 
and Stream. 
All work must be that of amateurs. 
The photographs will be submitted to a committee, 
who, in making their award, will be instructed to take 
into consideration the technical merits of the work as 
a photograph, its artistic qualities, and other things be- 
ing equal, the unique and difficult nature of the subject. 
Photographs should be marked for identification with 
initials or a pseudonym only, and with each photograph 
should be given, answering to the initials, the name of 
sender, title of view, locality, date and names of camera, 
and plate or film. 
ESSENTIALLY A THIEF. 
The term sooner has come to have a recognized place 
in the language of the field, as designating those gun- 
ners who take advantage of their fellows by shooting 
game before the lawful season opens. The word is not 
elegant but it is expressive and definite, and happily 
characterizes this breed of unfair and dishonest gunners. 
For the act of the sooner unquestionably is unfair and 
dishonest. The very motive of shooting before the sea- 
son opens is by unfair means to get ahead of other 
people, to anticipate them, and by open robbery of their 
opportunities to deprive them of their legitimate share 
of game, and the pleasure of its pursuit. The sooner 
thus stands forth as one not onfy devoid of those finer 
feelings of courtesy, consideration and fair play, which 
should characterize every man and control him in the 
field as in the social circle, but as lacking also in com- 
mon honesty: for it is in essence as dishonest to cheat 
another of his lawful shooting privileges as it is to de- 
fraud him in business, or to steal his purse. True, the 
law does not recognize the sooner's action as on a level 
with theft, but we challenge anyone to show that the two 
offenses are not inherently similar in principle. 
Nor may the true nature of this shooting out of sea- 
son be covered up by the claim so commonly 
advanced by its lawless perpetrators, that they are only 
exercising a natural right which antedates and super- 
sedes game statutes, and gives them privilege to do as 
their selfish natures prompt. The public is coming to 
understand these things more'clearly ; to see through the 
dishonest pretense of the natural-righters; and to recog- 
nize that those who shout the loudest for their individual 
natural rights to shoot are the very ones who most 
brazenly ignore and invade the natural rights of other 
people. The only natural right to shoot possessed by any 
man in this country is the right to opportunity — equal 
with that of all other men and invaded by no other man — 
to shoot in a way, at a time- and in a place open to him 
by the laws of the land. No" man under heaven has 
any natural or acquired right to take advantage of ot,her 
men by shooting before the law is off or after it is on. 
We repeat that he who does so does what is essentially 
mean, unfair and dishonest, and in respect to such action 
stands on a level with a common thief. One of these 
days we shall hear less of the sooners, for, this true 
nature of their offense recognized, they will have been 
reckoned with and suppressed. 
Meanwhile, this year and next year and every year, 
game commissioners and protectors and wardens and pri- 
vate citizens will do well to create and establish right 
public opinion on this subject by taking in and doing 
for the sooners as the law directs. 
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 
Commissioner Titcomb's suggestion that certain 
selected small trout brooks in Vermont should be set 
aside permanently as refuges and' nurseries is in line 
with advanced opinion in fish protection and fishculture. 
The plan is an ideal one; and its realization would mean 
a permanent fish supply. The one drawback is the diffi- 
cult problem of carrying the system into effect by pro- 
viding an actually efficient protection of the reserved 
waters, so that a brook thus set apart may prove really 
to be a supply nursery for the public advantage, and not 
simply a rich find to be looted by sneaking poachers. 
The fact is patent that some such expedient as public 
protected waters and game grounds must be resorted 
to if we may hope to preserve public fishing and shooting 
worthy the name. Opportunities which the State, the 
county, the village have failed to improve have in 
countless instances been seized by private enterprise for 
individual advantage. The desirable waters open to 
public fishing are becoming more restricted every year. 
In Pennsylvania, for instance, the rule is that all good 
fishing waters in Pike and Monroe counties are shut 
up, controlled by lessees and posted with trespass signs. 
So rapid is the change going on in these famous angling 
regions that in a few short years, it may safely be pre- 
dicted, there will be practically no public fishing worth 
the name. The prevailing system here and in other parts 
of the country shortly will be of closed streams and 
lakes. In fact, one who has noted the developments of 
the last fifteen years cannot fail of conviction that fish- 
ing as well as shooting soon will be a privilege to be 
bought in other ways than by purchase of a railroad 
ticket to public waters. 
The rivers and the lakes will remain open, but the 
smaller streams beloved of the trout fisher will be closed. 
This is not to say, however, that there will be just as 
many anglers and just as much angling. The sport will 
be established on a basis differing from the happy-go- 
lucky system of past and present. Waters pass into 
individual and club control because individuals and clubs 
stand ready to take them up. When the commercial 
value of trout fishing as a privilege to be bought and paid 
for shall be fully appreciated, we need not be appre- 
hensive that there will be a supply fully equal to the de- 
mand. And the system will so adjust itself that the cost 
of an outing on a protected stream, when the tangible 
results of the fishing are considered, will not exceed the 
sum one must now expend when visiting public waters. 
In other words, while the sport may be more expensive, 
there will be more substantial reward for the outlay. 
THE FOREST RESERVES. ' 
Among the appropriations in the sundry civil service bill 
is one, hardly noticed as yet by the newspapers, which 
is of real importance. It provides for the payment of 
forest inspectors, supervisors and other employees, and 
the amount set aside for this purpose is $75,000. The 
appointments, some of which were given last week in 
the Forest and Stream, are made directly" by the 
Secretary. It was certainly high time that some pro- 
vision was made for the maintenance of our forest re- 
serves, and each step taken in this direction is one in 
advance, and tends to strengthen the movement for 
forest preservation. That money has been appropriated 
to pay a force of forest employees, and that these em- 
ployees or some of them have been appointed, is most 
encouraging. The paragraph in which the appropriation 
is made reads as follows: 
Protection and Administration of Forest Preserves: 
To meet the expenses of executing the provisions of the sundry 
civil act, approved June fourth, eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, 
for the care and administration of the forest reserves, to meet 
the expenses of forest inspectors and assistants, and for the em- 
ployment of foresters and other emergency help in the prevention 
and extinguishment of forest fires, and for advertising dead and 
matured trees for sale within such reservation; Provided, That 
forestry agents and supervisors, and other persons to be designated 
by the Secretary of the Interior for duty under this appropriation, 
shall be allowed per diem, subject to such rules and regulations 
as he may prescribe, in lieu of subsistence, at a rate not ex- 
ceeding three dollars per day each, and actual necessary ex- 
penses for transportation, seventy-five thousand dollars. 
The long and bitter fight against the reserves thus 
ended not only in continuing the reserves, but in pro- 
viding a force for their maintenance, and funds to 
pay this force. While it may well be that this force at 
first will not accomplish great things for forest preserva- 
tion, the fact that it has been established cannot fail to 
greatly aid the progress of the work. 
There is a law in New York which forbids, under 
heavy penalty, having in possession live song birds, in- 
cluding the robin. As an illustrative commentary on the 
prevailing ignorance of this law, or indifference to it, may 
be cited a robin case which came up in one of the courts 
in this city last week. A sixteen-year-old boy, Adam 
Redwitz, was arraigned for having stolen a caged robin 
from Charles Mucha, an uptown shoemaker. In a 
struggle between Redwitz, Mucha and the neighbors-, the 
robin was nearly pulled to pieces, but finally escaped and 
flew away. The magistrate held that, as no one had seen 
the boy steal the robin, it might have been at liberty 
when the boy took it, and in that case, having won its 
freedom, it was nobody's bird, and could not be subject 
of larceny. It appears not to have occurred to the 
magistrate, nor to any of the authorities, game pro- 
tectors or others, that the man who claimed ownership 
of the bird was himself subject to a fine for its posses- 
sion. Probably not one magistrate in New York to-day 
knows that the law forbids the possession of robins. 
The pursuit of the upland plover shows an anomaly 
in the field shooting code, for while it is forbidden and 
tabooed to shoot birds other than flying it is the practice 
of upland plover shooters to pot them on the ground. 
The mode is defended by the plea that the plover is 
so shy and wary that it is permissible to circumvent him 
and to take advantage of him without giving him any 
law. Men who would scorn to bag their quail by a 
ground shot have no compunction whatever about the 
plover, and among their fellows make no concealment of 
their ground shooting. This has its parallel in duck 
shooting, in which pursuit some men— -perhaps a ma- 
jority of the duck shooters of the country — kill the birds 
on the water; or endeavor at least to get one shot at the 
bunch on the water with the first barrel, and a second 
shot as the birds rise in the air. 
One of the fascinations of black bass fishing, as the 
angler becomes more and more experienced in the art, is 
a growing appreciation of how meager and baffling is 
one's knowledge of the fish. When a veteran fisherman 
is asked to tell us what he knows about bass, he is 
very likely to respond by telling us of the things that 
puzzle him, that he does not know and cannot find out. 
This is an undertone of Mr. Van Cleef's paper this week 
on the black bass of the Bay of Quinte. As in so many 
other things, it is only the novice in bass fishing who 
knows it all. 
