Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1898. 
Terms, $4 a Ye<r. 10 Crs. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. ( 
J VOL. Li. —No. 16. 
| No. 346 Broadway, New Yor- 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
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garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
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Cbe forest and Stream Platform Plank. 
"The sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons.' 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
I agree with my friend Stark, of Dunbarton 
(who is one of the best all-round sportsmen New 
Hampshire ever produced) , that the State of New 
Hampshire should pass a law indorsing the Forest 
and Stream Plank and stop the sale of game at 
all seasons of the year. This would surely put a 
check upon the market-hunter and snarer. 
Commissioner N. Wentworth. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
The Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
tor amateur photography will be found on another 
page. ==——=========== 
SUN DA Y SHOOTING. 
The New Jersey game law forbids shooting on Sun- 
day; and the monthly reports sent out by Game Warden 
Shriner show that the law is enforced. The heavy fine 
imposed upon two New Jersey gunners for shooting on a 
recent Sunday prompts a correspondent to urge that 
it is a hardship that men who must work six days in the 
week should not be at liberty to gratify their bent on the 
only day of freedom open to them; and that men should 
be punished for Sunday shooting he thinks "a Puri- 
tanical outrage." .We are not disposed to discuss the 
religious aspect which may or may not attach to the 
Sunday shooting law. If the law exists it should be 
obeyed. The presumption is that it embodies the will 
of the community, to which that of the individual must 
defer. 
Many game laws work hardship in a like nianner. 
Not a summer goes by that we do not have applications 
from school teachers or students for shooting resorts in 
districts which are closed by law during the period of 
the summer vacation. These people are compelled to 
forego their sport because the game seasons and the 
school vacation seasons do not come together. This 
unquestionably is a hardship, but no reasonable person 
would dream of insisting upon a special privilege to 
hunt in July because he could not hunt in October. 
Would-be shooters who are -in school in the shooting 
months, and other would-be shooters who are at work 
on the week shooting days, both alike must perforce 
forego their pleasures. In other words, the individual 
must adapt himself to society and the social machine. 
As has been intimated, the character of Sunday shoot- 
ing laws in whatever religious aspect they may have is 
not under consideration. Accepted modes of Sabbath 
observance vary with localities and communities. For 
the most part in the East, especially in rural sections, the 
community demands quiet and repose, and the .laws are 
designed to assure it. Shooting is a noisy pursuit, and 
as such is naturally resented. In New England particu- 
larly the Sunday shooter, who shoots near towns or 
farm dwellings, is looked upon as a noisy nuisance, to be 
suppressed-. It is the experience of farmers whose fields 
are overrun by them that Sunday shooters are as a rule 
awless, unmindful of the rights of others, and given to 
the wanton and heedless destruction of fences and farm 
property. The result growing out of this is that the 
enmity engendered by Sunday shooting is entertained 
toward shooters in general; and the whole guild suffers 
by reason of the misconduct of the Sunday shooting con- 
tingent. 
New England game wardens have testified repeatedly 
to the Sunday shooter's disregard of the game laws; in 
Massachusetts it was found by experience to be so 
impracticable under the old law to suppress illegal 
shooting on Sunday that the statute was strengthened 
by making the possession of firearms in the open on 
that day prima facie evidence to convict. 
For two reasons then, that Sunday shooting promotes 
prejudice against all shooting, and that the Sunday 
shooter is given to d disregard of the game laws, the in- 
terests of sportsmanship at large call for enforcement 
of the statute which forbids Sunday shooting. 
A BUSINESS TRANSACTION. 
The engagement of a guide for a hunting trip is a 
business transaction. Very commonly the engagement 
is made far ahead; and the guide is expected to make 
all arrangements on the spot for the expedition, provid-- 
ing canoes or pack horses, canoemen, packers, and the 
necessary camp contingent; and all this not infrequent- 
ly involves the assuming of pecuniary obligations and 
responsibilities for the men engaged. Moreover, the 
guide who has contracted to go with one party must 
reject opportunities to go with others; the outfit he has 
signed with is the only one with which he may con- 
nect himself for the season, or a particular period of the 
season. In a financial way then the guide's engagement 
with a hunting party is to him a very important matter. 
It means quite as much relatively as do promises of em- 
ployment or position in other fields of honest work. 
On his part the sportsman who enters into an ad- 
vance contract with his guide assumes obligations which ' 
he may not decently evade. He is held in honor to ful- 
fill his part of the agreement; or failing that, to make 
such other arrangement as may be equitable and fair. 
He may not in simple inconstancy of purpose or idle 
whim revoke his woods plans, and "throw his guide 
overboard," unless he be willing to make good the 
guide's loss involved. A high-minded person will always 
recognize and bind himself by his just obligations, 
whether these be with respect to his business or social 
fellows at home, or to the woodsman in the depths of the 
wilderness on the other side of a continent. 
The complication of a sportsman who unexpectedly 
finds himself debarred from a projected hunt and a 
guide who as suddenly is thrown out of employment is 
one which not infrequently occurs, and it is a satisfaction 
to record that most of the- instances of this which come 
to the notice of Forest and Stream are brought to 
its attention by sportsmen who are intent upon making 
good their obligations to the guide, either by a reason- 
able settlement or by providing another party to take 
their place. Such men are known far and wide and 
honored among the men of the wilderness. Not less 
certainly does the ill repute of the man who flippantly 
evades his obligations penetrate to the depths of the 
woods and the remote recesses of mountain ranges. 
THE Y MA Y BE A VOIDED. 
Commenting upon what was said in these columns 
the other day of shooting, casualties, a correspondent 
remarks that "it would be as useless to attempt to 
legislate against such a class of accidents as against 
the dropping of a lamp, the running away of a horse, 
the tipping over of a boat or any other of a thousand 
mishaps, which will always occur because some are 
careless and some are blunderers." That is well said 
and truly. But the casualties to which specific reference 
was had are not accidents; they belong in quite another 
category; and that the distinction may be made clear 
we recur to the subject. 
The incidents of the wounding and killing of human 
beings by firearms in the hands of hunters belong to 
two well-defined classes: those which are purely ac- 
cidental and those which are criminally careless. When 
a hunting dog collides with a shooter and causes the 
man to stumble and fall, and his gun to be discharged 
by the fall, the casualtj r which may follow is an ac- 
cident pure and simple. When a hunter discharges his 
rifle at a rustle in the bush, not seeing nor having identi- 
fied the object shot at, the death of the human being 
which may follow is not an accident, but the result of 
criminal carelessness. The first happening was some- 
thing beyond all possible exercise of care and foresight; 
the other was caused directly by deliberate neglect of 
simple, practicable and due precaution. For the ac- 
cident which one may not avoid he may be held blame- 
less; for the casualty one might have averted he must be 
held to account. However futile it might be to declaim 
against the real accidents, or to legislate for them, we 
should not weary of denouncing in their true character 
and making odious those other acts which are not ac- 
cidents, but crimes. If every hunter who goes into the 
woods could have impressed upon him the criminal 
character of the killing or wounding by those who shoot 
at: human beings in mistake for game, such an injunction 
would go far to promote the common exercise of cau- 
tion. The Maine Commissioners are doing a public 
service by putting into print the letter written by Nathan 
B. Moore, relating so instructively his own personal ex- 
perience with the man target. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
We print the text of the decision of the Vermont 
Supreme Court upholding the authority of the Com- 
missioners to close stocked streams, and incidentally 
expounding certain basic principles upon which the 
game and fish laws are founded. The closed brook 
law itself is not of great importance, say the Commis- 
sioners in their report just issued, because experience 
has shown that the system of shutting up a stream for 
three years amounts to no lasting advantage, for im- 
mediately upon the expiration of the close time such a 
host of fishermen gather for the fishing that the waters 
straightway are reduced to their old condition. Instead 
of pursuing further the plan of closing streams for 
short terms, it is proposed that small brooks known to 
serve as spawning grounds for trout shall be set 
apart permanently and protected as natural hatching 
stations. This is now done with certain waters in Maine, 
and the results of the system fully justify its wider adop- 
tion. 
The Asbury Park sea lion case has just been decided 
by the Appellate Term of the t Supreme Court of New 
York. It will be recalled that the dispute was as to the 
ownership of the lion, which had escaped from Glen 
Island in Long Island Sound, gone to sea and been 
recaptured off the New Jersey coast, and purchased by 
Mr. James A. Bradley, of Asbury Park, for exhibition 
on the fishing pier. The original owner, Mr. James R. 
Mullett, recognized it, and brought suit for recovery. 
Mr. Bradley's defense was that the creature was ferae 
naturae, and having escaped from captivity was then the 
property of no one but in accordance with the accepted 
principles of law, would belong to any one who might 
reduce it to possession. The lower courts sustained this 
view, and the Appellate Term has now affirmed the 
decision. The most notable feature of the case is that 
Mr. Mullett's counsel should have advised him to .take 
it into court. 
The Ontario Game Commission tells us that the law 
forbidding the sale of game is bearing good fruit. It 
is well enforced, and is actually accomplishing its pur- 
pose. The notable result is a restoration of the quail. 
The supply had been diminished by the traffic — Chatham 
alone having received 36,000 brace annually — until the 
depletion threatened extinction. With the market cut 
off the stock has come up again, and Ontario now has 
quail shooting once more. 
A curious instance of misinformation on the part of 
one who should be well informed comes from Maine. 
One of the game wardens of that State,- who also con- 
ducts a sportsmen's camp, wrote of grouse to a prospec- 
tive patron in Pennsylvania, "The law allows you to 
carry fifteen birds out of the State at one time." The 
Maine law, on the contrary, implicitly prescribes that 
grouse may be taken only for consumption within the 
State. That game warden should post up on the game 
laws. • 
It is announced that the forthcoming report of Com- 
missioner Binger Hermann, of the General Land Office, 
will recommend an extension of the Yellowstone Na- 
tional Park on the south and west. The recommenda- 
tion is the outgrowth of a recent visit by Mr. Hermann 
to the territory concerned. 
The hunter is required to distinguish between a moose 
and a deer, and between cow and bull, or buck and doe, 
before firing his shot. Is it too much to demand that 
he shall also distinguish between moose or deer and a 
human being before he shoots? 
• The photographs from which were made the illustra- 
tions of Blackfoot Mountain, in our last issue, should 
have been credited to Mr. E. W. Deming. 
