Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Hints, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Cory. 
Six Months, $2. 
\ 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1898. 
( VOL. LI.-No. 18. 
( 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 bt 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. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
Tite Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
for amateur photography will be found on another 
■page. . . 
Cbe forest ana Stream Platform PlanR. 
"■The sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons. 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
CONCERNING A NUISANCE. 
The New York Tribune and Sun, the Boston Traveler 
and other papers, which have commented upon the 
case of the Italian who was killed in self-defense by a 
New Jersey game warden the other day, appear to en- 
tertain a notion that the game laws are quite correct 
and commendable so long as they are respected by 
everybody, but that if Italian gunners choose to defy 
the statutes and to menace the wardens who are charged 
with enforcing them, it is really not worth while to 
retain the laws. This is not going quite so far as does 
the editor of the Boston Fibre and Fabric, who coun- 
sels the summary shooting of game wardens; nor as. the 
editor of the Port Jervis Farmer, who is forever ex- 
horting the farmers to arise and abolish all game laws. 
It shows, however, that the character of the average 
Italian gunner as he presents himself to suburban com- 
munities is not understood by those who would abolish 
the bird protective statutes in his favor. Without such 
information, a newspaper editor is not competent to 
discuss the question; and may not hope to fool the pub- 
lic into thinking that he is by raising the silly cry that 
a man's life is worth more than a robin's. Of course it 
is, but the fact has nothing to do with the case. 
In this country we make a- sharply defined and com- 
monly recognized distinction between game birds and 
the other species which are birds of song or insectivor- 
ous in their habits; and this distinction extends to and 
governs the practice of the sportsman afield. A gun- 
ner who is out after grouse or quail, or other legitimate 
game, would not think of counting sparrows and 
thrushes into his bag. We have no class of shooters 
native to America who kill song birds for sport or the 
pot. In some other lands, on the contrary, the small 
species are regarded as game; in Italy every feathered 
creature, counts, even if no bigger than one's thumb; 
and when the Italian gunner comes to this country he 
brings his peculiar notions of game and sport with 
him, and attempts to put them into practice here. Going 
out from the cities, he ranges nearby fields and road- 
sides in pursuit of sparrows, thrushes, larks, robins, 
thistlebirds, swallows and wrens. Anything large 
enough for him to hit he counts as game, and in pursuit 
of it invades pastures and orchards, home yards, parks 
and cemeteries. In one of the Boston fells last week 
two Italians were arrested for having in their possession 
a shotgun, five robins, three hermit thrushes and a wood- 
pecker. The park, we are told, is amply posted with 
warning signs, but Italians from Boston are caught in 
it every few days shooting song birds. In Long Island 
districts, where there is not the slightest pretense by 
the authorities of enforcing the game laws, the hordes 
of song bird shooters from this city have practically 
free range, and are an unmitigated pest. In New Jersey, 
where on the contrary the State game warden force 
is making an honest effort to suppress the nuisance, the 
monthly record of the department shows that of the 
numerous individuals arrested for these offenses a vastly 
preponderating majority bear foreign names. 
These Italians constitute a distinct class of marauding 
gunners, with whom suburban communities find it most 
difficult to deal. The Italian hunts where legitimate 
sportsmen seeking legitimate game have no occasion to 
go; for the objects of his pursuit are the small species 
of farm and door yard, and he becomes a trespasser of 
peculiarly aggravating type. Game laws and trespass 
laws he regards as relics of hard and oppressive class 
restrictions left behind in the old world, and he shows 
his independence of them by insolent disregard and de- 
fiant violation. As trespasser and song bird, shooter, he 
is a constant nuisance and menace. For his suppression 
some means must be devised. If the journals which are 
so free in their condemnation of the game wardens will 
suggest any other and better way of dealing with the 
problem, the public will give it welcome. 
THE LONG ISLAND DEER. 
There will be five Wednesdays in November, and ac- 
cording to the New York game law, on each of these 
days deer hunting will be permitted on Long Island. 
But here is a curious condition of things, for while the 
law allows deer hunting, ail the people of the deer coun- 
try have leagued themselves together in a compact to 
permit no hunting; and as they control the situation, no 
hunting will there be. The deer range covers a terri- 
tory of about thirty square miles. Much of this is in 
large estates, which adjoin one another, are posted, and 
on Wednesdays in November will be effectively policed. 
The Long Island Railroad, which runs through the 
district, has in former years afforded in its tracks and 
right of way a vantage ground for the deer hunters, 
whose method was to line up on the railroad and shoot 
the deer when driven across the road by hounds. This 
year the railroad authorities will not permit the track to 
be used for such purposes. Nor will hunting on the 
highways be allowed. In short, the entire deer district 
will be tightly closed against the invasion of hunting 
forays. 
This means that practically no deer will be killed. 
What then is to be the solution of the Long Island deer 
problem? for with a steadily increasing stock there has' 
come to be a problem. The creatures have bred and 
multiplied with the prolificacy natural to the species 
when the favoring conditions are present of an abundant 
food supply, immunity from foes and security and peace- 
ful repose. If the numbers continue to increase the 
people of the district will be compelled to adopt some 
measures to reduce them. Here, as we have suggested 
before, is an excellent opportunity for the State to estab- 
lish a game park for a deer breeding station, from which 
the Catskills and other depleted deer sections may 1 ?. 
restocked. 
SHOTS IN THE NIGHT. 
"We crawled away to beds made of wild duck feathers, 
which conjured sweet dreams of unending sport." As 
he records his outings in print, we note, the average 
sportsman dreams of ducks or deer or fish or whatever 
it is he proposes to pursue on the morrow. It is quite 
the regular and conventional thing in print; how is it in 
actual experience? Does a sportsman never sleep 
through the night before without beholding dream 
shadows of the game of the morning? 
If all the hosts of spectre ducks and deer and quail and 
grouse and antelope and bears, which course through the 
realms of dreamland, could be reduced to material ex- 
istence, their multitude would go far to stocking anew 
the prairie expanses and mountain ranges of the con- 
tinent. 
In one of the numbers of the Spectator, Addi- 
son remarks that dreams are an instance of that agility 
and perfection which is natural to the faculties of the 
mind when they are disengaged from the body; the 
slow of speech make unpremeditated harangues, the 
grave abound in pleasantries, the dull in repartees and 
points of wit. "I am in no way facetious nor disposed 
for the mirth of company," said Sir Thomas Browne, 
"yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, be- 
hold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself 
awake at the conceits thereof." So in dreams are done 
physical deeds surpassing those of waking hours; and 
in the realm of sport the veriest bungler may perform 
in sleep feats of skill with gun and rifle. The novice 
who has yet to undergo his novitiate of buck fever slays 
his dreamland deer with unerring bullet and the non- 
chalance of a Davy Crockett; and brings to bag swiftly 
flying game from, prodigious heights. This shooting in 
sleep is the easiest shooting in the world. It is the 
mastery of the highest degree of marksmanship, the 
attainment of perfection in that art which Mr. Ham- 
mond in his new book calls "Hitting vs. Missing." 
"Supposing a man always happy in his dreams and 
miserable in his waking thoughts, and that his life was 
equally divided between them," asks Addison, "would 
lie be more happy or miserable?" We leave that for 
the man who grasses his grouse in dreams and touches 
never a feather by day; is his trip a success? And one 
who thus invariably hits in his dreams, but misses 
when awake, is he a duffer or a good shot? 
The man who, on the eve of a day in the field, lies 
down to pleasant dreams of the sport of the mor- 
row may join with Sir Thomas Browne when he writes: 
"I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do my good 
rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reason- 
able desires, and such as can be content with fit of 
happiness." 
SOME SHOOTING RECORDS. 
That story of a Bohemian side-hunt is suggestive of 
game conditions abroad which do not prevail here. In 
European countries, where game is bred like domestic 
poultry, and if ten thousand pheasants are killed to- 
day, ten thousand others may be raised to take their 
places, the side-hunt is not so devastating a competition 
as it is in this country, where we depend on a natural 
supply only, and one which cannot maintain itself against 
such combined assaults of associated shooters. In 
this country then we have reason to discourage side- 
hunts, as in their effects opposed to the sportsman's 
interest. As the game supply diminishes year by year 
the opposition to side-hunting naturally gains strength 
among sportsmen. As we pointed out the other day, 
side-hunters as a rule are riot sportsmen. 
In Europe, on the contrary, where the question of 
a game supply does not enter into consideration, killing 
for count is recognized as legitimate and sportsman- 
like. He is considered to have made a record of 
honor who has bagged the largest numbers of birds or 
other game. Thus we read of one Trauttmansdorff — 
Prince Carl Trauttmansdorff — who has to his credit 
for a single day's shooting the slaughter of 862 head of 
game, with a best bag of pheasants 303, of partridges 
632, of hares 416, of rabbits 638, of roebuck 12, of fallow 
deer 20, and of black cock 14, and a best year's count of 
10,833 head of assorted game. Another record smasher 
is Earl de Gray, whose exploits have been duly tabulated 
for a series of years, from 1867 to 1895. His pheasant 
score was 111,119, with 89,401 partridges, 47,468 grouse, 
26,747 rabbits and as many hares, 2,735 snipe, 2,077 wood- 
cock, 1,393 wild duck, 567 deer, 12 buffalo, 11 tigers, a 
couple of rhinoceros, and 9,000 assorted; making a total 
of 316,699 for the entire period, or about 11,000 annual- 
ly. This is a record which the most industrious market 
shooter in this country would needs work hard to equal. 
In very truth the noble sportsman must have been a 
monomaniac in the field. Yet for all his slaughter the 
game supply where he shot has not been permanently 
diminished. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The Bulletin of the League of American Wheelmen 
appears to be edited oh a theory that the members of 
the League are congenital idiots. Its columns are stuf- 
fed week after week with silly puns, the damnable itera- 
tion of which for fifty-two weeks in the year, as pre- 
sented to intelligent people, must disgust and repel. We 
advise the League managers, who are looking about for 
the causes of a diminishing membership, to consider 
whether the imposition of such a worthless and foolish 
official organ upon the members has not something to 
do with it. 
The annual meeting of the New York State Fish, 
Game and Forest League will be held in Syracuse on De- 
cember 8th. The League cordially invites support and co- 
operation of all clubs and associations which have for 
purpose the better protection of fish and game. The 
League is in control of those who are themselves sin- 
cerely concerned to advance the real interests, and it 
is the most promising and efficient agency for promot- 
ing these interests. The secretary is Mr. Ernest K. 
Gould, of Seneca Falls. 
We print to-day from Mr. Langford a further note as 
to the ascent of the Grand Teton; and next week we shall 
publish a statement of the case prepared by Mr. Wm. 
O. Owen, submitted by him to support his claim to 
credit for having been the first to achieve the ascent. 
