Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
ERMS ' A C0PY 1 NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 18 9 8. {^.s^k^X^. 
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 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
Cbe forest ana Stream Platform PlanK. 
" The sale of game should, be forbidden at all seasons." 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
The Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
for amateur photographs is given elsewhere. 
I never hear a greasy-faced, sanctimonious fellow 
declaim against the cruelty, the wantonness and 
the unprofitableness of field-sports, but I set him 
down for an arrant fool or an arrant hypocrite. 
But I long- to assure him that in the eyes of Hea- 
ven, and God be thanked, even in the world also, 
some pursuits are held profitable besides that of the 
almighty dollar ; and some amusements innocent 
besides cheating our neighbors on the street, and 
calling that business ; or slandering them by the 
fireside and calling that conversation. 
Frank Forester. 
A FINANCIAL CONSIDERATION. 
New Brunswick is rapidly coming to the front as a 
game country. This season has proved a most fortunate 
one for sportsmen from the United States, as our game 
columns from week to week have testified. Moose and 
caribou hunters have been very successful; and many 
noble trophies have been brought out of the woods. The 
law of demand and supply has worked to increase the 
native supply of guides. A few } r ears ago the really good 
guides and moose callers might be numbered on the 
fingers of one hand; and to supply the deficiency, Maine 
guides were taken in by visiting sportsmen. The New 
Brunswick woodsmen have learned the trick of calling, 
and there are now so many qualified guides among them 
that the visitor may be reasonably certain of satisfaction 
with the local talent. These guides have in many 
instances an exaggerated notion of the value of their 
services, and evidently look upon the American moose 
hunter as a victim to be bled. Cases are cited of guides 
who, when they got their parties well in hand, demanded 
six dollars a day or deserted. This is extortion. No 
guide can earn six dollars a day. If his employer 
chooses to give him that wage, or ten times as much, he 
may take it, not as earned, but as given; but the lavish 
rewards scattered by bountiful employers may not rea- 
sonably be accepted as affording any gauge of what the 
service is worth or should be made to pay when, others 
are concerned. Moose hunters are not invariably mil- 
lionaires; some of them have first to count the cost; and 
even millionaires are currently believed to be resentful 
of downright imposition. 
It is with guides and guiding very much as with the 
tipping system, which is coming to be all so prevalent 
in every branch of service where one person does any- 
thing whatever for another. The person who tips thereby 
puts an obligation upon the next one who comes along 
to give a tip too, or else be slighted; voluntary tipping 
by some leads to obligatory tipping by all; and the 
exactions are such as to be burdensome to many who 
cannot afford them. In precisely the same way the giv- 
ing of a fancy price for services rendered in the woods 
often means making crooked and difficult the trail for 
those who are to follow. No one will begrudge what- 
ever a woods guide may receive from those who can 
afford it, and are disposed to give it, over and beyond the 
actual worth of services rendered, but the generosity of 
such gratuitous rewards should not be taken as the meas- 
ure of what is actually due and just as a reasonable and 
sufficient scale of payment for guiding. 
NO VEMBER. 
November — what changing scenes the name recalls. 
To-day, beneath the cold, gray sky, the trees shiver in 
the scant remnant of their gay attire; the forest floor is 
strewn thick with the cast-off splendor; the clogged 
pools are clotted with it, and are more gorgeously 
mantled than if the departed wood ducks had left their 
splendid plumage in their ' forsaken summer home, and 
all the summer flowers were blooming, afloat with all 
the summer butterflies voyaging on them. 
To-morrow, under the same cold, rough sky that the 
harrows of wild geese do not smooth nor soften, the 
trees stand naked and gray, the gay litter of the forest 
turns to somber hue and the sodden leaves sink down, 
dyeing the crystal pool to amber. From aloof, the surly 
north wind sends a hollow murmur, then nearer and 
louder, clashes the bare boughs and tosses the scurrying 
leaves along the earth. A procession of crows is swept 
before it in a hurried, staggering flight, swifter than the 
blown clouds above or the leaves beneath. 
Another day, under the pale blue sky, the windless air 
is soft as May. Through the veil of haze the wooded 
hills are stranded clouds; the mountains, piles of move- 
less smoke: the gleam of the sunlit stream, a ribbon of 
silver winding through space. From it comes, in soft- 
ened cadence, the raucous call of the dusky duck; from 
the cloudland of the hills, the mellow chiding of a 
hound, the dreamy memory of the cock grouse's April 
drum call, the indolent cawing of lingering crows, and 
faint and far, or near and loud, the gun's sudden boom 
breaks in' upon the congruous voices of nature. 
Again the scene changes, the mountains and then the 
hills are blotted out in the lowering sky, and the world 
is narrowed to a dreary circle, beaten by a slant of leaden 
rain and downright drip of branches and roofs with dull 
and lifeless monotony. 
Again, and the bitter north wind turns the earth to 
stone, the circle of the world widens toward its old 
bounds, then closes in a blankness of gray and white, as 
the desolate nakedness of autumn is made seemly by the 
charitable garment of winter. 
CAMP PHOTOGRAPHS. 
Some amateur photographs of camp scenes or other 
subjects are not so pleasing in effect as they would be if 
the people who appear in them were not staring at the 
camera. Unless the purpose of the photograph is to give 
full-face portraiture, artistic considerations demand that 
the human element of it shall not be manifestly having 
its picture taken. 
A photograph of camp life should be permeated with 
the theme of the subject. The campers should be din- 
ing, or making fires, or fixing tents; getting guns, rods 
or boats ready for the day's sport; or whatever the hour 
of the day, the incidents should have a corresponding 
fidelity to camp as it actually exists at the moment. But 
when the campers are lined up in front of the camp, or 
standing in stiffly set and self-conscious poses, they 
themselves have abandoned the reality of camp life to en- 
gage in having themselves photographed. Tents, trees 
and other detail of the camp then merely serve the pur- 
poses of a background, as the curtain does in the photo- 
grapher's studio. 
As one looks on a photograph composed after the 
set manner above mentioned, the impression of camp 
life is but remotely conveyed; one is impressed by the 
dominant feature, the personality of the camp being 
photographed. 
If the picture is to really portray camp life, it must be 
as camp life really is. People must fit in with the life of 
the camp. -People in camping, fishing, etc., do not 
stand stiffly looking with set eyes at a point in the fore- 
ground. To the members of the party so photographed 
there are associations with the subject which make 
the photograph an incident of camp life; to all others, the 
incident is stripped of all associations. It then is only an 
incident complete in itself, telling no story of the mo- 
tive inspiring the camp in its pursuit of health and sport. 
So it is with all other photographs. Each person 
should be a consistent part of the whole, whether of 
camping, boating, shooting, or fishing scenes. 
If then you make part ' of a camp group be- 
fore the camera, don't stare at the instrument, be 
doing something, looking at something, posing in some 
way to indicate that the picture is of a real scene, as 
natural in attitude and grouping as it would be at the 
very moment of the snap were there no camera within a 
thousand miles. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Despite the posting of lands in the deer district Of 
Long Island, and an endeavor on the part of many of 
the residents to prevent hunting, a large force of hunters 
turned out early on Thursday morning of last week; and 
before the frightened deer realized what was happening 
sixty odd had been killed, thirty-eight on the lands 
adjoining the preserves of the South Side Club. When 
the deer recognized their danger, they took to the 
refuge of the protected grounds; and it is improbable 
that there will be offered again this season another op- 
portunity such as that of Thursday. The Long Island 
deer are practically tame. Living in perfect security 
the whole year around — save for four or five days irt 
November, and these at intervals of a week — they do not 
recognize man and dog as deadly enemies. On the con- 
trary, they stray at will, feeding by the roadsides, where 
as one drives he may almost flick them with his carriage 
whip, grazing on lawns, herding with the cattle in the 
fields, and in all respects conducting themselves as semi- 
domesticated members of the community. Such ani- 
mals "are hardly game in the sense of being wild creatures 
of the wild woods, which must be sought for with craft 
and cunning and skill in sportsmanship. There is in 
the slaughtering of Long Island's tame deer little of that 
pitting of the shrewdness of the hunter against the 
wariness of the game, of which we are wont to descant 
when we praise the art Of deer hunting. There is, how- 
ever, this to be said for what takes place on November 
Thursdays in the Long Island deer country, that it gives 
an -opportunity for trophy head and haunch of venison to 
many a man who could not make an expedition to distant 
hunting grounds; and that for those people who care 
for dee*: hunting of this kind it is a chance highly prized. 
In an 1857 copy of "Porter's Spirit of the Times," upon 
which we have chanced, complaint is made that the New- 
Jersey game law at that time imposed a fine of only one 
dollar for its violation; and a moiety of this was the 
only stimulus offered for bringing the out of season gun- 
ner to justice. The law had thus neither terror for the 
violator nor encouragement to voluntary enforcement; 
and it was a dead letter. Forty years have gone by, and 
to-day we have the New Jersey game law executive force 
urging that the penalties now prescribed are altogether 
excessive, and defeat the ends sought to be gained by 
enlisting sympathy for those who are subjected to them. 
The way in which this has come about is well told in the 
paragraph of the report quoted in another column. 
The principle we have noted before as operative in other 
States: if a game law fails of its purpose because 
laxly enforced, double the penalty; if that does not help 
matters, double the penalty again. It is a common 
delusion to imagine that if only the punishment be made 
severe enough, the law will enforce itself. The fact is 
that whatever the penalty, light or heavy, the. statute 
must be put into execution by those whose duty this is; 
and a reasonable penalty rigorously exacted is certain 
to prevent repeated violations, and at the same time it 
does not permit the offender to pose as a victim of in- 
justice. With such an admirably administered system 
as is that of New Jersey, the suggestion to lighten the 
penalties may well be assented to. 
- In this same number of "Porter's Spirit" we find the 
text of a law prepared by Frank Forester for the pro- 
tection of salmon in the Delaware, Raritan, Passaic and 
Hudson rivers, which waters there was then an intention 
of stocking with this fish. Forester thought that there 
was here an opportunity to add incalculably to the fish- 
ing resources of the three States; but the project never 
got beyond the drafting of the law. 
The expressions "buck-ague" and "buck-fever" are 
given by Bartlett as Americanisms. But surely there 
were deer hunters who were agitated with the tremors 
of excitement at sight of the game long before deer 
were hunted in America; and there must have been at 
least an equivalent for tfae terms before there were any 
Americanisms. 
