Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
RMS, $4 A YE>8. 10 C.TS. A Col'Y. I 
Six Months, $2. -| 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1898. 
VOL, LI .-No. 28. 
ati BROAt'WAY, New Yoiij<. 
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. 
Cbe forest ana Stream Platform Flank. 
"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. 
It is when the snow is on the ground that we 
take the census of the woods, 
E. E. Thompson. 
GAME AND THE FOOD SUPPLY. 
Commenting upon the current high prices of : English 
game occasioned by:the unfavorable weather, prevailing 
during the breeding season, the London Standard points 
out that under ordinary conditions game birds from the 
great preserves are cheaper than domestic poultry. 
"Thirty years since," the Standard says, "it would have 
been thought a piece of extravagance to buy game for 
ordinary consumption in any middle-class household. 
Latterly, however, ladies have found pheasants cheaper 
in the end than fowls. Without costing more money, 
they go a good deal further. A prime young pheasant, 
well fed on buckwheat and other nutritious delicacies, 
has more meat on him than the much-vaunted Surrey 
fowl. We must all be glad that both pheasants and 
partridges have been brought within the reach of the 
middle classes; and it would be an evil day, for more 
reasons than one, if ever they were placed beyond it 
again. We anticipate no such- misfortune as that." Par- 
tridge and pheasant are cheap commodities, of course, 
only because they are bred in enormous supply; and 
bred with as much system as are the ducks in any Long 
Island duckery that sends to market its twenty thousand 
ducks in a season. In this supply of cheap food for the 
large class in England who habitually buy game for . 
their tables is found an answer to much of the criticism 
upon game preserves. Only for the sake of shooting 
will landed proprietors go to the expense and trouble 
of maintaining game-keepers, pheasantries and costly 
establishment of a game preserve. In Great Britain 
then sport has a direct and wholesome effect upon the 
market price of cheap food. 
We have at the present time in this country no game 
conditions answering to these. A well-known sports- 
man of Ohio once made an eloquent plea for the pro- 
tection of quail in that State, and clinched his argument 
with the declaration that if duly protected the birds 
would become so abundant as to furnish an unending 
supply of cheap food for the people. Except in certain 
circumscribed localities, where birds are many and peo- 
ple few, this consummation can never be realized. 
Wherever and whenever the condition has existed it has 
been with the primitive stock of game, before it has been 
given protection, before there was apparent necessity of 
protection for it. Protection never has and never can 
so restore, a wild game supply as to make it a source of 
cheap food for the people. The game in our markets 
to-day. is a luxury. Canvasback ducks are quoted at $6 
a pair, redheads at $4-50 a pair, quail $3.50 a dozen, 
woodcock $2.25 a pair, snipe $4.50 a dozen, partridges 
$2.25 a pair, loin of venison from 50 cents a pound for 
fresh killed to 30 cents for refrigerated stock. No 
feathered species which is dependent upon natural supply 
alone can ever compete with the domestic hen, or with 
the imported pheasant, if that bird shall be bred in the 
English way. Given thirty years of extension and de- 
velopment of the game preserve system which is so 
rapidly taking hold in this country, and the experience 
of the United States, with the pheasant as a factor in 
the food supply, may answer to that of Great Britain; 
WC may then be where England. is now." ! '« 
RING-NECKED PHEASANTS IN NEW [ERSE V. 
The most important and significant story of game 
stocking enterprise ever told of the Atlantic States is 
contained in the chapter in the New Jersey Commis- 
sioners' report for 1898, which records the introduction 
of the ring-necked pheasant into the covers of that 
State. In 1897 some four hundred and seventy-four birds 
were distributed through the several counties, where 
they were entrusted to the care of persons who under- 
took to assure security for them by posting the land and 
other means. The letters published by the commission, 
some of which are quoted in our game columns to-day, 
establish the fact that when put out and left to shift for 
itself, v the pheasant is abundantly able to find food, to 
stand the climate and to maintain itself with our native 
birds. In New Jersey the pheasant has increased and 
multiplied. By giving us such a demonstration the Com- 
missioners have rendered a service to game interests ex- 
tending far beyond the limits of their own State. Pheas- 
ant breeding has been successful in numerous instances 
when undertaken as a private enterprise; here it was 
entered upon as a public charge, and the success attend- 
ing it is such as must insure the adoption of similar work 
by the game commissions of other States. 
A service like this rendered to the people by a fish and 
game commission must go far toward strengthening 
the commission in public esteem, and toward enlisting 
an improved public appreciation of its game protective 
functions. The persons of the community most difficult 
to deal with in these matters are those who look upon the 
commission and its executive force as having only the 
one purpose of restricting their sport and denying them 
the right to hunt when they choose to. The commission 
stands to them in the relation of a spoil sport. They 
cannot or will not look beyond this to the ultimate pur- 
pose of close seasons, and other restrictions, as measures 
adopted to insure the perpetuity of the game supply 
But here surely in this pheasant introduction is some- 
thing which the most obstinate and wilfully obtuse op- 
ponent of game protection must see and acknowledge 
as of direct value to himself and his fellow shooters. 
The enterprise declares upon the face of it that instead of 
seeking to restrict shooting, a commission which intro- 
duces a new game bird must be intent upon promoting 
sport with the gun. By and by, when the required close 
season on the game shall have expired, and fortunate 
gunners shall return from the field with the magnificent 
trophies, they will see this more clear-ly yet. The estab- 
lishment of the pheasant then will have a two-fold result, 
it will supply a new game bird, and it will foster and 
make converts to the game protection idea. 
THE SNIPE BAG. 
The trick of posting a greenhorn to hold a bag for 
snipe at night has remarkable persistence; hardly a 
season goes by without its reporting from some quarter; 
and not infrequently the results are fatal to the victim. 
Usually the bag holder is a guileless stranger, at whose 
expense "the boys" determine to have some fun; to that 
end they take him out . into the swamp, where the 
mosquitoes are thick if it is summer, or to the bleakest 
spot they can find if it be winter, and standing him there 
with a bag to hold open for the game, they caution him 
to silence, and go away ostensibly to beat up the game, , 
but actually to return to the tavern to await- the advent 
of the bag holder, when he shall come to a realization' 
of the sell. There was a blizzard in Iowa last week, and 
among the newspaper dispatches about it was one from 
Sioux City, recording that a young stranger who had ' 
been induced by practical jokers to held a bag for quail 
on the bank of the Little Sioux during the storm was 
supposed to have wandered away and frozen to death, or 
to have fallen into the stream. At last accounts the 
searching parties had not discovered the body. The un- 
fortunate individual appears to have fallen prey to that 
canine instinct in man which prompts him to do for the 
stranger after the manner of a band of dogs which will 
invariably set upon a strange dog. 
The snipe bag jokers we shall have always with us, 
but it may be noted that the stranger who is likewise a 
greenhorn is not nowadays so often as formerly the butt 
of village tricks. This is in particular true of those com- 
munities which derive a revenue from providing for the, 
sportsman tourist, for it has come to be understood that 
no matter how green the person may be, his money is 
quite as good as that of any other man when paid for 
hotel, boat, camp outfit, guide and cook. The first thing 
the dweller in an isolated place must learn, in order t© 
put him on good terms with a stranger, is that in dress, 
deportment, speech and equipment as to information or 
skill or ability, one may be at wide divergence with local 
standards, and yet be "a very decent sort of a fellow" 
after all. In teaching this lesson, the sportsman has al- 
ways hael a large influence, because it is the sportsman 
who so frequently first invades remote communities and 
puts them in touch with the world. The man with the 
gun and his brother with the fishing rod have thus in 
numberless instances been the bringers of many social 
amenities. " 
SNAP SHOTS. 
They do things differently in New Zealand. In that 
land of extinct and extinguishing forms of animal life 
they have a bird remnant, the Notornis mantelli, a giant 
flightless purple coot, first described from bones found 
with those of the moas, and like the moas supposed to 
be extinct. After a while a living one was discovered, 
and was, of course, promptly killed and made into soup. 
Years afterward a second one was captured, and the 
skin was sent to the South Kensington Museum; and 
then, some twenty years ago, a rabbit catcher one day 
found in his snare the third known specimen. A fourth 
has just been captured, also by a rabbit snarer, and 
promptly killed. It is, of course, a great pity that rare 
forms of bird life should be destroyed in this way, but 
what more could be expected of New Zealand rabbit 
trappers? In this enlightened country it would have 
been different. The same foresight and provident self- 
control which have preserved to us the wild pigeon and 
the buffalo, the Pennsylvania elk and the Florida plume 
birds, would have taken good care of a bird which could 
not fly. The genius of American sportsmanship is such 
that this continent would be a secure paradise for wing- 
less wildfowl. 
Mr. Titcomb sends us the list of deer killed in Ver- 
mont this year, as reported by postmasters. It runs by 
counties: Addison six, Bennington four, Caledonia 
two, Chittenden one, Essex ten, Franklin one, Lamoille 
two, Orange one, Orleans four, Rutland thirty-five, 
Washington two, Windham four, Windsor fifty-eight — 
a total of one hundred and thirty. This is against a 
total of one hundred and seven reported by postmasters 
in 1897; the whole number for that year was estimated at 
one hundred and forty; and it is probable that ' th» 
number this year is much larger. The open season in 
1897 and in 1898 comprised the month of October, arid 
the use of hounds was permitted. The experience of 
these two years has demonstrated that this drain upon 
the supply was too great, and acting at the instance of 
the game commission, the Legislature has changed the 
law; the game is protected except for the last ten days of 
October, and the use of dogs to pursue deer is pro- 
hibited. 
"It is the almost universal custom with the local shoot- 
ers here to shoot the bucks and let the does go free," 
writes Mr. Risteen from New Brunswick. "I never 
shoot does nor fawns, but always wait for something 
with a head on it," said a Florida sportsman the other 
day, describing deer hunting in that State. And so 
from Canada to the Gulf sentiment is growing in favor 
of sparing the does. The rules which sportsmen impose 
tipon themselves for conduct in the woods are not con- 
stant from generation to generation, but are made more 
and more stringent as time goes by. The tendency is 
all in the direction of a more provident and careful 
use which shall not diminish the parent stock. 
Guide Joe Francis of Maine woods trail and camp 
is Gov. Joseph Francis, of the Penobscot Tribe, having 
been elected to that-office on Tuesday of last week. If 
the Governor is as capable as the guide, the Penobscots 
have made a "capital ~choice. 
The organization of the Alabama Field Trial Club 
has had a distinct influence to quicken public interest in 
shooting and the game supply, and it is probable that 
one good result will be the securing of a game law to 
cover the State, 
