Jan. 26» 1901,1 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
69 
going to have the usual line of changes offered for the 
game laws. One can hardly care what the dates for our 
game seasons are. I should like to see this game market 
shut up, but if it is to he left open at all, then it would 
seem self-evident that what we need in Illinois is not any 
new or dififerent law, but a sterner and sturdier enforce- 
ment, of almost any kind of law than we have ever seen 
in all the weak efforts at game protection in this Western 
country. What we need is not more theories, not more 
new dates, not more new schemes, but more money and 
more men to enforce the laws which we already have. 
We can protect our game just as soon as we get ready to 
do so and say that it must be done. But we will never 
do this by tinkering with dates and schemes. 
White Moose Killed. 
A report comes from Minnesota that an Indian last 
month killed near Grand Rapids, in that State, a moose 
which was almost completely white. This is the first in- 
stance of an albino moose of which I ever heard. It is 
generally understood that a white deer or a white moose 
is regarded with superstitious awe by the Indians. The 
story goes that the hunter who killed this moose has been 
tried by his people and sentenced to very severe punish- 
ment for bringing bad luck on the tribe. 
The Sportsmen's Show. 
Mr; H. G. Maratta, the well-known Chicago artist, 
started this week for the Grand Canon of the Colorado 
to make studies for the purpose of putting up a big model 
of this canon on the main floor of the sportsmen's ex- 
position which is to be held in Chicago this coming 
month. Mr. Maratta has already made a small model of 
the canon, and it gives the best idea of that tremendous 
spectacle which has ever been offered in artistic form. 
The Chicago & Northwestern Railroad will put up a 
hunter's cabin at the exposition. Another well-known 
Chicago artist, Mr. W. L. Wells, will have charge of the 
designs for this exhibit. It is Mr. Wells who suggested 
to the management the idea of a flying flock of wild geese. 
There will be two dozen geese mounted and suspended in 
the air in a realistic way, as though they were just in 
to the marsh. The latter will also be shown in vivid 
realism. 
There promises to be a very good railroad representa- 
tion at the show, and on lines altogether unique and dis- 
tinct from earlier enterprises of a similar nature. Indeed 
the show seems to be moving in most satisfactory fashion 
throughout. 
E. Hough. 
■Hartford Building, Chicago, 111. 
Possession in Close Season. 
The People vs. Buffalo Fishing Company, 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have noticed several articles in Forest and Stream 
with reference to the case of People vs. Buffalo Fishing 
Company (164 N. Y., 93), recently decided by the Court 
of .Appeals of this State. 
These articles convey the impression that the Court 
of Appeals, in the case cited, has held that the prohibitions 
contained in certain sections of the Fishery, Game and 
Forest Law (repealed in 1900 by the Forest, Fish and 
Game Law) against the possession of fish and game 
during the close season, were invalid as in conflict with 
the Federal Constitution, as applied to fish and game law- 
fully taken outside the State and imported into the State 
during the close season. The court did not so hold. Judge 
O'Brien wrote the prevailing opinion in that case, placing 
his decision upon two grounds : First, that the act in 
question does not by its terms prohibit the "possession" 
of fish and game lawfully taken outside the State and im- 
ported during the close season. To quote his words with 
reference to the statute, "What it means, and all it means, 
is to forbid any person to catch, kill or be possessed of 
the fish described from waters of this State. The word 
'possession' obviously refers to those fish the catching 
or killing of which is prohibited— that is to say, fish in the 
waters of this State, and not those procured in a foreign 
country." As a second ground, he states that even though 
the statute were intended to prohibit the possession of 
fish and game during the close season without regard to 
where or how possession might be obtained, then, in his 
opinion, it would be invalid as in conflict with the Federal 
Constitution. 
Judge Gray wrote a dissenting opinion, holding that the 
statute applied to fish and game caught and killed outside 
the State, as well as that killed or taken within the State, 
and held further that the statute was not in conflict with 
the Federal Constitution. Judges Martin and Haight con- 
curred with Judge Gray in his dissenting opinion. Chief 
Judge Parker and Judge Landon concurred with Judge 
O'Brien in the prevailing opinion. Judge Warner, the only 
other judge sitting, also concurred with Judge O'Brien, 
but only on the ground first stated by him— that is. that 
the sections were not intended to apply to foreign fish and 
game. 
It follows that this case simply holds that it was not 
the intent of the Fisheries. Forest and Game Law to pro- 
hibit during the close season possession of fish and game 
lawfully caught or killed outside of the State and imported 
during the close season. 
Phelps vs. Racey (6q N. Y., io) is still authority that a 
statute which expressly forbids the having in possession 
of game during the close season, regardless of where, 
when or how obtained, is valid. 
The trouble was in the wording of the old Fisheries, 
Game and Forest Law, and as the wording of the present 
Fish and Game Law is practically the same, it should be 
.am.e'nded so as to expressly apply to fish and game im- 
ported into the State during the close season, and when 
so amended the act will be valid under the decision of the 
(Court of Appeals in Phelps vs. Racey. 
WiLLARD S. Reed. 
■Coining, N. Y., ^an. 18. 
The FosEST and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach ij? at tli? 
latest by Monday and in»ph earlier as practicably 
The Adirondack Deer* 
The folloAving letter from Lieut.-Gov. Woodruff was 
read at the meeting of the Brown's Tract Guides' Associa- 
tion at Boonville, in the Adirondacks, on Jan, 16 : 
Albany, Jan. 9.— Mr. A. M. Church, Secretary Brown's 
Tract Guides' Association, Boonville, N. Y. : My Dear 
Sir — I take pleasure in replying to your request for in- 
formation regarding the feeding of deer in the winter, 
with which I have had some experience, and am agree- 
able to your suggestion to present my views on this and 
the other questions associated with it to your Association 
at its meeting to-morrow. 
As you know, I have been for four years engaged as 
President of the Forest Preserve Board in the work of 
purchasing for the State lands in the Adirondacks and 
Catskills. For $1,950,000 this Board has acquired 400,000 
acres of land in "the Adirondacks alone, and recovered 
about 90,000 acres which had been lost to the State by 
previous improper cancellations of the State's title. The 
lands thus purcha.sed and acquired by the reinstatement of 
the State's title, through the operation of the Forest 
Preserve Board, are worth twice what they have cost the 
State. In 1883, when a law was enacted prohibiting the 
further sale of land owned by the State in the Adiron- 
dacks, the State possessed 700,000 acres. During the 
following thirteen years these holdings were increased to 
825,000 acres, until in 1896 a 7S,ooo-acre tract was pur- 
chased from W. Seward Webb, as the settlement in a suit 
brought by him against the State for damages incident to 
the damming of the Beaver River for reservoir purposes. 
Therefore, the State owned 900,000 acres in the North 
Woods when we took up this work under the provisions 
of the Forest Preserve Board act in the spring of 1897. 
Since then this acreage has been increased just 50 per 
cent, and to-day the State is in undisputed possession of 
about one-half of the Adirondack Park, the park em- 
bracing practically all the forest lands in the Adirondack 
region. In my opinion, it is unfortunate that, owing to the 
constitutional prohibition of the cutting of timber on 
State lands, the matured trees throughout this well-tim- 
bered forest territory cannot be marketed, instead of going 
to waste and retarding, as they do, the younger growth. 
The soft merchantable timber, or evergreens, on the State 
lands, which will soon die of old age, could to-day be sold 
for a sum sufficient to furnish the State with means to 
acquire the title to all the lands owned in the Adiron- 
dacks by corporations and individuals for lumbering pur- 
poses, provided the}' were granted a proper and reason- 
able reservation as to the large timber on their property 
at the time of its purchase. Not only would thi.s course 
result in the acquisition of the land not at present owned 
by the State, but it would furnish employment to a vast 
number of our people and supply to the ninety-eight pulp 
and paper mills in this State raw material, which is de- 
creasing in quantity at a rate which threatens the im- 
pairment of this great indu.stry, in Avhich the State of 
NcAv York leads all the other States of the Union. And 
what is of greater importance to your Association, this 
plan would prevent the further cutting of hardwood, 
which has now assumed large proportions in certain 
localities, for the manufacture of wood alcohol and 
cooperage stock, and which is subjecting large areas of 
the Adirondacks to the danger of being stripped as clean 
as a desert. Thus would the next generation find a forest 
preserved to them by us as grand and beautiful as the one 
which the generation preceding us enjoyed, but neglected 
to preserve for us, even when it could be purchased for 
one-tenth of its present value. 
It was not my intention to devote so much of this letter 
to forest preservation, but it is the foundation of the 
whole structure which your Association and many of us 
are trjnng to maintain and develop. The question of provid- 
ing for the wild deer, concerning which yo'i particularly 
ask for information, is of little consequence unless we 
have adequate game laws rigidly enforced. I believe that 
hounding must be permanentlj' prohibited. Only one year 
of its prohibition remains under the act of 1897. which 
prohibited it for five years. The movement to stock the 
North Woods with moose, which has now been ener- 
getically started, and the offer of Mr. William C. Whit- 
ney and o;hers to supply elk, if nothing else were wanted, 
indicate the absolute necessity of putting an end to hound- 
ing. Mr. Edward H. Litchfield, who has an inclosed pre 
serve of 8,000 acres on Big Tupper Lake, told me the other 
day that his game keepers had not found a dead deer within 
his inclosure, while thej- were frequently found outside in 
its Adciiaity. The deer in his park have never been 
araficially fed. Therefore, as the amount of natural food, 
the temperature, depth of snow and other conditions are 
the same outside as inside, he has come to the conclusion 
that the reason why the deer die in the vicinity of his 
park is because when overheated the}^ are driven into 
cold water by hounds, inducing phj'sical conditions that 
enfeeble them and render them unable to sustain the hard- 
ships of a cold, prolonged winter. 
As compared with the stalking of deer, hounding is un- 
sportsmanlike. The hunter by the latter method is not 
dependent on his own skill or exertions, but upon the dog 
and the man that rows the boat. This does not, of course, 
apply to runway shooting in the woods or on narrow, shal- 
low streams, of which comparatively little is done when 
shooting in the water is so much easier and more certain. 
To surely prevent the use of hounds in hunting deer, it 
should be provided in the law that no hounds or dogs 
capable of running a deer to water can be kept within the 
North Woods. Of course a reasonable period of time 
should be allowed those who now possess them to take 
them out and dispose of them. 
The question is asked, "How many deer do you esti- 
mate there are in the woods?" The Adirondack Park 
comprises about 5,000 square miles. I presume I have 
asked a hundred guides and sportsmen in the last few 
years how many deer they thought there were to a square 
mile on the average, and I do not remember that I have 
heard one place it at less than ten. This would indicate 
at least 50,000 deer. Of course there are many regions 
where there are very faw, but there are other portions 
where I know, from my own observation, that there are 
many times ten deer in every square mile. Some idea 
of the number may be gathered from the fact that there 
were shipped out of the Adirondacks by railroad during 
the past season 1,204 carcasses. In addition to these, a 
large number were taken to the surrounding towns by 
wagons. I think the guides who are members of your 
Association will bear me out in the belief that not more 
than one deer is shipped by rail out of every five killed. 
If this is so, the number killed during the past season 
must have been in the neighborhood of 6,000. Notwith- 
standing this large number, which has been about the 
same for five years past, they have certainly increased 
steadily in most localities. 
Many of the members of your Association will remem- 
ber the time when they were quite scarce as the result of 
being slaughtered for the market and destroyed by wolves 
and panthers. It may be of interest to you to know that 
there were shipped out of the Maine woods this fall 4,500 
deer and 200 bull moose, and the accessible hunting terri- 
tory in Maine is only about one-half larger than that of 
the Adirondacks. Hounding is prohibited, as you know, 
in the State of Maine, where the deer have increased in 
such proportions that the number shipped out this year is 
nearly three times as many as five or six years ago. If 
Mr, Litchfield's theory is correct (that the deer die from 
diseases induced by hounding), it will not be long after 
its prohibition before it will be a very easy matter for a 
man to get the two deer allowed by law in a season by 
the much more satisfactory and sportsmanlike methods of 
still-hunting. How much more salutary it is to tramp 
leisurely along a trail in the early autumn on the look- 
out for this noble game, or through the unbroken forest 
after the first snowfall has rendered tracking possible, 
than to sit on a watch point, nearly frozen to death, wait- 
ing for a hound to drive the hunted animal into the water, 
giving the guide an opportunity to get warm by rowing 
while the sportsman (?) continues to shiver so he .can 
hardly shoot the poor animal even when the boat is almost 
on its back ! And surely "floating" in the damp air is far 
from furnishing that recuperation for which most of us 
seek the seclusion and health-giving atmosphere of the 
North Woods, to say nothing of the fact that in "floating" 
for every deer brought down a considerable number of 
wounded ones escape and die a lingering death in the 
forest. 
To enforce laws against hounding, floating, killing deer 
and taking fish out of season there must be an adequate 
number of protectors. The number designated in the bill 
introduced last winter by Senator Malby was thirty-five. 
This number would provide one for about every 40,000 
acres of State land in the Adirondacks, or one to every 
section of eight miles square. If a protector were lo- 
cated at the center of such a section he would be within 
four miles of his limits in all directions and within eight 
miles of the protectors in charge of the adjoining sections. 
It would be impracticable to carry out this plan on the 
basis of such an exact and equal division of territory, and 
I have only thus used precise measurements for the pur- 
poses of illustration, If this general scheme is carried 
out, as I sincere^ hope it will be in the immediate 
future, these protectors or guards should be entrusted 
with the responsibility not only of fish and game protec- 
tion, but also of preventing forest fires and the stealing of 
timber. The State suffers great and constant loss from 
the present lack of adequate protection to its propert3^ 
The fires of a year ago last autumn cost $32,000 for labor 
alone to extinguish them. 
Protection such as I advocate would prevent destructive 
fires, for it would be the duty of the protectors to keep 
track of all fishermen, hunters, tourists and camping 
parties on their sections, and, as you well know, camp-fires 
which are left burning, and which have heretofore been 
responsible for so much destruction, gain headway very 
slowly at first. In the fall of 1899. when the State 
suffered so much, there were no fires on the lands owned 
by big lumber companies and private individuals, because 
they were promptly discovered and put out. In the con- 
sideration of this question of an adequate force of pro- 
tectors, it has been suggested that some allotted area 
would be without protection while the protector was ab- 
sent conveying one whom he had arrested to a police 
justice, or while giving testimony in the prosecution of 
the case. 
In my judgment this phase of the question may be 
eliminated from consideration, because there will be no 
A'iolation of forest, fish or game laWs. under the deterring 
influence due to the fear of almo.st certain arrest, when 
it is known that a protector is within sound of a rifle shot 
or the bay of a hound. When the illegal hunting and 
fishing carried on by the lawless residents of the forest 
region is prevented, then and not till then will the law- 
breaking cease which is so common among those well- 
meaning frequenters of the Adirondacks who fish and 
hunt out of sea.son and use dogs and "jacks." "because 
everybody else does." It is hardly to be expected tha' 
one will refrain from violating the law when every night 
as he lies in his camp he hears the discharge of shotguns 
in the direction of streams famous for night hunting, and 
listens attentively every morning to the music of th** 
hounds as they give tongue among the hills, beyond which 
lies a lake whose shores he knows are being watched by 
eager hunters. It is evident that the efficiency of any such- 
plan must depend very largely on the qualifications of the 
persons selected to serve as protectors. They must be 
selected solely for their knowledge of woodcraft and their 
acquaintance with all the methods and tricks of the 
hunters and fishermen. They must be just such men as 
compose the Brown's Tract Guides' Association and other 
associations of Adirondack guides, 
I had almost forgotten, in the interest aroused in the 
consideration of other questions, to reply to the last para- 
graph of your letter, in which you sa}', "I have been very 
much interested in the problem of feeding deer in winter 
and would like to bring the subject before the meeting 
on the loth instant." and asking for my experience and 
the privilege of presenting it to your Association. Dur- 
ing the months of March and April of last year, when, as 
yon will all remember, the snow was nearly 4 feet deep on 
the level, and when the deer were in poor condition as the 
result of an unusually severe, protracted winter, I kept 
four men constantly employed in feeding deer in the 
vicinity of my camp. W e tried hay, oats and almost every 
kind of food given to domestic animals. This food they 
would not eat, but we spon discovered that they would eat 
the buds and twigs of the maple and other hardwoods; 
