Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
CopvRiGHT, 1901, Bv Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, fi a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ( 
Six Months, $2. ( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1901. 
j VOL. LVI.— No, 14. 
I No. 846 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 
pagtes are devoted. . Anonymous communications will not be re- 
gardeu. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
conespondents. 
) 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 iii. 
If we are content with an ungainly fly, we will be satisfied with 
inferiority of rod and tackle; and although the fish may not see 
the difference, the angler may become from neglecting one point 
slovenly in all. A well-made fly is a beautiful object, an ill-made 
one an eyesore and annoyance; and it is a great satisfaction both 
to exhibit and examine a well-filled book of handsomely tied flies.— 
R. B. Roosevelt. 
THE REAL THING IN MINNESOTA. 
The Hallock, Minn., Enterprise reports that the 
poachers of Beltrami county have discovered that in their 
conflict with the game wardens they have "run up against 
the real thing." That is to say that they are now dealing 
witji an executive agent who means business. And this 
means that the Minnesota interregnum of make-believe 
protection for political purposes only has come to a sud- 
den end. 
For two years politics ruled. The deputy game war- 
dens were appointed with a view to the votes they could 
control. The game protection force was a part of the 
political machine. The result was precisely what it has 
been everywhere else and always will be. The poachers 
had things prettj"- much all their own way. Game was 
killed out of season, and was shipped to market in viola- 
tion of the law, and the illicit destruction was proceeding 
on a scale and at a rate that promised extermination. 
The change came with the appointment of a new com- 
mission and of a new executive agent. The commission 
is composed of Messrs. Uri L. Lamprey, W. P. Hill, 
D. W. Meeker. H. G. Smith and Samuel F. Fullerton, 
Executive Agent. Mr. Fullerton, it will be remembered, 
was the very efficient agent of two years ago. During 
his former term he did most excellent service and had 
acquired a thorough knowledge of the ways of offenders 
and the means of enforcing the law. He had, in fact, so 
well demonstrated his fitness for the plaoe and his use- 
fulness in it tliat there existed not an iota of justification 
for dismissing him from office. Had the public bMsiness 
of Minnesota at that time been conducted on the principle 
by which individual business is controlled, Executive 
Agent Fullerton would have been retained to carry on the 
good work he was doing. Now that he has been reap- 
pointed, the citizens of Minnesota have the right man in 
the right place doing the right work in the right way. 
As the Beltrami poachers put it, game law enforcement is 
now "the real thing." 
Some of Executive Agent Fullerton' s acts are startling 
in the light they throw upon the conditions which prevailed 
under the old regime. For instance, his predecessor had 
been told of a tannery established in the wilds of Itasca 
county for the tanning of moose and deer hides; but the 
story met only official pooh-poohing as a fake concocted 
for political purposes. Within ten days after taking office 
Mr. Fullerton discovered the tannery, raided it, seized 
137 deer skins and fourteen moose hides and nineteeri 
sacks of hair collected from other skins; arrested the 
proprietor, took him before a magistrate and had him 
roundly fined. This Itasca county tanner had employed a 
gang of hunters to kill moose and deer for him, and had 
sold the meat to lumber camps. Agent Fullerton ar- 
rested the lumbermen, haled them into court and col- 
lected the penalties. Another lumberman, one of the most 
prominent in the State, at latest accounts was dodging 
arrest and trying to arrange a compromise. Another 
seizure was of a taxidermy establishnient some seventy 
miles from Thief River Falls, whose proprietor had three 
men killing deer and moose for the heads, which were 
mounted for sale, the meat being sold to lumber camps. 
The man was fined and his business was broken up. Both 
taxidermist and tanner averred that they had been run- 
ning full time for two years and never before this had 
they been "'up against the real thing." 
The lawbreakers in the cities are "up against it" too. 
Last Saturday the steward of the Minneapolis Club was 
ftn?4 $.50 for ha-^apg venison in possessiofj. In St, Paul, 
Carling and Magee, two of the principal restaurant 
keepers, and R. E. Cobb, a commission man, have just 
been made to pay $70 each for game unlawfuly in posses- 
sion. These are but examples of numerous convictions 
of game law violators secured by Executive Agent Fuller- 
ton in the first weeks of his new term of office. He may 
be relied upon to carry on the work in the same vigorous 
way. The new administration means business; it is show- 
ing itself to be "the real thing." We congratulate Minne- 
sota upon the change and upon the outlook. 
THE GUN IN CLOSE SEASON. 
On£ consideration which was strongly urged in opposi- 
tion to the' Maine bill to forbid the carrying of guns into 
the woods in close season was the use made of firearms for 
signaling purposes by those traveling in the forest. There 
are men of experience and a good degree of woodcraft who 
are tievertheless unwilling to trust themselves to go from 
camp without a gun to fire as a signal in the event of 
their getting lost, Another argument advanced was that 
shooting at a mark is one of the common diversions of 
camp life, and it would be felt as a hardship by many 
visitors to be deprived of this. 
Whatever may be the cogency of these considerations 
in their application to the wilderness, they may not rea- 
sonably be urged with respect ta the common practice of 
carrying firearms into the home game covers in the close 
season. On the contrary, there are good reasons for keep- 
ing firearms out of the woods and fields in the close 
season. 
For one thing, it would simplify the enforcement of 
the game laws. A game protector would not be obliged to 
discover the actual killing of game ; it would be enough 
for him to find firearms in possession. 
Another reason is that to keep the guns out of the 
game co\'ers would secure to the game the conditions of 
peace and quiet essential to their breeding and well being. 
From the last day of the open season to the first day of 
the lawful shooting again the game country should be 
unaffrighted by the sound of shooting. 
The system would be welcomed as a decided relief by 
the farmer, for it would in a large measure lessen the 
nuisance of trespass and invasion of lawless strangers. 
It would stop the hordes of wanton shooters who swarm 
out from the large towns at times when there is no legiti- 
mate game to shoot. The farmer would have greater 
security for his fences, crops and cattle. The law would 
go far to solve the problem of the armed hoodlum. 
By exempting from^ the prohibition the landowner — 
that is, by reserving to a person the right to carry guns on 
his own lands — ^no possible hardship would be entailed by 
the adoption and enforcement of such a law. It would 
cut oif no legitimate privilege now enjoyed by any one 
as to the carrying of arms in the field. 
If we assent to the premises that guns should be used 
to kill only game, and not chippy birds, and that game 
should be killed only in its season, we may adopt the 
conclusion that guns should be carried in the game fields 
only in the time when game shooting is permissible, and 
that at all other times they should be forbidden. 
Why should we not adopt the absolute prohibition of 
firearms from the game covers as an essential feature 
of game protective legislation? Why may we not make 
it another platform plank? 
THE TRAPPER'S CAMP. 
When the days begin to lengthen and the cold to 
strengthen, when January winds send snow whirling 
through bare branches until it is piled deep in the woods; 
when quiet waters everywhere are locked in ice and only 
the swiftest brooks and rivers are open, then the trapper 
puts out his line of traps and gathers his harvest. In 
this time of hard cold, when the ground is snow covered, 
food is scarce. The carnivorous woods dwellers have a 
hard time to make both ends meet, for, of the creatures 
which are their prey in summer and autumn, many are 
now safely enjoying their long winter sleep, and fox and 
marten and mink are forced to work double tides to keep 
life in body. But now their fur is prime, and will 
be so until the snow is gone. 
If about to start in on new ground, the trapper built 
his camps in the autumn and gathered for himself a good 
wood pile. He looked over his steel traps, of which he 
had no great store, prepared the material for his dead- 
falls, and also the boards on which to stretch his small 
skins, Then, when the time to start h?i4 conie, he sta(rte4 
out from one cabin and set his traps to the other, and then 
perhaps put out a second line by another route back to 
his starting point. Over these lines he moved back and 
forth, collecting his fur, resetting and baiting his traps, 
always busy and often happy. There is pleasure, excite- 
ment and health in the life, even if to-day there is much 
hard work, frequent disappointment ■and little or no 
money. 
For in these days — except in the furthest north — the 
progress of civilization and the energy of earlier genera- 
tions of his kind have so reduced the supply of fur 
bearers that to-day the trapper's harvest is but a slender 
one. No longer may he hope to see hanging about his 
cabin, drying on their frames of green willows, great 
circular beaver skins, beautifully glossy brown on one 
side and smootWy dark on the other; rarely .may he secure 
an otter, such as is seen lying in the snow before this 
camp; and he who may kill a deer and so have fresh 
meat for weeks may think himself fortunate. , 
Nowadays most trappers must be content to skin the 
casual mink, the humble muskrat or the occasional fox or 
wildcat, for the day of trapping is past. Yet it was 
not many years ago that one in three weeks from the 
settlements secured twenty-seven beaver and one hun- 
dred and forty good mink; but he was a trapper and his 
like is hardly to be seen to-day. 
Trapping grounds in the United States are. few. Michi- 
gan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and one or two other States 
..along the border offer a little fur, but not enough to pay 
the trapper day's wages. Yet he who can endure the 
winter's cold and loves an outdoor life may well enough, if 
he has time, put out a line of traps and for a little time 
live as did the pioneers. 
ELK AND SHEEP. 
Judge J. L. Smith, of the Missouri Court of Appeals, 
whose experience in the Rocky Mountains has made him 
familiar with the game conditions there prevailing, has 
published in the. Kansas City Journal a stirring appeal for 
immediate action by the Secretary of the Interior to stay 
the threatened invasion of the Snake River Basin by the 
sheep men. We reprint Judge Smith's letter in another 
column. It bears out the representations of the elk situa- 
tion already given in our columns by Mr. Wells and 
others. The facts are familiar. The elk driven 
from the high ranges by the snows depend upon 
the pasturage of the low country for their winter 
subsistence. Of this winter range they have been in a 
measure deprived by the inroads of settlers. They have 
been menaced, and now are threatened again by the sheep 
men, who have attempted and will attempt again to pas- 
ture their immense flocks on the public lands. Such an 
invasion will mean inevitably the destruction of the feed- 
ing grounds of the game and the starvation of the elk. 
If there were no recourse, if to state these facts were to 
describe a situation for which no remedy were possible, 
to bring it thus to public attention would be without pur- 
pose. Judge Smith suggests that the Secretary of the 
Interior could by an order forbid the pasturage of sheep 
on public lands. Congress has authorized the Secretary 
to make regulations governing the forest reserves, but 
the constitutionality of the statute has been questioned. 
Congress should at the very earliest opportunity remove 
any such question now existing by enacting specific regu- 
lations for the forest reserves on the lines of those already 
enacted and in force for the National Park. The con- 
ditions described by Judge Smith give new force to the 
Forest and Stream's proposition that the national forest 
reserves shall be made game preserves. 
THE ARGUMENT FOR SPRING SHOOTING. 
The common contention, and the chief argument in 
defense of spring shooting, is expressed in a sentence — 
"Because others do we must." You may consume hours 
in talk and use up reams of good stationery to discuss 
the economic phases of the question, to show the foolish- 
ness of killing birds in the breeding season, to demon- 
strate that the stock cannot stand the drafts made upon 
it by the spring shooter, and to all your talk and writing 
the one all-sufficient and conclusive and unanswerable re- 
tort is, "Because others do we must." 
If spring shooting of game on the way to its breeding 
grounds, or on grounds where it would stop to nest if it 
were given a chance — if this shooting has any good and 
sufficient reason for continuance, it is not foupd in th§ 
plea, "Because others do we must" 
