Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $i a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1901. 
J VOL. LVI.— No. 15. 
( No. Broadway, New York 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
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gardea. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
Cbe forest ana Stream's Platform PlanR. 
"T/ie sale of game should be prohibited at all seasovs." 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1901.— No. III. 
MISSOURI. 
It is declared unlawful for any person to sell or offer to sell, buy 
or offer to buy any quail, pinnated grouse, prairie chicken, wild 
deer or wild turkey in this State for a period of five years from the 
passage of this act: Provided, this section shall not apply to game 
shipped into this State from any other State or Territory. 
IT WILL PREVAIL. 
The Forest and Stream's Platform Plank, that the 
sale of game should be prohibited at all seasons, declares 
a principle which is coming to have universal recognition. 
To forbid the sale of game is accepted as a necessity. 
It is conceded to be an essential component feature of 
any efficient scheme of game protection. 
Seven years ago, when the proposition was first made 
in these columns, the plan was warmly indorsed, but by 
many was regarded as Utopian. 
To-day it is a familiar, established, practical part of 
the protective systems of many States. 
Every year adds to the list of Legislatures which abso- 
lutely forbid the sale of game. 
No extraordinary prescience is needed nor unduly 
sanguine faith in the principle required to predict the early 
coming of a day when the wild game of America shall not 
anywhere be a market commodity. 
Even in those States which refuse it now, it is bound to 
come. The defeat of the principle in 1901 is' only a 
temporary check. A check, not a final rejection. The 
actual- working of the system wherever it is in operation 
is so conclusively for good, that its results carry their 
own argument. And against such an argument not even 
the corrupting lobby of the game dealers can always 
prevail. Just so soon as the people of a State shall come 
to a full understanding of the demonstrated fact that an 
anti-sale game law protects the game, they are going to 
have the system for themselves, Pennsylvania among the 
rest. The game bill introduced at Harrisburg by Hon. 
Frank G. Harris, by request of the State Board of Game 
Commissioners, contained a prohibition of the sale of 
deer or any feathered upland game killed within the 
Conunonwealth, but allowed the sale of game killed else- 
where. The measure was fought by the cold storage in- 
terests, and they corrupted votes enough to defeat it. 
That is the record for the Legislature of 1901. It will be 
different in 1903. If not then, there will be another 
session in 1905. The principle is right. Temporary 
checks may be regarded with complacency. They do not 
in the least impair confidence in the final result. The 
sale of game will be "forbidden at all seasons" in 
Pennsylvania. Because, we repeat, the experience of the 
States which have made proof of the working of an anti- 
market law is uniformly and overwhelmingly in support 
of the wisdom and utility of the system. No other re- 
strictive expedient has accomplished so much. To cut 
off the market solves the problem of abating the partridge 
snare. 'SVhen Massachusetts stopped the sale of ruffed 
grouse and closied the Boston market, the bird strangler 
went out of business. That is precisely what will happen 
in every State, including New York, when the New York 
city market is closed to snared partridges, as it shall 
|?e 5ome day. 
THE MICHIGAN GRAYLING. 
In the current biennial report of the Michigan State 
Game and Fish Warden the fishery interests are divided 
into two classes — that of commercial fishes and another 
of "'sentimental fishes." Sentimental fishes, we assume, 
are not such as are given to sentimentality in themselves, 
but such as provoke and promote it in the human breast. 
In this class the report includes the brook trout and the 
grayling, and by implication, though not specifically 
named, the landlocked salmon. Another category of 
'"semi-sentimental fishes" is provided for "the sunfish and 
perch family." The black bass is not placed, nor the 
pickerel, nor the Johnny Grindle; we are all at liberty to 
class them according to individual estimation. 
The Michigan fish to which most sentiment attaches is 
the grayling, for it is an example of a rare species of 
exquisite beauty which is doomed to an early disappear- 
ance unless the conditions now affecting it shall be 
changed. The grayling of Michigan is reduced to an 
extremity not unlike that of the heath hen of Massachu- 
setts. Whether the heath hen is to be spoken of as in 
the present or the past tense is uncertain ; it is known 
that a few lingering birds on Martha's Vineyard were 
alive last summer, but whether there are any living to- 
day is a grave question. The Michigan grayling is now 
said to be represented only b}^ a remnant in the upper 
waters of the Manistee River, and unless it can there be 
given absolute protection its early extinction is inevitable. 
Michigan should not permit this destruction of a form 
of life to come to pass. It need not come to pass if the 
preventive shall be applied. The grayling may be given 
new lease of life by stopping the fishing for it. Put an 
all-the-year-round . close time on grayling and close the 
upper waters of the Manistee to all fishing. This is the 
simple expedient proposed by Mr. W. B. Mershon. of 
East Saginaw, who is thoroughly conversant with the 
Michigan grajding problem in all its bearings, and whose 
counsel in such an affair should be heeded by the Legisla- 
ture. Opportunity has not gone by for action at the cur- 
rent session. There should be sentiment enough in the 
Legislature to provide for the preservation of this most 
"sentimental" of all Michigan fishes. 
BITS OF TALK. 
THE MAN TARGET IN THE MAINE WOODS. 
It was in Boston, and they were sitting about a large 
round table, after the meeting had broken up and the 
early birds had gone home. The talk was of Maine. 
When a knot of Boston sportsmen get together the talk 
is always of the Maine woods or of the Cape. They all 
go to the one or the other, and many to both. All have 
at one time or another been over the same grounds, made 
the same carries and camps, fished the same pools, lost 
the same big fish and missed the same old monster moose 
with the rocking chair on his head. So now it was Maine. 
"And a moose would be vastly more frightened." said 
the Cambridge man. "if he knew just what it meant when 
the rifle cracked and the bullet whistled by him." 
"Well, if he did know all about it, he couldn't get away 
any more quickly than that fellow disappeared after my 
shot." said the Back Bay member, who had been telling 
how he had missed the big moose he had been hunting 
for for five years. 
"That is a nice point in moose psychology," suggested 
the President. "My moose have invariably taken _ such 
immediate and expeditious leave, and have kept on leav- 
ing for so long, that \ have always considered them 
frightened to the limit of their capacity." 
"No moose was ever so scared at a shot as I was last 
October," testified the man from Haverhill, "I had my 
boy with me, and a fool with a gun took him for game 
and blazed away." 
"No man who loves his son will ever take him into the 
Maine woods in the hunting season," said the man with 
the trout prese"ve on the Cape. 
"What did you do to the fool shooter?" asked the 
President. 
"Do? I didn't do anything: he w^as scared too, and 
ran like a moose himself— and I forgot I had a gun." 
"I'll tell you a little experience of my own down in 
3taine last season," said the President. "Two of us were 
deer hunting. A third man saw the motion of the scrub 
where we were forcing our way through and fired at us. 
The ball went between my companion and tnyself. We 
yelled, and the fellow instead of running away, as your 
man did, came to us. He said in a frivolous manner that 
he was sorry; he had seen the motion of the bushes, and 
had thought it was a deer. Then he grinned at the joke 
on himself and on us. 
'"We did not see it that way. We had been getting 
madder and madder, and it took us just about a minute 
and a half to give that fellow a jury trial and to make 
believe we were in Dover, Delaware. We undressed him_ 
and tied him to a big tree, face side to the bark; cut two 
good birch switches " 
"Is this a true story?" interrupted the Cambridge man. 
"Every word of it; I am telling j'ou precisely what 
happened. We laid on what We thought the Delaware 
code would give an idiot who shot at a motion made by 
a man ; then we made him dress himself, bound his hands 
behind him, tied his gun on his back and told him to get. 
And he got." 
"He also got what he deserved," observed the Secre- 
tary', "and is the first fool shooter I ever heard of who 
did." 
"There would be others," said the man from Haver- 
hill, "if Maine would borrow the Delaware whipping poat 
and set it up on some convenient and central carry where 
the birch flourishes. Then these shooting at a noise or a 
motion idiots could be 'whipt into their senses,' as the 
Earl of Strafford said of Hampden." 
The Cape man was right ; a wise father will not take 
his son into the Maine woods in the hunting season. In 
fact, the prudent man will not betake himself there. The 
risk is too great. If the fool shooters m.ultiply in some 
parts of the Maine woods for a few years more at the 
rate of the few past seasons, it will be impossible for a 
sane person to go there and avoid the charge of intending 
suicide. 
The Maine Legislature has at length been moved to take 
long-needed action against the careless shooter. Chapter 
263 of the Laws of 1901 provides that "Whoever, while 
on a himting trip or in the pursuit of wild game or game 
birds, negligently or carelessly shoots and wounds or kills 
any human being, shall be punished by imprisonment not 
exceeding ten years, or by fine not exceeding one thousand 
dollars." 
This law should be posted at every, railway station and 
boat landing and tacked up on every carry and dis- 
plaj^ed in every camp in the hunting region. It should be 
so impressed upon the mind of every shooter that the 
thought of it may be with him constantly to restrain his 
hand from the "careless" or "accidental" shooting which 
is now an ever-present menace to human life. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Senator Malby's bill to extend the term during which 
deer hovrnding shall be forbidden in the Adirondacks has 
passed the Senate and gone to the Assembly. There it is 
encountering opposition by certain interests in the North 
Woods. And our old friend appears once more upon 
the scene, the genius who argues that hounding really 
tends to increase the stock because it makes the deer wild 
and hard to get. If this were not so utterly foolish on the 
face of it, abundant evidence of the exact contrary. 
namely, that the deer increase immediately the hounds are 
barred, would be afforded by conditions prevailing in the 
Adirondacks, where the great abundance of deer has in 
part resulted from the operation of the law forbidding 
the itse of hounds. Contributing also to this increased 
stock is the admirable law which forbids shipping venison 
from the woods except that an owner may bring out one 
carcass. The anti-hounding law has another year to run ; 
it will not expire until August of next year. It should not 
expire then. Of deer hdimding in the Adirondacks we 
should be permitted to say, as was written in one of the 
death notices in a Washington paper the other day — 
My darling daughter has gone away, I 
She has gone for good and gone to stay. ' 
The new Indiana game law forbids the use of field dogs 
for hunting. The law reads: "Whoever hunts with dog 
or dogs, or whoever hunts or shoots with any kind of 
firearms upon any inclosed land without first securing the 
written consent of the owner or tenant thereof, shall be 
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction 
thereof shall be fined not less than ten nor more thaT> 
twenty-five ^o'lars " 
