Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, bv Forkst and Stream Publishing Co. 
Tbkms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. (. 
Six Months, $2. I 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1901. 
VOL. LVI,-No. 16. 
No. 846 Broadway, New York 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
'inent, mstiuction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
gardea. 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 iii. 
CDe forest ana Stream's Platform PlanK. 
'^^ The sale of game should be prohibited at all seasons." 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1901.— No. IV. 
QUEBEC. 
R. S., Art. 1400 a.— It is forbidden to sell, expose for sale or to 
have in possession for the purpose of sale, any birch= or »wanip= 
partritlg:e before the first day of October, 1903. 
In his many sided nature were an infinite gentleness witli weak 
tilings, a vigorous hatred for those who inflicted suffering un- 
necessarily on man or beast, that came from a sympathy which 
made him feel the extent of that suffering. This may seem a 
strange claim to make for a man who was so keen a sportsman, 
but it is ■ an essential part of the true sportsman. There is as 
fundamental a diiTerence between a true sportsman and a man. wlio 
loves inflicting death or suffering from sheer love of cruelty as 
there is between either of these and the nervous lady Who shrieks 
at an earwig and takes to the table top when mouse or beetle 
claims the ffpor. — Slary'^ tt. Kingsley's Memoir of George Henry 
Kingsley. 
-MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS. 
A West Virginia correspondent wrote the other day' 
in criticism of the New England mode of ^ox hunting, 
which is to drive the fox by dogs within gun range and 
"then to shoot it. The West Virginia yiew, was that this 
was not sportsmanlike, but that the better way was the, one 
pursued in the South, of driving the fox with hounds 
until it is overtaken and killed by dog or huntsman. And 
in illustration of truly sportsfnanlike fox huritlfig, ' two 
famous cases were cited. In one thirty hounds started, a 
fox in the morning and kept him going all day, until, eight 
dogs having stayed in to the finish, at the end of thirteen 
hours the fox was overtaken and killed. In the other 
case cited three hounds having started a fox on a Satur- 
day morning went out of hearing of the hunters who had 
put them out, and ran the fox until sundown of the 
Sunday following, when, at a point seventy-five miles 
from the start, being cheered on by three men who had 
been attracted by the cries of the chase, "the dogs quick- 
ened tip a bit and caught the fox. All fell in a heap and 
could not be persuaded to move a step." Whether the 
fox died of exhaustion or not is not told. In this case 
it appears that the sportsmanship consisted in starting 
the dogs on the trail of the fox and leaving them to do 
the rest; to keep up the hunt through the night while the 
htintsman was asleep in his bed at home, and during Sun- 
day while he was in church, and enjoying his Sunday 
dinner and his siesta. It would be more nearly accurate 
to say, however, that while this incident affords an illus- 
tration of the extraordinary staying power's of fox and 
hound, it is not a typical Southern fox hunt, in which 
the hounds are followed by mounted huntsmen and the 
enchantment of the sport is found in the glorious cross 
country riding. 
When a fox hunter, by which is meant the rider to 
hounds, contemplates the New England mode of hunting 
the game with dogs and gun— where the hunter concealed 
behind the stone wall shoots the fox when it comes within 
range — he very naturally decries and condemns the sport 
because it is in all resp«cts so different from his own 
hunting. And on the other hand the fox hunter of the 
New England hills, where riding to hounds is unknown 
and for many reasons impracticable, makes an equally 
strong argument in advocating his methods as the one 
best adapted to local conditions and affording abundant 
satisfaction in its successful, or on occasion unsuccessful, 
pursuit. 
But "sportsmanship" is so much a matter of individual 
training, custom, prejudice and partiality, and these in 
turn are so largely or so wholly determined by local 
conditions of opportunity and restriction, that instead of 
the followers of one practice denouncing those of another 
as unsportsmanlike, it is much 'thore sensible for each to 
consider that the other, though diiferent from his own, 
tnay yet be quite as correct and defensible and commend- 
able. Certainly no person may justly set himself up as an"" 
oracle to, pass judgment in condemnation of either, until 
he shall have made test for himself of both, the exultation 
of the gallop and the satisfaction of the shot. - 
It is in our modes of recreation, as in many other phases 
of life, we are given to disapprove certain things just be- 
cause they are different from what we are accustomed to 
for ourselves. We have a notion that our own way is the 
right way, and aay other, , way 4s- tHejVroiig, way. In- 
tolerance of fox hunting methods is only another expres- 
sion of that human nature .which- makes us.- intolerant: iii , 
politics and art,^ and lias caused ^tlie history of religion 
to be in large measure a record of persecution. , . We ridi- 
cule the foreigner who does not dress or walk or eat or 
smoke as we do, and we persist in making shirts for the 
heathen and insist upon their .wearing them, when the 
heathen thmk that the more sportsmanlike way is to go^ 
about clothed only in their pristine purity. In sport, as in 
religion, we '.'lengthen the creed" even if we do not 
"shorten the decalogue." 
The accepted ethics of sport are for the most part 
purely artificial in origin and development, although they 
may not be for that reason any the less deserving of 
recognition nor any the less binding. For instance, the 
rule that a sportsman should not sell his game is ac- 
cepted only because , of lively appreciation of the game 
depleting effects of market hunting. The rule that for- 
bids .shooting at birds on the ground is accepted because 
of the recognition of the higher skill required for wing 
shooting and the satisfaction one finds in the attainment 
and practice of that skill. The rule that one must not 
kill an excessive amount of game is based upon economic 
grounds and considerations of justice to others — namely, 
that the parent stock must not be unwisely reduced, that 
wanton waste is wicked and that other shooters have a 
right to their share of the game. Aside from these con- 
siderations, there is no wrong in the making of a big 
bag of game, for if on other grounds there is nothing 
censurable in the killing of one quail, there can be 
nothing censurable in the killing of a hundred quail, since 
one hundred times nothing is nothing, and a thousand 
times nothing remains nothing still. 
The restrictions provided in our game codes are based 
upon economical considerations and not upon ethical 
whimsies. The statute which forbids certain modes of 
capturing game, .such as deer crusting, partridge snaring, 
shooting ducks with swivel guns, netting quail or game 
fish, taking garne and fish at certain seasons, or taking 
more than prescribed numbers — all these are concerned 
only with ^sO; limiting the destruction as not to imperil 
the perpetuity of the breeding stock. 
The' whole purpose and theory of game protection as 
embodied in the statutes is the application to wild game 
of the principles which govern us with respect to domestic 
animals — ^namely, to breed for use, deer as sheep, moose 
as cattle, prairie chickens as domestic poultry, wild ducks 
and geese as barnyard fowl, wild turkeys as domestic 
turkeys. The severaV species are protected and conserved 
and kept in existence, that successive generations of thein- 
may be hunted and killed and eaten by .successive genera- 
tions of mankind. This purpose aside, we would have no 
game protection to-day nor any game. 
The conditions which affecl: the supply of a game species 
may differ in different localities or in different countries, 
and with the varying conditions there will be found a 
corresponding variation both of ethics arid Of what are 
regarded as necessary laws. An example in point is one 
to which we have more than once alluded, that of the 
big bags of game which are common in European coun- 
tries and there approved and warranted on economic 
groitnds because the game is artificially bred and the 
supply may be kept up equal to the demand, but which 
are not sanctioned in America because here the condi- 
tions as to supply and demand are quite different. 
Again, in America we anathematize the big gunner who 
steals upon the wild ducks in the night and rakes them 
with a pound of swan shot, and our feeling against the 
poacher and our laws which forbid it are amply justified 
by the ruinous effect night ducking and the use of big 
guns have upon the local shooting. But in the waters of 
Great Britain the punt gun is an approved appliance of 
the wildfowler's art, and the most decided satisfaction is 
experienced by the fowlef who by arduous toil and con- • 
summate craft succeeds at last in training his cannon on 
the fowl. Here is a paragraph from a chapter on the 
art of wildfowling as set forth by an authority : 
Another hour passes; it is 3 o'clock, and we can now begin to 
gauge the chances of the night. So far, everything points to this 
being our "night out," the lucky one in a hundred (mostly blanks). 
To-night the fowl are setting in toward the mussel beds of the 
highest bank, the last to be covered by the tide; hence the most 
favorable for a shot,, since the big gun is at least twice as 
effective on fowl ashore as on fowl afloat. Yes; we are indeed in 
luck to-night, for, as the punt draws in to the final advance, we 
just clear the point of the high land with its dark loom; and 
now, full in the bright water and the horizontal rays of the sink- 
ing moon, we at length perceive our friends. They are still in 
full "flock"; but anxious moments remain ere that last hundred 
yards is made good. In no other sport within my knowledge is 
there more concentration of excitement, more prolonged suspense, 
than is experienced during these critical moments of yet un- 
decided, fate, with the noisy masses of wildfowl already almost in 
shot, and the trigger lanyard tightly twisted around one's fingers — 
no,, not even when at length, for the first time, the fore sight of 
the rifle dwells in thrice-refined aim on the shoulder of pome 
grand beast one has sought out in his haunts, hunted or stalked, 
perhaps for days, it may be for weeks on end; or when the rod 
bends to the first mad rush of a 30-pounder. There before us are 
the ducks we have worked for all night — aye, for a score of nights; 
there they sit, «fi.^e hundred of them, all crowding in the moon- 
light on to that last low mussel scaup that in five more minutes 
will be submerged. What a spectacle of animation they preseiit 
during those, few seconds while the punt shoots silently forward. 
The dark outline .keeps altering as outsiders., spring on wing and 
attempt to wedge themselves into the center "of the crowd. All is 
life and movement, while a torrent of sibilant voices, of purrs and 
growls, rolls along in undulating waves of sound. A record shot 
now seems a certainty. Yet well we know that a score of mis- 
chances may ruin the game at the last moment — one untoward 
noise of man, boat, gun or gear; the touch of the iron-shod setting 
pole on a stpne; the boat taking th6 ground forward, and swing- 
ing round with the racing tide; straggling ducks springing and 
giving the alarm. A cruel mischance -is a distant shot from an- 
other gunner; -but crudest luck of all, a misfire; and one may 
have to pull homeward wiHj an empty, boat and a deadly sick- 
ness about the heart. Buts luck is not always bad. In all thifigs, 
even in wildfowling, the hardestrand most precarious sport of 
all, one occasionally- has""a lilO?ne"rit of bliss, and this serves to 
leaven the rest.. And pf.tbose happy hours, none exceeds in sense 
of true triumph that glorious moment when one sees the wary ■': 
widgeon at last out-maneuvered, and' their ranks well raked at close 
quarters by a pound of No. 2. The man who has done this has 
done somelhing of which he may be proud for life, for he has sur- 
mounted one of nature's stiffest barriers, and that at no gap or 
gateway, but precisely at that' point where she has made the 
handicap the most severe. 
What with the growing number and ubiquity of tramps, 
it is strange that the gentle angler pursuing his art re- 
moved from the protection of the propinquity of the 
crowd does not more often fall victim to thieves. We 
have chronicled from time to time highway or stream- 
side robberies of fishermen by muscular hoboes, but such 
cases are after all extremely rare. A new and ingenious 
mode of robbery in the woods has been devised. The per- 
petrators are, in given cases, game wardens, real or 
pretended, who find their victim in the unhappy fisherman 
or shooter who by an infraction of the law has made 
himself amenable to the attack. The non-resident shooter 
afield without a license is the favorite prey of these gentry. 
The warden, or pretended warden, appears in camp and 
demands that the stranger shall accompany him to head-r 
quarters, it may be forty or a hundred miles away by 
arduous trail. If the victim scares, as he is likely to 
do, he begs for a compromise. The warden compromises. 
Usually he takes all there is in sight. Then he tells his 
victim that he may now kill game, when, where and as 
much as he will, without regard to the law. When a war- 
den gives such license as this, the man who has paid the 
money may be sure that the warden is a thief who has 
put the money into his own pocket. 
From the peaks and glaciers of British Columbia to the 
sand dunes of Long Island the outdoor world is for the 
enjoyment and delight of the sportsman tourist. Whether 
one follows Mr. Frisbie on a far journey into a strange 
country, or with Mr. Moonan finds interest in familiar 
nearby scenes, there is abundant reward for going afield. 
The world is very beautiful all about us if only we would 
give ourselves the opportunity and privilege of looking 
upon it. 
Mr. J. von Lengerke's account of beaver exi.=ttng in a 
wild state within fifty miles of New York city is one o{ 
the most interesting natural history records we have ever 
printed. It is ap excellent illustration of the persiitence 
pf wild life if only immunity be assured, and we Uust 
that these enterprising ciolonists maj^ be jealously guarde4 
by Mr, von ^xngerke-that-their stay may be pernaanep^, ' 
