446 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
UtTNE 8, 1901. 
California Game Interests. 
San Francisco, Cal., May 22.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Among "nails driven in 1901" you have recorded 
as No. VII., Sec. 626k of the Penal Code of California 
forbidding- the sale of game and game birds. 
« The passage of the law was a notable victory for the 
best class of California sportsmen, and it was the outcome 
of a sportsmen's convention called last year, and which 
took place in this city. Representatives were present from 
most of the counties of the Slate, and the game laws, 
mainly through the efforts of the committee appointed 
by the convention, were thoroughly revised and quite 
satisfactorily amended by the Legislature. 
Some of the principal newspapers of the State and 
Coast have been peculiarly antagonistic to game law legis- 
lation. Those the furthest back in the woods, and also 
in antique intelligence, have been the most ardent ob- 
structionists. The usual argument advanced against laws 
for the protection of game has been that the laws are 
made in the interest of city sportsmen, clubs and rich 
fellows, who in open season can go out and kill all the 
game, while poor people — the other fellows — -have to work. 
Another argument has been that some people do not 
shoot, but like game to eat, and if they cannot buy it 
they will be deprived. Both these theories look well to 
the uninformed when in type and nicely arranged phrases, 
but they are not so picturesque to those who consider that 
when the game is exterminated the poor fellows who 
work, and the other poor fellows who buy, will have a 
tougher time of it than ever. 
One of the leading San Francisco papers (Chron- 
icle) was notably worried and gave much space edi- 
torially to democratic ideas against "class legislation," as 
applied to game laws, although it is not appreciably demo- 
cratic otherwise. It alleged that most game was plenti- 
ful. Deer, if much protected, would eat up gardens and 
fields, and quail were devastating vinej'ards (this claim 
"is rich reading where quail are worth $3 per dozen and 
grapes are worth $6 to $10 per ton), and that conditions 
here are entirely opposite to those in Europe, where only 
the rich can have game, etc. 
Even after the passage of the law by the Legislature 
the paper urged Governor Gage to veto the bill, and from 
an extensive editorial I copy the following paragraph 
verbatim ad literatim: 
"Since the passage of the bill in the closing days of 
the session' hotel and restaurant keepers, marketmen. 
waiters and sportsmen in thousands have expressed their 
disapproval. They agree with everything the (itself) has 
said against it." 
I consider the paragraph a curio worth further preserva- 
tion, as a modern instance of editorial art, although the 
writer seemed to consider the sportsman the last leaf 
upon the tree — an omnibus waiter, or something coming 
after. 
There is perhaps no region in America as much in need 
of wise laws for the protection of game, and where pro- 
tection will be productive of so much good, as the Pacific 
Coast. Here is a vast and varied territory yet fairly sup- 
plied with game of many kinds, but from many parts 
of it the game has been and is being exterminated. Much 
of the territory is sparsely settled and vacant land owned 
by the Government. A great deal of it is only adapted to 
mining operations, grazing and lumbering. There are ex- 
tensive parts of it that are used for pasturage alone, and 
for that purpose but few months in the year, while much 
territory in the mountains is rarely explored except by 
hunters of game. 
Notwithstanding these natural conditions that are favor- 
able to the game, there are many other considerations most 
unfavorable, and there is no lack of evidence that all kinds 
of game is being rapidly destroyed. Antelope, once plen- 
tiful in California valleys, are entirely extinct; elk, once 
generally scattered and numerous over a wide area, now 
exist in but a very few isolated and remote localities; 
bears are now seldom found in this State except in the 
extreme northern and northwestern mountains, while 
deer, until the protective laws of recent years, were be- 
coming scarcer each season and were plentiful only in the 
more distant and undisturbed parts of the mountains 
With the laws now in force for their protection, I do not 
think they will increase in numbers unless wardens are 
more generally appointed and systematically provided for. 
There are many things to make the preservation of 
game more and more difficult, particularly in California. 
While there is vast mountain territory with many of the 
best natural provisions for the larger animals, affording 
great expanses of cover, browse, mast and water, there 
are also vast regions where some or all of these advan- 
tages are lacking or meager. Heavy snows drive the 
game from the higher mountains in winter, and in other 
regions the drought of summer restricts and confines it 
to narrow limits. 
Each year even the most inaccessible of the mountain 
localities are being more thoroughly explored and ex- 
ploited in one way or another. In addition to pasturing and 
lumbering operations, to which most mountainous regions 
are subject, the minerals of California and most portions 
of the coast offer a further inducement to explorers and 
settlers, and one of a most attractive nature. 
Again, for six or eight months of the year in California 
men can live almost anywhere with the least need of 
equipment or shelter. They can carry necessaries for 
half a year into the remote nooks and corners of the 
mountains upon a single pack animal, and hundreds of 
hunters, and prospectors do so, their supplies often con- 
sisting mainly of guns, ammunition, a few groceries and 
their blankets. The mountains must furnish the rest. 
There is not much difference between a hunter and "a 
prospector. The latter may not hunt for a living or at 
times he may, but he nearly always hunts to live and 
relies to a great extent upon the game if there is any. 
One of the best laws for the protection of game in Cali- 
fornia is the one made a few years ago prohibiting the 
sale of venison and deer skins. Before the establishment 
of this law it was a common thing to see wagons coming 
. from the mountains of Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta and Sis- 
kiyou counties loaded with dressed or dried deer skins 
with from two to a dozen men in charge. A single wagon 
load might contain a thousand skins and not a pound of 
venison, all save that consumed by the party having been 
left to rot where it was killed. Such parties made a 
business of hunting deer for tlieir hides, and made little 
if any disguise or denial of it. Although it was a despica- 
ble business, there was more or less money in it and 
nothing to prevent. 
Many deer skins are doubtless yet smuggled out of the 
State, and deer are yet slaughtered for them in remote 
localities, but in the main it has been stopped, and the 
lines are being drawn closer and closer that will eventu- 
allv stop it altogether. In prohibiting the sale or pos- 
session of hides the law is in a measure destructive, and 
those killing deer legitimately — bucks in the open season- 
often leave the hides in the woods or destroy them. 
The conditions mentioned, with others of more or less 
consequence, such as floods and forest fires which^ drive 
game from its places of refuge, make the protection of 
game animals and birds in California very difificult. The 
scattered sportsmen who give thought to the subject, and 
others who are interested, need more encouragement and 
assistance than they receive or are likely to receive from 
local newspapers, too many of which have no conception 
of the importance or value of efforts made, and who 
know little about the subject. In nothing is a little 
knowledge a dangerous thing unless it be in the hands 
of editors who may lead thousands of readers astray. It 
would seem that the many States from which game has 
been nearly or quite exterminated should afford instances 
or examples enough to the few remaining with a com- 
parative abundance that careful and intelligent work 
must be done for its protection and maintenance. But 
the game belongs to everybody, and everybody's busi- 
ness is proverbially neglected, unless somebody attends to 
it for everybody. This seems to be the case in more 
matter;^ with which a Republican Government has to con- 
tend than one. Ransacker. 
A. F. Kinney. 
The following appreciative notice of Mr. Kinney as 
citizen, churchman and sportsman is from the Worcester 
Gazette : 
The three fields of business, hunting and church work 
seem at first thought so utterly diverse and almost in- 
consistent with each other that one would not expect to 
find a man who had attained not only success but promi- 
nence in all three. And yet that it what A. B. F. Kinney 
has done. To some Mr. Kinney might be known best as a 
business man who, in the twenty-five years that he has 
been in Worcester, has more than been successful. Others 
might think first of his activity in the Methodist Church, 
of which he is a member, and of his prominence in mis- 
sionary work. And still others, perhaps most of those 
who know him, think of him as a lover of outdoor sports 
last big animal that he brought down was a 700-pound 
grizzly, which he shot in the Teton Mountains, Idaho. 
At that time he was hunting with a party of whom Jerome 
Marble, of this city, was a member, and he went solely 
to get a grizzly. His friends finally left him to come 
back East, but Mr. Kinney stayed behind, arid at last; suc- 
ceeded in securing what he wanted — a beautiful specimen, 
which did not drop imtil the fourth bullet had struck him. 
The beast's head is now mounted and occupies a prominent 
position in Mr. Kinney's home on Westminster street. 
Here, by the way, he has .one of the finest collections of 
heads, horns and hides in New England. Further evi- 
dence of how widespread Mr. Kinney's prominence as a 
hunter may be seen in the fact that he was once presi- 
dent, and is now vice-president, of the National Fox 
Hunters' Association, and from the following dedication 
inscribed by Thomas Martindale in his "Sports Royal" : 
"To A. B. F. Kinney, a friend of thirty years' acquaint- 
ance, and the best all-round sportsman I have ever met; 
a man equally expert with rifle, gun or fly-rod, who has 
killed game of every species that the American cbntinent 
affords, from the grizzly bear to the ubiquitous rabbit, 
from the wild goose and its rival in migratory flight— the 
mysterious brant— to the solitude-loving woodcock, and 
who is, besides, what the world affectionately calls a royal 
good fellow." 
Mr. Kinney, however, is not all sportsman. In busi- 
ness he has been very successful as a broker and dealer in 
guns and ammunition, and it was he who started here^the 
first gun store between Boston and New York. Mr. Kin- 
ney is also a thorough churchman, and ior the past twen- 
ty years has been a trustee of Trinity Methodist Church. 
He is president of the Methodist City Mission and Church 
Extension Society, and of the Sterling Camp Ground As- 
sociation, the oldest Methodist camp ground in New Eng- 
land. In 1896 he was a delegate to the General Methodist 
Conference at Cleveland, O. He has always been promi- 
nent in religious and philanthropic work. It is not often 
that a man combines church work, business and fox hunt- 
ing, but Mr. Kinney has done it successfully, allowing 
no one of them to interfere with the other two. He 
believes in healthful outdoor recreation, such as hunting 
and fishing afford, and thinks that they are not incon- 
sistent with his standing in the Church. 
Besides his efforts to arouse an interest in hunting and 
in shooting, Mr. Kinney has done a great deal toward im- 
proving the quality of American fox hounds; more, pos- 
sibly, than any man in New England. The hounds here, 
not so long ago, were too slow to insure good sport, but 
by importing stock from Kentucky, Mr. Kinney has suc- 
ceeded in greatly improving the quality. Every one here- 
abouts has heard of the . Kinney- White pack of twelve 
hounds, and probably most of the fox hunters in the 
country have hunted behind them and know what they are 
worth. At present, however, Mr. Kinney has little to 
do with dogs except to hunt with them, and the pack is 
cared for by John M. White, of Millbury. The hounds, it 
might be said, are the chief source of pleasure which Mr. 
Kinney derives from fox hunting. 
A. B. F. KINNEY. 
and an enthusiastic fox hunter. All three would be 
right. It is rare that a man wins prominence in more than 
one field, but Mr. Kinney has done it in three, and three 
that are so far from being kindred and so various as 
those that have been mentioned. 
Mr. Kinney has been an ardent sportsman all his life. 
When a boy he had the love of hunting and fishing, hut 
not the means of gratifying it, and it was not until he 
came to Worcester, twenty-five years ago, that he was 
able to indulge, in the sports as much as he wished. In 
these twenty-five years he has probably done more than 
any one man in Worcester to build up an interest in hunt- 
ing and fishing. That he has been successful the Worces- 
ter Fur Company and the Worcester Sportsman's Club, 
in the founding of both of which he was instrumental, will 
attest. The Fur Company was organized in 1884. Pre- 
vious to that time there had been a company to which 
anj' one in the county who had ever shot a fox belonged. 
It was, however, without organization, officers or by-laws. 
Mr. Kinney conceived the plan of putting the company 
on a firmer and more definite basis. As a result, the 
present Fur Company was founded, and for the first eight 
years Mr. Kinney was its president. Since retiring from 
that office he has still kept up his interest in the com- 
pany, and is always present at annual hunts and banquets. 
Mr. Kinney is also president of the Worcester Sports- 
man's Club and of the Worcester County Game Protec- 
tive Association. 
Mr. Kinney's experiences in hunting have not been con- 
fined to the small game near at home. He has traveled all 
over the United States, and shot all kinds of game. The 
Tobique Guides. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In the sporting publications of the last few months 
there have been a number of articles concerning ' the 
character of the Tobique River guides in New Brunswick. 
Some of these have been written temperately, others in 
heat and haste, and very few indeed have exactly hit 
the mark. This discussion began, I believe, late last 
fall with an interview printed in one of the Bangor news- 
papers. The sportsman that published his views had 
just returned from the Tobique, and having fallen afoul 
of the native, was in an exceedingly unhappy frame of 
mind. If my recollection is right, this gentleman had 
negotiated tentatively with two different guides, and had 
finally made a selection. But when he arrived at Plaster 
Rock he found both men and their outfits awaiting him. 
Naturally, he had no intention of employing two sets of 
guides, and when he said so and sought to show the second 
guide the mistake, the guide declined to see it, and de- 
manded a month's payment to settle the affair. The gen- 
tleman, very wisely, declined to accede; there was a 
threat of legal process, of seizure and jail, and for a 
Avhile it seemed extremely probable that the sportsman's 
trip would be ruined. The affair, however, was in some 
way compromised, but the annoyance, the delay and other 
disagreeable incidents had their decided effect upon the 
sportsman's mind, and when he came out of the woods he 
expressed himself in unmeasured terms concerning the 
rascality of people- along the Tobique. It is only justice 
to him and to the other guide, however, to say that the 
trip itself was a thorough success, so far as the conduct 
of the guide engaged was concerned. 
Now, in the Provinces there is a term of derision that 
exactly states what this sportsman had in mind. In 
words it is "Mean as a Tobiquer." It originated on 
the Mirimichi, so far as I can find out, but the truth of 
the matter is that the Tobiquer is only human — somewhat 
simple, to be sure, but still human. Justly speaking, 
human nature is displayed there as it is in every other 
quarter of the globe. There are rascals along the Tobique 
and there are also honest men. I don't know whether 
the rascals or the honest are in a majority, but I cer- 
tainly can certify to meeting several honest men — also 
certain rascals. I know of men along the river that have 
fleeced and robbed by divers tricks every unsuspecting- 
sportsman that fell into their clutches, and I also know 
other men that would blush to take the scantest advantage 
of even the most unwary. But this condition preA^ails 
everywhere. Take the Adirondacks, for instance. There 
are guides there that make a specialty of wringing the 
last cent from the departing sportsman, and there are 
others — some — that do not do this thing. It is the same 
thing in Maine, Canada, western Quebec, Muskoka — 
everywhere. 
The point I' wish to make in defense of the Tobique, 
which I know fairly well, is that its guides are no different 
from the guides of any other place, save that they have 
less experience. I repeat this to impress its truth. 
It is an unsafe proceeding in any quarter of the globe 
to go blindfolded. One is likely to fall if he do. No man 
should go fifty or a hundred miles into the heart of a 
howling wilderness with a man he has no reason to be- 
