Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1901. 
j VOL. LVII.— No. 9. 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
The Forest ahd Stream is thcTecognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. 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. 
THE HOME FEELING. 
The strong attachment felt by birds and mammals 
for special localities is recognized by all observant peo- 
ple who have occasion to spend much of their time out 
of doors. Not only is this attachment to locality well 
known to naturalists, but sportsmen know of it quite as 
well. 
The hvinter knows that in a particular piece of swamp 
or woodland, some certain great buck or doe makes its 
home, and that in this tract it can almost always be started. 
The man who shoots birds is familiar with the fact that 
during- the shooting season a certain bevy of quail will 
always be found in or near the same spot at -a particular 
time of day; or that some old cock partridge dwells 
on a certain hillside or in a special run, and may be 
started there day after day, though his wisdom is such 
that it is almost impossible to get a shot at him. In the 
same way in the old days of summer woodcock shoot- 
ings^ each gunner knew of special places, where, if there 
was a woodcock in the neighborhood, it was sure to be 
found. 
In a similar way we know that birds are attached to 
special localities and that year after year certain pairs — 
presumably the same or their descendants — return and 
breed in the same piece of woods, perhaps in the same 
tree, possibly even in the same nest. We have in mind 
a place where each spring a pair of owls is as sure to be 
found breeding in a hole in a certain oak tree as the 
tree is to put forth its leaves. Authentic cases are re- 
corded where pairs of the great logcock, or pileated 
woodpecker, for many years have returned to the same 
forest and reared their broods either in a tree close at 
hand or in a new hole dug in the same tree, or even in 
the same hole. Hawks frequently occupy the same nest 
year after year, and the robins and phoebes and house 
wrens which help to gladden our country homes in sum- 
mer, build their nests as nearly as possible on the sites 
of their last year's homes. 
If these things take place among the wild creatures 
that are most familiar to us. we may take it for granted 
that they take place also among those of which we know 
less. And thh i« true.. As has been very truly said, the 
elk. the deer, the buffalo, and the antelope, are extremely 
local in their habits. Many striking examples of this 
have been cited. We recall a case where five mule deer-, 
dwellers about a rocky eminence which was too big 
and rough for a butte and yet too small for a mountain, 
were once watched for four or five days by a party of 
hunters who had all the meat they wanted, and in all 
these five days the animal's did not Avander one mile away 
from the trail which led between their ordinary resting 
place and the stream where, each day about noon, they 
went to siake their thirst 
In an article in the Forest and Stream, which re- 
lated the experiences a good many years ago of Major 
G. W. Stouch, U. S. A., retired, with buffalo, a case was 
cited where a herd of nearly 1,000 buffalo remained for 
about six months within a few hundred yards of the 
Government post. Once, as it appeared, they made up 
their minds to go away, and started on their migration, 
but the n-iovement being detected before they had gone 
very far, the commanding officer literally sent after them 
and brought them back. 
It would seem as if the loAse of home, of a permanent 
abiding place, were itr-planted in the minds of most living 
creatures. Possibly this may be only another form of 
inertia, but we fancy it is much more than this, and that, 
in birds and mammals at least, a real attachment is felt 
for special localities. Domestic animals show this not 
less strongly than wild ones. The dog or the cat 
transported to a great distance often returns weary and 
footsore to the home from which it has been taken. 
Cattle driven from the ranges where they have been 
bred to others with which they are unfamiliar often 
work their way back to their old range and have to be 
gathered and once more returned to the new. Many a 
man on a journey over the plains has been left afoot 
by the escape of his horses or mules, which have started 
back home, and have often been recovered after long 
and ai'duous pursuit. 
Akin to this love of home, yet widely different from 
it, is the mysterious migratory tendency which, after 
years of absence in the sea, brings the salmon back into 
the river where it was spawned; which takes the young 
bird South not very long after it leaves the nest, and in 
spring again returns it almost to the same spot 
where it was bred. How can we know why it is that 
year after year certain seabirds choose special spots for 
nesting and neglect others all about it which would 
seem equally advantageous? Why do the shearwaters 
breed on only one of the many islands of the Scilly 
archipelago, or the terns choose one gravel bar sticking 
up out of the sea to the neglect of all the rest? 
And often these creatures will cling to their old home, 
no matter what changes may take place in it, apparently 
until the last one of the old stock has been killed. JIow 
wide is the field of nature study which lies open before 
each one of us! 
THE COST OF SPORT. 
Regret is expressed betimes by people whose fondness 
for wholesome sport is in inverse ratio to their means of 
gratifying it that, as the dift'erent forms of it become 
more specialized in general and m.ore refined in particular, 
the expense of it increases to a degree so high that their 
participation is almost prohibited. 
In a majority of cases, however, their standard of the 
sport is based on the fashion of it and the luxuries of it 
rather than on the substantial factors of it. There is no 
doubt that the most expensive forms of sport, within cer- 
tain wise limitations, may be made the most pleasurable, 
but it does not by any means follow that less expensive 
forms are therefore devoid of all pleasure. 
People who, some years ago. were content to fish or 
shoot or boat or yacht in their old every-day clothes for a 
proper costume, and who also were content to use the 
family "fish pole," or Queen Bess fowling piece, or boat 
of Noah's Ark model, have become educated up to higher 
standards of sport, and their tastes and needs are of a 
higher degree accordingly. Nevertheless, as between the 
primitive methods and the most expensively refined meth- 
ods, there are many intermediate stages in which sport 
can be enjoyed at a reasonable expenditure. The same 
common-sense principles of finance apply to it that apply 
to the serious business occupations of life and of living. 
People adjust the quality and style of their clothes and 
homes and foods to correspond to the purchasing power of 
their incomes, and they recognize that these are the neces- 
sities of life and the luxuries of life, and observing the 
limitations iriiposed, they manage to live quite comfort- 
ably. 
Sport has its counterparts of serious life in its necessities 
and its luxuries. In the serious affairs of life, people 
recognize that there is a law of supply and demand which 
determines values, and that there is a limit both in respect 
to quality and quantity beyond which they cannot venture. 
The luxuries may be made the most expensive features. 
As a style of living, no sensible man with a small income 
would consider for himself that the millionaire's standard 
of living with all its luxuries was the true one for every- 
body to follow. The same common sense applies to 
standards in sport, for in a similar manner it has its neces- 
sities and its luxuries. It has its implements of rare 
material, of mechanical excellence, of artistic design and 
finish. It has others of equal utility, although perhaps of 
less elegance, to supply the needs of him whose purse 
permits him to engage in sport at all. 
There is nothing inherently changeful in the sport itself 
which has made the transition from the inexpensive rec- 
reation of years ago to that of the present time. The 
essentials remain the same. Taste has been cultivated to 
a higher artistic plane. Skill has improved and demanded 
finer mechanism. Wealth has become on-eater and more gen- 
eral, furnishing the wherewithal to gratify the craving for 
the best. The interests of sport have kept pace with the 
general advancement. 
Sport was less expensive some years ago, because at 
that time one could not make it expensive if one en- 
deavored to do so. There were not the thousand and one 
implements for the sportsman's need then on the market. 
It was in a manner analogous to an attempt to busy a 
highly finished .suit of clothes when the spinning wheel 
and homespun clothes ruled supreme. 
The expensiveness of sport, like the expensiveness of 
living, is much as one makes it. It may be cheap or dear, 
-sensible or foolish, original or imitative, wholesome or un- 
wholesome — it is a matter in which the personal equation 
dominates. But at no time in the history of sport could 
its devotees obtain so many essential articles of sport at so 
cheap a rate as they can at the present time. The true 
standard is to enjoy life within one's means, a precept 
which was sound in the years gone by, as it is to-day 
and will be in the years to come. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The owner of a private game preserve, who has im- 
ported exotic species to stock his park, is not unreason- 
able if he asks for the taking and disposition of such 
game greater privileges than those given for hunting the 
wild game of the State. As a specific illustration of this, 
there is a Pennsylvania mountain preserve into which 
the owner some years ago introduced elk from the West. 
The elk in Pennsylvania has been extinct for more than a 
half-century, and there is then no demand whatever for a 
law forbidding the killing of elk at certain periods and 
the exportation from the State at any time. There is such 
a law, however, and the only practical effect of it is to pre- 
vent the preserve owner, who happens to live in New 
York, from bringing his game home with him after he 
has killed it. The elk which were introduced six years ago, 
have bred and multiplied, until their number now is such 
that they have outgrown the food supply, and the only 
alternative of the owner is to annex more territory or 
kill some of the herd. Under these circumstances liberty 
to export the game would be nothing beyond reason. 
The communication which we print from Mr. D. C. 
Beaman, of Denver, relative to the form of a game law, is 
deserving of careful consideration. Mr. Beaman has 
given the subject much study, having brought to it a 
combination of high legal attainments and warm interest 
in game protection. To him Colorado owes its present ad- 
mirable law. In the crudeness, complexity and bungling 
contradictions which characterize them, many of the game 
laws of the day are excellent examples of all that they 
should not be; nor may any improvement be lookgd for 
until in each individual case the statute shall be made a 
subject of deliberate preparation before the haste and 
confusion of the closing hours of the legislature. Of all 
the laws we have, those relating to game and fish should 
be the simplest, most readily understood and most easily 
complied with. It is a reflection on legislative game com- 
mittees when a carelessly worded statute leaves room for 
doubt as to its meaning. 
The so-called Hunt and Rideout case which has just 
been decided in the Maine courts grew out of the am- 
biguity of a special law made by the Fish Commissioners 
for Greene's Lake. Instead of specifying a particular 
lake where fishing might begin, the Commissioners set the 
time when the ice left, and the opportunity was thus given 
for a difference of opinion as to when the ice actually 
was out. The law as commonly interpreted was under- 
stood to mean that fishing was permissible when it could 
be done from a boat, for the water is some twelve miles 
long, with narrows for only^a few miles down, so that it 
is impossible for one at the upper end to tell whether 
the ice is entirely gone. Messrs. Hunt and Rideout were 
among several fishermen who had acted upon the quoted 
interpretation of the law, but they appear to have been 
the only ones prosecuted, a circumstance which gave color 
of personal persecution to the case. The affair has ended 
in their vindication, but it is one which ought never to 
have occurred. A game or fish law should be simple, 
plain, direct, one that all may understand, and und^r which 
all should be treated alike. 
