Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1901. 
Terms, $i A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ( 
Six Months, $2. f 
j VOL. LVII.— No. n. 
j No. 346 Broadway, Nkw 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 
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. 
best, the game supply is far from equal to the demands 
of sportsmen, and to the end that there may be few years 
or lesser years of deartli, the same moderation should be 
exercised in the years of plenty. 
The country still stands appalled a^t the magnitude of 
the calamity that has come upon it. For a third time, the 
President of the United Stat-es has fallen by the bullet of 
an assassin. The mourning is deep and general, for Will- 
liam McKinley the President, and for William McKinley 
the man. In the universal sadness no one is more 
entitled to sympathy than he who has taken the place of 
the murdered President. Happily, he has never been one 
who feared his responsibilities ; happily, also, he has be- 
liind him a record of twenty years of well doing in pub- 
lic lifer which justifies the supremest confidence in his 
future course. It should give us all courage and comfort 
that the mantle of William McKinley has fallen on the 
shoulders of Theodore Roosevelt. 
ANNOUNCEMENT. 
We s'hall begin next week the publication of a serial 
story by Rowland E. Robinson, entitled "In the Ranger 
Service." and dealing with the days of Ticonderoga. It is 
written in the pure and limpid English of which Mr. 
Roljinson was a master, and as a graphic pen-picture of 
an early period in our American history will take deserved 
high rank. And there is in it, too, the outdoor and wild- 
wood flavor which give it a fitting place in Forest and 
Stream. 
THE SEASONS AND THE GAME. 
The reports from the different sections, in respect to 
tlie supply of game birds, are pleasingly favorable, hence 
all who love sport with dog and gun have sufficient cause 
for rejoicing thereat. They unanimously indicate that, as 
compared with the dearth of some former years, there is 
an abundance.- 
The prairie country seems to be specially favored with 
an unusually great increase in its supply of chickens, and 
this is the more remarkable since the constant growth of 
agriculture in the prairie region is antagonistic to their 
multiplication. Both tilled and wild land are essential to 
their best preservation : the former to afford a food sup- 
plj% the latter shelter and concealment. Such is their 
best habitat. Too much agriculture not only reduces or 
destroys the places of natural shelter and concealment, but 
it introduces direct destructive agencies; namely, the local 
sportsmen with their dogs and guns. 
Not less favorable are the reports concerning the quail 
supply for the season's sport. Long Island seems to have 
been particularly fortunate in this respect. In that section 
the breeding season was the best of many years. 
While the destructive agcHcies are practically constant, 
the increase and decrease of the game birds are in a meas- 
ure seemingly independent of them. Making all due 
allowance for the heavy rains of spring drowning out the 
young birds or destroying the eggs, or the equal harm 
supposed to result from excessive droughts, etc., there 
is still remaining the fact that all springs are more or 
less wet or dry, and that, nevertheless, in some seasons 
the birds are extraordinarily fertile or sterile, the causes 
of which are beyond the knowledge of man. However, 
such fluctuation does denote that a dearth of birds in any 
one year is not a sure indication of their progressive ex- 
termination by the agency of rod and gun, though we must 
recognize that destruction by man, beyond a certain limit, 
cripples nature or renders her powerless. 
However, in the average of the years there must be a 
check on the destructive agencies to correspond to the 
average powers of reproduction, else the destruction which 
ends in extermination is only a question of time. At 
BLUNDERINGS. 
During the last session of the Arkansas Legislature the 
chaplain of the House, in his opening prayer one morn- 
ing, said, with pardonable unction : 
O Lord, we thank tliee tliat we are not in the hinatic asylum 
this morning, nor considered fit subjects for the same. 
It was about this time that the Legislature was deliberat- 
ing on a bill to tax non-resident sportsmen $500 for a 
shooting license, and the ultimate failure of the measure 
certainly had its part in demonstrating that sanity for 
which, the chaplain had given thanks. As a rule, legisla- 
tures are sane when they are providing protection for 
game, but the degree of sanity manifested in specific cases 
is frequently very far removed from common sense. We 
can forgive an unwise game law, if only it be the result 
of deliberate consideration and embody the actual intent of 
its framers, for. however mistaken such a law may be, 
there is still to be ascribed to its makers good intention 
and a decent degree of care in carrying out that intention. 
But for the careless and haphazard blundering which 
gives us in the end a statute which is foolish or worse, we 
can have and should have no patience whatever. 
Take the Illinois quail law as an example. The State 
pays its representatives in Springfield and its employees 
in the clerical branch of the' service to do their work, and 
to do it without blundering. For such an egregious piece 
of incompetence as the omission of a line of the law 
whereby protection was taken from quail, there may be an 
explanation, but there can be no excuse. Nor is the error 
one which may be righted by the course pursued by the 
Illinois authorities, which is to assume that a law protect- 
ing quail exists when one does not exist, and to punish 
the quail killers as if there were a law forbidding the 
killing of quail. The protection of quail is of very high 
importance : but of transcendently higher moment is it to 
give every citizen of the State protection in his rights, and 
one right which everj' citizen of Illinois possesses is that 
of immunity from arrest and punishment when he has vio- 
lated no law. 
Another blundering Legislature this year was that of 
Michigan in the law for the protection of quail, woodcock 
and grouse. Much uncertainty has existed on this point. 
The section of the law, as amended in 1901 and signed by 
the Governor, made the open season for quail, woodcock 
and grouse throughout the State from Oct, i to Nov. 30. 
This was the form published in the Game Laws in Brief 
and embodied in an abstract given out by the Secretary of 
State as the law in force. Subsequently it developed that 
there had been irregularities in the observance of the pre- 
scribed course of procedure for the passage of the amend- 
ment through the Legislature to the Governor's hand, and 
the Attorney-General has rendered an opinion that be- 
cause of this irregularity the amendment was void, and 
that the old law must be considered as still in force. This 
makes the season for quail, woodcock and partridge from 
Oct. 20 to Nov. 30, with the partridge season in the Lower 
Peninsula opening Oct. i. 
Another snarl is in the New Jersey law on flickers, and 
it is a capital example of the heedless, happy-go-lucky way 
of Legislatures when they struggle with bird protection. 
The Legislature of 1901 adopted two separate statutes hav- 
ing application to the woodpecker, known as the flicker 
or highholder. The first of these was the general law 
which provides that with certain specified exceptions no 
wild bird may be killed other than the game birds, and 
the law goes on to define what birds are game birds. 
■Among the game birds that are classified, the flicker is 
not included. Accordingly by this law the flicker is pro- 
tected at all times. But in the face of this plain prohibi- 
tion the Legislature proceeded to enact another law, in 
which it is provided : "It shall be unlawful to kill . . . 
any flicker or highholder, excepting during the months of 
September and October." And again, "It shall be unlaw- 
ful to kill . . . any woodpecker (the yellow-bellied 
woodpecker or sapsucker, however, excepted)." 
In other words, in intent, this gives an open season 
on a bird which in another law adopted the same year is 
protected always. An important point to note here is that 
the laws last quoted do iiot expressly declare that the 
flicker (or highholder or yellow-bellied woodpecker or 
sapsucker) may be killed; it says in one case that it shall 
not be killed except at certain times, and in the other case 
it excepts the bird from protected species. Against both 
of these exceptions the other law forbidding killing at 
any time holds good. The effect of the laAV, taken as a 
whole, is to protect the flicker in New Jersey. 
The practical working of the law has been to promote 
the killing of the birds. The average reader of the law 
would conclude that it permitted the shooting of flickers, 
and we have expressed the opinion that punishment for 
unwitting violation of the law would be harsh. The people 
of New Jersey should be able to find men to send to 
Trenton who could frame a simple game law easily under- 
stood of the people. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
That New Jersey flicker law blunder has had the effect 
of revealing the extent of the popularity of the flicker as a 
game bird. It is to be so classed, of course, only with 
those who estimate a bird as game solely by the test of 
its edibility, and there are those who esteem the flicker not 
to be despised as a dish for the table. There was a time 
when the bird was not protected in New York; that was 
the period when the robin, too, was considered fit for 
the gun, and the two birds were sought with much en- 
thusiasm by those who knew their gustatory qualities. 
Jacobstaff has told us of the exciting times in those days 
on Long Island, when the flicker shooters from New 
York city would repair to their favorite grounds in the 
night time and take position within shot of certain favor- 
ite trees, where the birds were certain to alight in their 
migration. The gunners lay through the night and held 
their positions the following day just as duck shooters 
take possession of favored points and blinds the night 
before to be in readiness for the shooting on the next day. 
If we may judge from the number of inquiries we have 
received and the reports of the amount of flicker shoot- 
ing in consequence of this law complication, the bird must 
have a tremendous popularity in New Jersey. We are not 
inclined to go so far as President Frothingham of the 
Fish and Game Commission of New Jersey, who expresses 
the conviction that a person who would kill a flicker 
would shoot a quail on the nest, for we have known men 
who were very good sportsmen in all that pertains to the 
shooting of game birds who did not disdain a flicker when 
it came within range. Indeed, it is more a matter of 
education as to the economic value of the bird than any 
other consideration which leads to its protection. 
The views expressed by Ransacker on the trespass ques- 
tion are of special significance, and value because, as he 
tells us, they are written by one who has contemplated the 
subject from both sides of the fence. If his recommenda- 
tion that trespass should be put on a plane with burglary 
as to the heinousness ascribed to the offense and the 
severity of the punishment given it, shall appear too 
radical, let it be remembered that he writes as one who 
has suffered much and who has abundant personal war- 
rant for entertaining such views, even though they are 
somewhat in advance of the sentiment of the times. There 
can be no question of the changing public feeling about 
trespass. It is all in the direction of our correspondent's 
change of view. The once universal tolerance of free 
entry upon land is giving away, and in many localities the 
opposite rule of resenting intrusion is coming to be 
almost as universal in application. The change is bound 
to be progressive. It embodies a recognition of new 
values and new resources. Just so soon as game is given 
value, just so soon is it protected for what value there is 
in it. The solution of the problem of where the sportsxiian 
of the next generation is to get his game will be found 
in the adoption of more stringent trespass systems, and 
the conservation of game as a by-product of the land. 
Every manager of a railroad running into a game coun- 
try and seeking the patronage of shooters should read with 
care Mr. Cristadoro's communication on the ways of 
some baggagemen with the game intrusted to their care. 
It would take only a word fitly spoken and with authority 
back of it to insure a full count every time when the 
sportsman was handed his string of birds from the bag- 
gage car. And not a feather less than just this should be 
made absolutely certain to every sportsman patron of th<; 
road, 
