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. ( 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1901. 
( VOL. LVH.-No. 20. 
I No. 846 Bpoadway, New York 
INDIAN TERRITORY LIVE QUAIL EXPORT. 
The transplanting of quail from States where they are 
abundant into other States where the supply has been 
depleted, has grown to large proportions, and of late 
years has been stimulated by the establishment of numer- 
ous game preserves. One of the principal dealers in live 
quail for stocking purposes is Mr. E. B. Woodward, of 
this citj', who for several years has drawn his supply 
chiefly from the Indian Territory. He found formerly 
no question as to the lawfulness of the capture and export 
of the birds, but upon the enactment of the Lacey Act the 
Department of Agriculture instructed the United States 
marshals in the Territory to prevent the further export, 
on the ground that it was in violation of the law relating 
to the Indian Territory and of the Lacey Act. His busi- 
ness in live quail thus broken up, Mr. Woodward ap- 
pealed to the Department for a modification of its order. 
In reply he has been advised that as the prohibitions of 
the shipment of quail are contained in acts of Congress, 
the executive branch of the Government cannot alter nor 
ignore them, and has no option but to enforce them. Dr. 
T. S. Palmer, Assistant Chief of the Biological Survey, 
who is charged with securing the enforcement of the 
Lacey -Act, writes : 
The question is one of considerable interest to us, and one to 
which we have given some attention during the past year. In several 
instances we have made special efforts to have provisions, which 
would permit export of live birds, in corporated in State game laws. 
In the case of the Indian Territory, the best remedy for the present 
difficulty seems to be that suggested by Hon. John F. Lacey, viz., 
an amendment which will authorize trapping of birds for propa- 
gating purposes under proper supervision, rather than an attempt 
to nullify the existing law. 
And Hon. John F. Lacey writes to Mr. Woodward: 
There is now no way that you can ship quail from Indian Terri- 
tory without a modification of the local law of that Territory. I 
should think the proper remedy would be to get an amendment to 
authorize the Secretary of Agriculture, in his discretion, to allow 
the trapping of some reasonable amount of quail for propagation 
in that Territory, and in his discretion he can limit the amount 
so as not to be destructive to these birds beyond what the propa- 
gation there would justify. The quail of Indian Territory breed 
fast, having usually two broods a year. 
I should think the law might be modified so as to give the 
Secretary discretion, which he would not exercise beyond reason- 
able limits, and he could make such regulations as would prevent 
the use of these privileges by those marketing the birds for food. 
While it was true that gentlemen had been shipping live birds 
from that Territory in good faith for propagation, they were also 
being captured and shipped in violation of law for market purposes. 
At any time in the past this law could have been enforced in the 
Territory. Under the Lacey Act, it can be enforced anywhere in 
the United States, wherever the birds may be found, thus makmg 
the local law operative where heretofore it was disregarded. 
From all of which it appears that there is confusion as 
to the Indian Territory law and the application of the 
Lacey Act. 
In the first place, it is to be said that there is nothing 
in the Indian Territory law to prevent the trapping of 
quail by Indians for export; and in the second place, the 
Lacey Act has no application whatever to the export or 
import of live quail from or into any State or Territory. 
An examination of the text of the two laws will lead to 
this conclusion. 
The Ind'an Territory law under which the Department 
of Agriculture has acted, reads as follows : 
Revised Statutes of the United States, 1878.— Sec. 2,137. Every 
person, other than an Indian, who, within the limits of any tribe, 
with whom the United Slates has existing treaties, hunts or traps, 
or takes and destroys any peltries or game, except for subsistence 
in the Indian country, shall forfeit all the traps, guns and ammuni- 
tion in his possession, used or procured to be used for that purpose, 
and all peltries so taken, and shall be liable in addition to a penalty 
of ?500. 
The law was originally enacted in 1832, and was re- 
enacted in 1878. Its purpose was to secure to the Indians 
the right to and profit from the game on their reserva- 
tions. It was never intended to interfere with the Indian's 
right to take game and to sell it to the whites; on the 
contrary, it was designed expressly to assure that right to 
him, in order that he might have the profit accruing from 
the capture of game and peltries. It did not mean in 1832, 
nor does it mean in 1901, that the Indians of Indian Terri- 
tory rriight not trap game and send it out of the Territory 
or barter it at the trader's store for export from the Ter- 
ritory. There is in this law no warrantj for the inter- 
ference of the United States marshals in the capture by 
Indians and shipm^it of quail, dead or alive, from the 
Indian Territory. 
Nor has the Lacey ^ct any application to the case. 
That Act declares; 
Sec. 2. That it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to 
import into the United States any foreign wild animal or bird 
except under special permit from the United States Department of 
Agriculture. * « * The importation of the mongoose, the so- 
called "flying foxes" or fruit bats, the English sparrow, the 
starling, or such other birds or animals as the Secretary of Agri- 
culture may from time to time declare injurious to the interests of 
agriculture or horticulture is hereby prohibited. 
The provision prohibiting the transportation of game 
reads : 
Sec. 3. That it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to 
deliver to any common carrier, or for any common carrier to trans- 
port from one State or Territory to another State or Territory, 
or from the District of Columbia or Alaska to any State or Terri- 
tory, or from any State or Territory to the District of Columbia or 
.\laska, any foreign animals or birds the importation of which is 
prohibited, or the dead bodies or parts thereof of any wild animals 
or birds, where such animals or birds have been killed in violation 
of the laws of the State. Territory, or District in which the same 
were killed. 
The articles of which the transportation is forbidden by 
this section are "any foreign animals or birds, the importa- 
tion of which is prohibited," and "the dead bodies or parts 
thereof" of native game unlawfully killed. The live 
quail shipped from the Indian Territory are neither "for- 
eign birds, the importation of which is' prohibited." nor 
are they the "dead bodies or parts thereof of any birds 
k-Iled in violation of the law," consequently they do not 
come within the category of birds with which the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture by virtue of the Lacey Act has to do. 
Under these circumstances it is not too much to ask 
that the Department of Agriculture should withdraw its 
mistaken instructions to the marshals of the Indian Terri- 
tory, to the end that what is not prohibited by statute may 
not be prevented by the arbitrary act of the Department. 
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT, 
To him whose knowledge of game shooting, big or 
small, comes from a perusal of press recountals, the ap- 
palling yearly lists of violent deaths consequent to every 
conceivable kind of "accident" from the use of the rifle 
-and shotgun in the open season on game, the sport might 
have a significance more of death and bereavement to 
mankind than of pleasure and recreation. The average 
reader of such gruesome recountals further might justly 
resolve to eschew a sport which is apparently so prolific 
of loss of life and Hmb, even if he did not condemn it 
entirely on the ground that, being so, fatal, it could not 
be a sport at all. 
In any form of sport, accidents which neither care nor 
wi.sdom can guard against, will happen even though the 
most skillful are engaged in it. But, if to the skillful 
performers there be added a host of ignorant and un- 
skillful, then accidents result in a far greater ratio tlian 
the mere addition of numbers would suggest. Place a gun 
in the hands of a person ignorant and unskillful in its 
use, and that man, however amiable or learned otherwise 
he may be, if unrestrained, is forthwith a menace to his 
fellows and in a lesser degree to himself. He is not in- 
tentionally dangerous, but he nevertheless is dangerous 
from his ignorance. If he is warned that his loaded gun is 
pointed at one companion, in shifting it away he is quite 
likely, unconsciously, to train it on another. He may not 
be able to climb over a fence with any degree of cer- 
tainty even when his hands are free ; with a loaded gun in 
them, then, danger threatens everywhere. 
In the presence of game, or its anticipated presence, the 
average novice is in a high state of excitement, and may 
then do any senseless thing, from discharging his gun 
prematurely in any random direction, to mistaking for a 
deer the friend of a lifetime. 
It should require no argument to prove that before a 
novice goes afield with the shotgun and rifle, he should 
have an accurate knowledge as to the proper manner of 
safely handling them, as well as some discipline in their 
practical use. 
The "accidents," so called, are not the result of any 
natural perils inherent in the sport itself so much as they 
are the result of ignorance or criminal carelessness in the 
Use of firearms. No one would consider it other than a 
criminal act if a man, entirely ignorant of engines, were 
placed in charge of an engine either stationary or loco- 
motive ; and tlie same might be said if a green man were 
placed in the position, of a pilot on a steamboat. On 
engines- and pilot and on tlie members of other profes- 
sions also, society imposes the most stringent legal re- 
strictions for the safety of life and property; yet on the 
other hand a man may take a gun in hand and though 
ignorant of its use and powers, may sally forth with it in 
a settled community, with all conceivable possibilities of 
accident. 
If a wholesome, earnest public opinion were aroused, 
not against the sport or against properly disciplined sports- 
men, but against the practices of the und'sciplined, im- 
properly equipped beginner, a step toward correcting the 
evil at its source would be taken, instead of accepting 
the fatalities as being truly incidental to the sport as a 
whole. 
As they concern shooting, the conditions at the present 
day have changed greatly from what they were some 
years ago. At that time game was more uniformly dis- 
tributed ; the country was more thinly settled ; the 
shooters were mostly schooled from boj'hood, and firearms 
were inferior in many re?pects. though more in keeping 
with the special uses to which they were app'ied in prac- 
tice. At the present day the game sections are much 
smaller, the numbers of shooters have increased many 
thousand fold, firearms and ammunition have been irfi- 
proved, but, unfortunately, many shooters begin their 
schooling and their shooting together, in actual 
work afield. Not infrequently the deer hunting 
novice selects a high-power rifle with a range 
of over two miles to use in a settled ne'gliborhood. 
A rifle with an accurate range of 200 yard-; would be 
more than ample, for most of the beginner's shots would 
be less than 100 yards, though that would be a much 
greater d'stance than he could skillfully shoot at. But if 
the novice shoots at a deer twenty yards away, and, with 
his long-range rifle, kills a man two in les-away. can such 
a calamity be classed as an "accident"? Common fore- 
sight and prudence could easily have guarded against such 
happening. Therefore, instead of being an accident, such 
an event would be the result of criminal carelessness. 
Of course there are certain happenings, dangerous to 
life and property, such as the bursting of a gun. the strik- 
ing of a rock by a boat, etc., which no human foresight 
could foresee or prevent, and there arc true accidents, 
but the talamities which are in a way uivited are quite 
distinct from them. 
Our greater population and consequently our more 
closely settled counfy with its much lessened game sec- 
tions, and the great multiplication of hunters year by 
year, impose greater standards of skill and care on the 
part of the users of guns afield. Where the life and limb 
of others are involved, he who uses the rille or shotgun 
should be a master of it. While society may not require 
that he must have a license from the proper authrrities as 
a guarantee of his fitness to handle the gun. as it does in 
respect to the eng'neer, pilot, druggist, etc., to follow 
their vocation, there is nonetheless the same underlying 
obligation to observe the rights of the public. If the 
novice does not heed this obligation, it is only a question 
of time when he too must have ajicen-e wlrch is a 
guarantee to the publ'c that he is a safe m.m when gun 
in hand he wanders about where men. women and chil- 
dren also have a right to wander about, and therewith to 
live in peace and safety. 
Before getting into a wagon it is no mere Ihnn common 
prudence and foresight to remove the shells from one's 
gun. It also is but the task of a moment. If the horses 
should run away, if the wagon should break down, if the 
shooter should slip and fall in gelling in or out. tlicre is 
no possibility of death from the discharge of his gun. If 
the same precaution is observed when crossing a fence, 
there again can be no "accident" from the gun. If one 
keeps one's gun pointed in ihe air or cmircly away from 
the person of others, even if the gun should be discharged 
when in hand, there again could be no accident. If the 
gun is placed against a tree, the cartridges being first 
withdrawn, then, if the dog knocks it over, or if it falls 
down from any cause, there aiii be no accident. ]f the 
shooter takes care to know absolutely what kind of ani- 
mal is moving, he cannot by mistake shoot a man for a 
deer. It is quite as easy to think that a deer is a mati as it 
is to think that a man is a deer. Wait till you know 
definitely, then you will not afterward have Id le!l what 
you thought, with the added knowledge thai a man does 
not remotely look hke a deer, and liiat all rtgiets cannot 
restore a life. In short, the matter of "accident" may de- 
pend 00 the matter of caie and foreiight more than on the 
unforeseen. Think about these things ; and think abovjt 
them before, anil wot J^Cter. 
