Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun, 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 1902. 
j VOL. LVIII.— No. 9. 
| No. 846 Broadway, New 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 
nages 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 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
THE BEST THING FOR NEW YORK GAME. 
There is now before the New York Legislature a bill 
(Assembly 410) which provides that it shall be unlaw- 
ful at any time to sell woodcock, ruffed grouse and quail. 
This is to put into effect, so far as concerns these im- 
portant species, the Forest and Stream Platform Plank, 
and aside from the general principle of the great utility 
of such a law, there are two special reasons which 
strongly demand the adoption of the non-sale system at 
this time in this State. 
The first reason lies in the fact that the sale of game 
and its export for purpose of sale are now so generally 
prohibited throughout the other States that the rule 
may be said to be practically universal. This being so, it 
follows that there is no legitimate source of supply in 
other States from which the game dealers of New York 
may get woodcock and. grouse and quail to sell. The 
New York game market then is supplied, as to these 
species, if supplied at all, with contraband goods, and 
those who deal in game thus unlawfully supplied are 
fences. It should not be permitted under the law thus to 
constitute the markets of this State receptacles for game 
smuggled out from other States. New York should stand 
with the rest of the country with a common system to 
preserve the game. 
The second fact deserving special consideration is, as 
'Mr. Tallett intelligently points out in another column, 
that because of the non-export laws prevailing in other 
States and the growing difficulty of deriving game from 
those States, the market demand is more and more in- 
sistent for game from New York fields. That is to say, 
if game continues to be sold, and if it cannot be had in 
sufficient quantities elsewhere, it will come from New 
York covers. If the markets have game it is New York 
which must supply it. For the protection of their own 
game, therefore, the people of New York must close their 
game markets by the adoption of the anti-sale law. This 
,is the game protective expedient which is most needed 
to-day, and the one which will most surely prove effective 
and adequate to accomplish the end. 
To make into a law Assembly Bill 410, to prohibit the 
sale of woodcock, ruffed grouse and quail, would be the 
best thing now practicable for New York's game supply. 
POTOMAC FISHING. 
The anglers of Washington are confronted by a peculiar 
situation. For a number of years the members of the 
Fish and Game Protective Association of the District of 
Columbia have given much attention and devoted much 
effort to stocking the Potomac River with black bass and 
pike-perch; and as a direct result of the Association's 
activity, immense numbers of bass, crappies and other 
fishes have been preserved by a system of transfers from 
the canals to the river. The Association also has been suc- 
cessful in securing wise laws for the protection of the 
Potomac fish. All these public spirited undertakings of 
the Washington anglers have been for the common benefit 
of the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland; for 
the waters which have been stocked and protected lie in 
the District and in these two States. 
Now, having restored the Potomac fishing and having 
provided for its continuance under the required laws, the 
Association members find themselves threatened with ex- 
clusion from that part of the Potomac which lies in Mont- 
gomery county, Md., except upon payment of a non- 
resident license. Whatever may be the merits of the 
non-resident shooting and fishing license system in gen- 
eral, it is very clear that in this case the adoption of the. 
contemplated restriction by the Maryland Legislature 
would be nothing else than a gross injustice to the anglers 
of Washington. We print in our fishing columns the 
very convincing letter which Admiral Evans has pre- 
pared. His presentation of the Association's case should 
prevail with the Maryland Legislature to defeat the pro- 
posed license imposition. 
This cool proposition of the people of Maryland to 
appropriate to their own exclusive free use the stock of 
fish which has been provided by the very non-residents 
they would discriminate against, is a piece of effrontery 
matched only by the residents of Chautauqua county, 
New York, who, having had Chautauqua Lake restocked 
with muscalonge by the State, now want a county non- 
resident license law, to compel the people of the rest of 
the State to pay for the privilege of fishing for the fish 
produced by public funds. 
THE CHANGING HABITS OF GAME. 
Nothing is better understood by sportsmen generally 
than that wild animals are susceptible of education. The 
wildfowler of long experience knows that to-day the can- 
vasbacks fly higher and are more wary of approaching the 
battery or the blind than they were in the days of his 
youth. The upland shooter is convinced that the quail 
of to-day are better educated than those of old times. 
They come out from the swamps for a shorter time, often 
instead of walking- to the feeding grounds they fly, and 
the dog is therefore unable to find them, unless by some 
fortunate chance he passes, so close to the brood as to 
wind them. So with the pinnated grouse. In old times, 
in the treeless portions of Minnesota, it flew and alighted 
in the grass. Later it took to the corn for shelter, then 
to the windbreaks, and then to the trees of the timber 
claims. Now the birds sometimes even alight in trees; 
things that the species once "knew not of. 
With large game it is the same. Sixty or seventy years 
ago the wild sheep — now the most alert of North Amer- 
ican game animals, and the wariest — was as stupid and 
gentle as the buffalo used to be, and did not know enough 
to run away; but it has learned its lesson, though even 
now in certain sections where it is little hunted or even 
hunted not at all, it is still gentle and unsuspicious. 
But, if game which is persecuted learns the lesson of 
self-preservation, the converse also is true, and game 
that has been wild become tame, if the dangers which it 
has learned to fear, cease to exist. The big game of the 
National Park has thus become educated. Bears— under 
most circumstances the shyest of creatures— wander con- 
tentedly among the tourists, feed close to the hotels, and 
occasionally are even enticed into the hotel office by the 
offer of a piece of pie. Antelope and mountain sheep 
understand very well that there man is not a dangerous 
animal, and there have been cases where officers driving 
along the road between Gardiner and the Hot Springs 
have come upon sheep lying in the roadway which de- 
clined to get up so as to permit the vehicle to pass. 
The white-tailed deer which in one form or another is 
scattered over the whole of temperate North. America, has 
within the past few years undergone considerable changes 
of habit in certain fairly well-settled portions of the coun- 
try. Nearly twenty years ago a writer on the deer family 
of North America said: "The keenness of the deer's 
olfactories has become proverbial, and the experienced 
hunter when starting out always satisfies himself as to 
the direction of the wind ; for a deer, when its nose has 
told it that a man is in the neighborhood, waits for no 
more definite information on the subject, does not seek 
to learn just where he is, nor how far off, but makes the 
best of its way from the spot." This used to be the 
fact everywhere, but in some localities the deer have 
learned new things about man. Recently an old Maine 
deer hunter, narrating his experiences of the last twenty 
years, related that in old times when hunting on the 
border between his State and Canada, he found that if 
a deer got his wind it promptly ran away, going so far 
that it was useless to follow it. Subsequently, when 
hunting deer in the southern counties of Maine, where 
people were more numerous and the deer far less hunted, 
he discovered that there the animals had become accus- 
tomed to the scent of man, and no longer regarded it 
as a thing to be greatly alarmed at. It was a question of 
use. The same thing, of course, has been observed on 
Long Island, where the deer, even if persons pass to 
windward of them, manifest no alarm. 
In New England of late years deer have greatly in- 
creased in number. Maine, New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont are well supplied, Massachusetts has a few ? which, 
with protection, will increase. There are a very few in 
Connecticut and Rhode Island. Reasonable protection 
will unquestionably insure a constantly increasing supply 
of these animals, which, like others of their kind, will 
become tamer and tamer, and feeling secure will increase 
rapidly. 
The State of Connecticut, which has recently very 
wisely authorized the setting aside as game refuges of 
small tracts of land called town preserves, which are 
under the control of the Game and Fish Commission, 
has made a long step in the right direction, and ofle which 
might well be imitated by others of the rnre ■ hickly 
settled States. While the Connecticut t m pr serves 
are too small to be of great importance £j 1 '' :s for 
deer, they still contain the germ of an idea v d!j vorthy 
of imitation and amplification. 
In these days of widely spreading interest m nature 
study, a large portion of the general pub"'; is beginning 
to have a new feeling for our wild thing for the mam- 
mals, the birds, the reptiles and the plai.es; and in this 
newly roused interest is to be found a great hope fo 
the preservation of many of our wild creatures, whic< 
have been regarded as speedily approaching extinction. 
All this has a very direct bearing on the question, now 
becoming an active one, concerning the establishment of 
game refuges in forest reserves. 
When a person grasps a gun and pulls it toward him 
muzzle foremost, and is killed by its accidental discharge, 
we speak of his act as fatuous folly. And yet this very 
thing occurred at Atlantic City, N. J., the other day, un- 
der circumstances which leave room for no word of 
censure for the victim who thus' brought death upon 
himself. Three hunters were gunning on a pond, when 
one of them broke through the ice, and floundering in 
the water extended his gun to his comrades, one of whom. 
Willard Tucker, grasped it by the muzzle to assist him 
from the water. The weapon was discharged and Tucker 
was fatally wounded. This was the one instance out of a 
thousand where the pressing necessity for instant, in- 
volutary, unthinking action left no room for ordinary 
caution. One cannot read of the incident without the 
thought that here was a victim of this common gunning 
casualty who gave his life for another. 
*> 
The growing attention given to forestry and the in- 
creasing tendency on the part of individuals and of States 
to provide for the scientific administration of their forest 
possessions make it clear that the work of a forester is 
to be recognized in this country as one offering attrac- 
tions and moderate financial rewards to young men. Mr. 
Gifford Pinchot, Forester of the United States, has writ- 
ten a circular of instructions to prospective foresters, in 
which he notes that the present demand for trained forest 
experts is far in excess of the supply. There are forestry 
schools at Cornell, Yale and Biltmore, N. C, the courses 
ranging from one year to four. Mr. Pinchot's "Sugges- 
tions to Prospective Forest Students" may be had on 
application to the Bureau of Forestry, Department of 
Agriculture, Washington. 
Mr. John W. Titcomb, for many years one of the Fish 
and Game Commissioners of Vermont, has joined the 
United States Fish Commission and has succeeded Mr. 
Ravenal as chief of the Division of Fishculture. Mr. 
Titcomb has won national repute as one of the most 
energetic and able men of the day engaged in the work 
of fishculture, and the Forest and Stream congratulates 
him upon the enlarged field which has now opened be- 
fore him at Washington. The Vermont Fish and Game 
League was of Mr. Titcomb's creation, and we assume 
that he will continue for the present at least the direction 
of its affairs. Mr. Ravenal gave up his place in the 
Fish Commission to go to the Smithsonian Institution. 
The question of Sunday fishing came up anew in the 
Massachusetts Legislature the other day, and a proposi- 
tion to repeal the law which makes fishing on Sunday 
unlawful was voted dow". 
We have had a fine illustration this weel. A ' trt of 
yacht launching as a great international s-. core^ 
mercial and political function , 
