Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1908, bv Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Tbrms, $4 A Year. 10'Cts. a Copy. 1 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 1908. 
I VOL. LX.-NO. 14. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York. 
Ok forest ana Stream's Platform Plank. 
^^The sale of game should be prohibited at all seasons^ 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1903.— No. I. 
NEW MEXICO. 
Act of March 7, 1903. — Sec. 6. It shall be unlawful for any 
person or persons, agent or employe, or any association or corpo- 
ration, to buy or sell, or to expose or offer for sale, any species 
of trout or game food fish taken from the public streams or 
waters of this Territory, or any game known as elk, deer, antelope, 
or mountain sheep, at any time during the year. 
WILLIAM N. BYERS. 
It was a singularly well rounded life which was 
brought to a close when William N. Byers passed away, 
at his home in Denver, on W ednesday of last weelc, March 
25. His age was seventy-two years. Mr. Byers was one 
of the conspicuous figures in the history of Colorado, a 
chief actor in the development of the State. He was a 
type of the western pioneer whose daring enterprise, 
foresight and indomitable courage subdued the wilderness 
and established States. Born in Ohio in 1831, of Scotch 
descent, he went in 1851 to Iowa and began surveying 
in the service of the Government. In the prosecution of 
this work he went as far west as Oregon and Washington 
and to California; and when the territories of Nebraska 
and Kansas were opened for , settleinent, he went to 
Omaha and ran the section and township lines of eastern 
Nebraska. In 1S59, when the motto "Pike's Peak or Bust" 
was the watchword of so many adventurous spirits, Mr. 
Byers set out for the Rockies with a printing press and 
newspaper outfit, which were carHed by pack mules; and 
on April 17, 1859, reached Kettle Creek, the site of Den- 
ver, and on April 27 issued the first number of the Rocky 
Mountain New.s, the pioneer paper of the proposed State 
of Jefferson, afterward Colorado. Although in after years 
Mr. Byers held many oiilices of honor and trust, it is be- 
lieved that in nothing else did he take so much pride as 
the record he made for the News and for himself in its 
conduct, and in the recognition popularly accorded him 
as the founder of Colorado jounaalism. Thus active and 
influential in the early days of Denver, Mr. Byers wa.^ 
all through his life until its closing years a man of large 
affairs, and was identified with many of the important 
financial enterprises which have made the crude Kettle 
Creek of 1859 the Denver of to-day, with its 170,000 in- 
habitants. 
Mr. Byers was from the first publication of Forest and 
Stream a contributor to its columns, and older readers 
will recall the delightful descriptions that came from his 
pen of fishing excursions and camps in the Rockies. He 
was an authority on the West, and his writings had pecu- 
liar charm because of tjae. intimate knowledge they showed 
of the scenes and the subjects concerning which he wrote. 
His angling papers were surcharged with the freshness 
of the mountains; they reflected the breadth of spirit 
which characterized the man. Always appreciative of the 
value of the fish and the game, and recognizing the duty 
of securing their conser^-ation, Mr. Byers was one of the 
earliest advocates in the Rocky Mountains of game and 
fish protection, and the subject was one in which his in- 
terest was never lost. One of the last things which he 
wrote for the Forest amd Stream was a plea for the 
rescue of the Lost Park herd of buffalo, Colorado's relic 
of that fated game of which in his youth the surveyor of 
the territories had seen the herds of tens of thousands. 
A SIGN IN THE HEAVENS. 
To THE dwellers in great cities, most of the charming 
transitional stages between the going of the winter and 
the coming of the springtime are unknown happenings. 
To them the shy and slow budding of the dainty leaflets ; 
the gradual changes of earth from shades of dull brown 
to the refreshing shades of vivid green; the swarming of 
restless, musical bird-life where a short time since there 
was only silent void, are to city dwellers perforce the 
phenomena of things unseen and therefore practically un- 
known. They miss the glories so lavishly in evidence to 
the country dweller — the magic of the mellow sunshine, 
which coaxes forth bud and blossom, and life and color 
where before were only the sere and the dormant; sights 
to please the eye and gladden the heart. 
To the city d\\'eller winter seems to end in an abrupt 
sort of way, and spring seems to come Avith equal abrupt- 
ness. Bricks and mortar walls do not show the season's 
changes as do fields and forests. To them all seasons are 
nearly alike. 
But betimes some isolated natural happening may 
herald to the one in city streets the arrival of spring 
and revivification. On Monday of this week several flocks 
of geese passed over New York city, high up in space to- 
ward the sky, steadily winging their way northward to 
commence the season's domestic labors. And, while they 
could be distinctly seen, but few people in New York saw 
them, for there the pedestrian must needs look up quite 
perpendicularly to behold much sky, and when seen it is 
sky broken and irregular in every direction accordingly 
as the lofty and numerous sky-scrapers interfere with the 
sight. The northward migration of the geese denotes that 
spring's impulses are upon them, but their lessening num- 
bers tell also that the season is here when the shooting 
of wildfowl should be prohibited by law and frowned 
upon by public opinion. The entire stock of wildfowl is 
insuflicient to reproduce to a degree equal to their destruc- 
tion. 
Even if unmolested in the springtime, stringent restric- 
tions on shooting wildfowl Avould still need to be en- 
forced in the fall ; for the agencies of destruction have 
multiplied so generally everywhere that, if imrestricted in 
their exercise, the utter extermination of the wildfowl 
would be quickly compassed. Indeed, the thinly scattered 
flocks of geese flying warily northward are now in meagre 
contrast with the numerous flocks of years ago. For this 
great decrease in the numbers of the wildfowl the perni- 
cious practice of spring shooting far exceeds all other 
kinds of destructiveness. 
The springtime, in the animal and vegetable world, is 
nature's chosen time for reproduction, not for destruc- 
tion. Let the birds pass unmolested to their breeding 
giounds. In the fall there will be more and better birds 
to test the sportsman's skill and craft, and there will be 
more birds in future years for the sportsmen and their 
posterity. 
WHEN DO THE WILD DUCKS MATEF 
The question as to the time of mating of the migrating 
wildfowl that are with us in winter is one that has been 
hotly debated by the advocates and the opponents of 
spring shooting. Almost every man has an opinion on 
the subject based on what he has seen of the actions of 
the birds, but these opinions are drawn from inference 
and not from absolute evidence. Definite knowledge oa 
the matter is wanting. 
On one hand we know — or think we know — that wild 
geese mate for life and are strictly monogamous. This 
conclusion is drawn from birds kept in captivity, for it 
is a fact that a mated male has no interest in any female 
except his mate, and indeed will severely beat and drive 
away any female which approaches his mate when she is 
nesting. Nothing of this kind is known about the ducks, 
but it is seen that in late winter and all through the 
spring ducks frequeritly travel in pairs, male and female. 
If one of these birds is killed by the gunner the other 
is likely to make a long round and to come back to the 
place where its companion fell. As against this another 
group of gunners declare that birds sometimes do this in 
the fall. That might very well be if the wild ducks mate 
for life as the wild geese do. Many gunners on the 
southern broad waters, where so many of our wildfowl 
pass the winter, aver that the wild ducks mate in Febru- 
ary. Abe Kleinman, a veteran market gunner of Illinois 
and Indiana, declares that the bluebills, or broadbills, are 
mated in March. 
Dr. T. S. Palmer, of the U. S. Biological Survey, who 
is interested in the question of when the birds mate, 
wrote us recently as to the Chesapeake Bay region, say- 
ing: "I saw personally (March 26) several pairs of black- 
heads which had undoubtedly mated, and Mr. Walter 
Jackson, a man of more than ordinary intelligence, who 
has been shipping ducks from Havre de Grace for years, 
tells me that there is no doubt that many of the ducks 
are paired off before they go north. He assured me that 
he had found partially developed eggs in ducks killed 
in spring on the Susquehanna flat." 
While positive evidence as to when the ducks mate can 
be had with but great difficulty, there certainly must be a 
very distinct preponderance of opinion amc-ng gunners on 
one side or the other of this question, and it would be in- 
teresting to receive from men of experience statements of 
their beliefs concerning it, and their reasons for theau 
It is but a few years since it was denied with great 
positiveness that wild ducks bred in New York State, but 
when the question was asked in the columns of FoRES*r 
AND Stream whether they did or did not breed, there was 
positive and prompt response from a number of men who 
showed that beyond question they did breed in that State. 
Later the results which followed the prohibition of spring 
shooting in Jefferson county have shown that if unmo- 
lested in spring, the ducks will remain and breed in New 
York in very considerable numbers. In all the 
Northern States they would do the same thing were they 
protected. 
There is a lot of rubbish and "rot" publislicd about 
President Roosevelt as a sportsman. Something near the 
limit has been reached by the Philadelphia Record, which 
prints a column dispatch from a Salt Lake City lunatic 
descriptive of a herd of 10,000 moose in Jackson's Hole, 
"which the President may charge on horseback and kill 
them with pistol or knife as he desires." There are also 
in the perfervid imagination of this writer 20,000 elk in 
the Hole, and all. this game "belongs to the most danger- 
ous generation of elks and moose that ever roamed the 
western coiintry." The President will be in the West in 
April, which is popularly regarded by sportsmen as close 
time, but such a small matter as the game law does not 
stand in the way of this yellow journal programme. The 
plan, we are . told, , is "to give President Roosevelt , a 
chance at the scrappiest herds of elks and moose in the 
world. The scheme is to take him into the Jackson Hole 
country when he leaves the train at Laramie to ride over- 
land by horseback to Cheyenne. It is proposed to haye 
the game laws waived in Roosevelt's honor and hiint these 
moose and elks for three days." When this sort of truck 
is ladled out by the column, one stands in amaze at the 
character of the readers who are assumed to be suc^h 
idiots as to pay for the privilege of haying the stuff 
served up to them as "special to the Record," 1 
■I 
At this season of the year in the North the r:qbin js 
welcomed as one of the harbingers of spring, on its return 
to take up housekeeping in the orchard or the dooryard ; 
and as one of the familiar birds of the Northern home it 
is cherished and protected by sentiment and by law. In 
these latitudes the robin is not a game bird. . In' the 
South, where no such sentiment prevails, the bird is 
esteemed chiefly as a table delicacy. This is. illustrated 
anew in the act of incorporation of the North Carolina 
Audubon Society. This is a body organized to protect 
bird life; the act nevertheless expressly excepts the robin, 
and provides that the robin and the meadow lark "shall 
be considered game birds." The bobolink, another bicd 
v/hich in the North is regarded and protected, is in North 
Carolina, under the name of rice bird, classed as vermin, 
along with hawks and crows and blackbirds, which may 
be killed without limit. Thus in matters small as well as 
large the sentiments which govern our likes and dislikes 
are largely influenced by latitude and longitude. 
Governor Odell has declared himself unalterably 
■opposed to any appropriation by the Legislature for the 
purchase of Adirondack lands until it shall have been de- 
termined definitely what amount will be required ulti- 
mately for a comprehensive and final scheme of a forest 
.preserve. It is highly desirable that such a definite plan 
should be adopted in order that its attainmeiit may be 
provided for. But under existing conditions a polipy 
which stands in the way of any land acquisition whatever 
is unwise. To defer purchases until the adoption of the 
plans would mean under existing conditions putting it off 
till doomsday. This is the reverse of economical, for the 
reason that the value of Adirondack lands is steadily ap- 
preciating, and purchases in the future caimot be made so 
cheaply as they could be made now. Moreover, tracts of 
forest land are undergoing denudation which should be 
acquired by the State and preserved in their natural con- 
dition. The people of New York approve the Adirondack 
forest preserve principle; and Governor Odell would give 
-d more substantial proof of his statesmanship in the mat' 
ter if, instead of making this demand for a definite pre- 
serve plan his excuse for preventing action on the mattei', 
he should- — if still insisting on the necessity of the plan — 
take some action toward securing it. Let a commission 
be appointed in time for report to the next session, and 
for action then on the report. 
