Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. ^ 
Copyright, 1903, by Forest and Stream Pdbushino Ca 
Terms, $i a Year. iO Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 190S. 
( VOL. LX.— No. 16. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York. 
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THE COMIC OPERA SPORTSMAN. 
Have we not seen a comic opera king — complacent, 
strutting, posing, loquacious? Was he not comic, indeed? 
And yet the character, with all its exaggerations of cos- 
tume, color and action, had a subbasis of fact in real life. 
It contained fact and fancy, for all the comic opera of 
life is not on the stage. Real life, serious life, has it in 
abundance. 
Since lordly man, tilting his haughty nose toward the 
empyrean first set his arch foot on this beautiful dollar 
world of ours, he has been a hunter or an imitation of a 
hunter, a creature of fact or fancy, for man is a being 
of both earth and air. His advent as king of creation, 
with feet on earth and nose turned perky skyward, is 
typical of the double life he leads from the neccessities of 
his being; that is to say, leading a life both real and 
imaginary. Gravity holds man's body in contact with the 
earth, but his imagination is not bound by any laws or 
forces. Thus, while his feet rest on matter, his head 
most of the time is in the clouds. 
In the actual struggle for existence, each man reasons 
and acts more or less logically according to his cerebral 
make-up and the circumstances of his environment. Then 
he may be said to think soundly by virtue of his feet rest- 
ing perforce flatly on the earth's surface. But when he 
smartly turns nose skyward and thinks, his ego, freed of 
bodily restraints, does glorious transformation feats in 
the pathless clouds, brilliantly ennobling by their valor, 
their genius, their sterling worth, their pure perfection. 
The clouds become a stage then in imagination. On it 
the disembodied ego does capers of marvelous excellence 
in the individual comic opera, the earthly man for an 
audience, the paradoxical situation of the ego being the 
actor and the egotist the audience. When the egotist 
draws the curtain, ego and egotist depart together, both 
vested with all the vanities of the ego. And yet it may 
have been all a day dream. It is unwise to dream through 
one's nose if one's mind is not well disciplined, or if one's 
natural mentality is not quite strong. 
Sportsmanship has more than its share of the comic 
opera of life, funny and sad, for there is no comic opera 
so funny that it is free from pathos. And of all the comic 
opera of sportsmanship, none is more comical than the 
claim to sportsmanship by virtue of contemplation, or 
how to be a sportsman without any of the qualities of 
true sportsmanship. How does it so happen? Because 
the ego gets into the clouds, returns, and the egotist 
imagines that his dreams were true. 
Thus there is the man with the camera who sallies 
forth into the wilderness, photographs trees, water, flow- 
ers, and perhaps some deer, moose or rabbits. He returns 
and declares that the men with dog and gun on killing 
bent are cruel, barbarous, unsportsmanlike; that he him- 
self is your true sportsman because he indulges iii the 
only true sport. He mistakes an idea, of which he him- 
self is the king, for the only true domain and definition of 
sport. Now, it is sport if it pleases him, but it is distinct, 
differentiated from true sportsmanship more than a bal- 
loonist is from a coal miner. Let him enjoy it at its face 
value. La 1 la ! That would be asking too much. It is 
something to be a sportsman, and how can the prestige 
of the ages and the praise due individual prowess be more 
quicldy secured than by photographing a deer and by 
force of insistence becoming a sportsman? 
Then there is the man who takes himself to the wilder- 
ness a few miles from town, seats himself on a moss- 
grown rock in propinquity to some trees, a few wild 
flowers, a sheen of water, a deep, deep blue sky over all, 
rests his hand upon his chin and thinks about the lovely 
things he beholds. He tries to think differently about 
them, else his thoughts will have no currency; for, mind 
you, he is not thinking solely for himself— the public 
must know of it. He returns heavy with the perfection of 
his form of sportsmanship. He has gazed on rabbits 
which have hopped by, squirrels which have run and sat 
and peered and quivered; observed flowers bloom and the 
mellow winds wave the green grass. He writes of it, : 
talks of it. He has discovered the true sportsmanship. 
All other is savage and cruel. And yet, while he con- 
templated the beautiful he probably had a round steak in 
his stomach, or chicken, or other animal food, according 
to the law of his being. He mistook the workings of his 
mind for a universal law governing this terrestrial vale of 
tears. The ego broke through the boundaries and by 
mere force of thought a star thinker within the confines 
of his subject became a comic opera king in the domain 
of true sport. Say not alas ! to this. It is the nature of 
man to have his toes on earth and his nose in the clouds. 
Blame him not for his nature. He did not make it. 
Real man has been always a hunter. His passion for 
the chase has ever been enthralling. His aversion to be- 
ing chased as an object of sport, or as a food possibility, 
has been stronger yet. All the obtainable evidence, past 
and present, on this subject, enormous in scope, is in sup- 
port of this allegation. The traditions of mankind from 
time immemorial are largely devoted to the deeds of 
mighty hunters, to a glorification of the hunters, and to 
the laudation of them as examplars for the generations 
to emulate. Then there is testimony which goes so much 
further into the past that it makes all history and tradi- 
tion things of yesterday. The geological strata tells of 
man's doings on earth tens of thousands of years ago, 
Flint knives, flint axes, arrows and lance heads, human 
bones, together with the bones of wild animals found 
together deeply buried, bear silent witness of man's man- 
ner of life on earth seons ago, probably contemporaneous- 
ly with the cave bear, the extinct rhinoceros, the mam- 
moth. Why man is by nature a hunter no one knows. 
The question why? involves the problem of life itself. 
His nature is as it is, a part of his being. No man with a 
camera, or his chin resting in his hand in deep medita- 
tion, can change it. To question it is to rebuke the 
creator, and all the generations of mankind who were 
hunters. If it were essential to know the why as well as 
the what, man would probably have been taught it all 
long since. 
Yet the prestige of a hunter is desirable. It presup- 
poses good qualities of mind and body, fortitude, vigi- 
lance, patience, courage and valor, the enduring of 
fatigues and hardships without murmur or yielding. 
Imagine the man with a camera or the man seated on a 
log at the, dawn of creation going forth to subdue the 
earth, and to take dominion over the animals. 
Hurrah for the comic opera sportsman ! 
GAME LEGISLATION IN SECRET. ' ' 
If Connecticut is called the land of wooden nutmegs 
and shoe peg oats, this is a humorous tribute to the 
astuteness, progressiveness and go-ahead-qualities of its 
citizens. But even as Homer is said sometimes to nod, 
so the citizens of Connecticut occasionally go to sleep, 
or if they do not go to sleep, they become so drowsy that 
they permit themselves to be buncoed by their representa- 
tives in the Legislature in a fashion which is more or 
less humiliating. 
At the present time, when the sentiment of sportsmen 
throughout the country strongly advocates the abolition 
of the spring shooting of wildfowl, when a considerable 
number of the Northern States have already abolished 
such shooting, and when a hard fight is being made in 
New York to pass such a bill, the State of Connecticut 
takes a long step backward and extends the shooting for 
wildfowl one month later in the spring. A bill was re- 
cently introduced making the close season for web-footed 
wildfowl from May i to August 31, both inclusive, in- 
stead of from April i to August 31, and the Committee 
on Fisheries and Game reported through Mr. Arnott, of 
Manchester, chairman of the Committee, on the part of 
the House, that the bill ought to pass. The bill has 
passed both Houses, and Governor Chamberlain has said 
that it will become law. 
The act is absolutely opposed to the sentiment of the 
majority of gunners in Connecticut, and its paissage is 
due to the fact that it was secretly introduced, and that 
nothing was said about it in the pybUq print? qi the 
State, so that the announcement that the bill had passed 
both Houses was an absolute and bewildering surprise 
to most Connecticut gunners. It is understood that two 
members of the Legislature, one from Hartford and one 
from Bridgeport, engineered the passage of the act, doing 
it with absolute secrecy, and taking measures to keep the 
whole matter from the public until the bill was passed. 
It is alleged that no hearings were given before the com- 
mittee, that the sportsmen of the State had no oppor- 
tunity to advance arguments against the billj and that 
every effort was made to preserve the utmost secrecy, 
and to rush the bill through with what is termed indecent 
haste. 
Many Connecticut gunners are highly indignant about 
the matter, and feel especially mortified for the State; 
less at the action of the Legislature, perWps, than at 
that of the Committee on Fisheries and Game. Theyjeel 
and say that if this committee can be manipulated in 
such a fashion, proper game and fish protection is impos- 
sible unless counsel shall be hired to reside in Hartford 
during the whole session of the Legislature to watch 
every movement of the Fisheries and Game Committee, 
and make public each act of that committee which is op- 
posed to the general welfare. 
Incidentally the second section of this bill does away 
with the prohibition against battery shooting which ex- 
isted in the old law. . . 
The good sportsmen of Connecticut — and there are. very 
many of them — are likely to express their views in no 
uncertain terms over this action of the Legislature. 
Public opinion in the State is greatly aroused over Avhat 
is regarded as an outrage, and we shall be surprised if it 
does not find expression strong enough to force an im- 
mediate reconsideration of this Act by the present 
Legislature. 
Assemblyman Finigan, of Rockland county, has intiro- 
duced in the New York Legislature a bill which is an ex- 
cellent illustration of the spite-fence spirit prompting 
much of the anti-non-resident shooting and fishing legis- 
lation of the time. Rockland county adjoins New Jersej". 
New Jersey compels Rockland county and other non- 
resident sportsmen to pay a license fee of $10 before 
shooting in the State; and now Rockland county sports- 
men are bent on retaliation. They would out-Jersey I^ew 
Jersey by exacting from non-residents a license fee not 
only for shooting but for fishing in any county of the 
State which borders upon New Jersey. The supervisors 
of the several counties may fix the amount of the fee, but 
in no case may it be less than the $10 exacted by New 
Jersey. Such a law would affect the fishing in Green- 
wood Lake, which lies in both States, and it would have 
direct and unwelcome application to many of the citizens 
of New Jersey who have been accustomed to repair to 
Rockland and Orange counties for shooting and -fishing. 
Mr. Finigan and the constituents he represents may not 
be censured for this move. It is human to give tit for tat. 
"If the Jerseymen make us Yorkers pay them," they 
reason, "we will make them pay us." As ret^diation these 
non-resident tax measures are excellent and noble, and 
their promoters are worthy of all applause. But they are 
not game and fish laws. Fish protection is -one thiiig; 
building spite fences is another. , 
Mr. Justus Von Lengerke recorded in our colurims two 
years ago the discovery of a colony of beavers' in the 
wilds of New Jersey, a region from which the anirnal was 
supposed to have been exterminated long ago. The pre- 
cise location of the colony Mr. Von Lengerke judiciously 
withheld, for he was apprehensive that the beaver would 
prove a temptation to the trappers. But now the animals 
have revealed their whereabouts and forced themselves 
into public notice by reason of their beaver nature and the 
activity and enterprise which it has prompted. They 
have built dams and overflowed the adjacent farm 
lands, and the land owners have at last become tired of 
destroying their work, and are now seeking some measure 
of relief. At Mr. Von Lengerke's suggestion, the New 
Jersey Legislature passed a bill for the protection of 
beaver; and the aggrieved farmers are thereby restrained. 
Taken altogether, this is a very curious conflict between 
wild life and agriculture within two hours of New York 
pity- 
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