Forest and 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1908, wv Forest and Stream Publishing Ca 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cxs. a Copy. 
Six Months, p. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 2 5, 190S. 
J VOL. LX.-No, 17. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York 
THE PLANK IN NEW YORK. 
The New York Assembly on Monday last passed 
the Armstrong Bill, which had already gone through 
the Senate, to prohibit the sale of woodcock and 
grouse killed in the State. 
This is not all that it should be, but it is a tremen- 
dous step in the right direction. 
It will mean an end of lawful killing for market in 
New York. It will mean that the most destructive 
element in the reduction of the game supply will have 
been eliminated. The action of the Legislature is a 
great victory for the cause of game protection and for 
the sportsmen. That is to say, for the citizens of the 
State of New York. For the sportsmen are the citi- 
zens. That blatant objection to the anti-sale restriction 
which is put forward under pretense that to stop the 
sale of game would be to deprive the masses in favor 
of a privileged class, has not the slightest founda- 
tion in reason. The sportsmen are the masses. The 
market shooters are the class. There are scores of 
sportsmen to one market shooter. The anti-sale law 
gives the scores a chance to get some game on their 
holidays, that is to say, their shooting days. It de- 
prives the market shooter of pursuing game on his 
work days, that is to say, his shooting and snaring 
days. It insures the permanence of the outdoor sport 
of shooting. It stops the outdoor business of market 
hunting. It secures the greatest good to the greatest 
number. What has been done this year in Massa- 
.chusetts, Texas, New York and elsewhere by the adop- 
tion of the Forest and Stream Platform Plank 
— "The sale of game should be forbidden at all sea- 
sons," may be done and soon will be done for the 
entire country by the enactment everywhere of the 
same beneficent law. 
LIMIT THE BAG. 
The game protective idea is growing more and more 
rapidly as time passes, and a large class of people 
whose pursuits give them little interest in it and who 
are without practical knowledge of its working, are 
unconsciously acquiring proper ideas on the subject. 
Even the average legislator now considers game bills 
with a certain amount of respect. 
One form which this game protective idea has taken 
is the acquiring of large tracts of land by individuals 
or groups of sportsmen, and the stocking — or at least 
the stringent protection — of this private property. All 
along the lakes of the West, and at many points 
throughout the central region, as well as at many 
localities on the Atlantic seaboard, from Maine to 
Florida, are the grounds of shooting clubs, associa- 
tions and individuals from which the general public 
'is rigidly excluded. Such grounds the birds are in- 
vited by various attractions to visit or to remain on. 
They are protected from molestation by all except the 
owners of the land, often some spots are set aside as 
actual game refuges, where even the owners do not 
shoot. Frequently the birds are liberally fed, in case 
their natural food seems to be growing scarce. 
In exchange for the time and money expended to in- 
duce the birds to resort to such protected grounds, the 
owners take from them such toll as they can during the 
season, and when the shooting is' good they kill as 
many birds as practicable. This certainly is natural 
enough, and is very likely what we all of us would do, 
even though we may preach a different doctrine. 
Among the restrictions placed on shooting by the 
statutes of various States, there is one often advocated 
by Forest and Stream, and which in time is likely to 
be generally adopted. This is a bag limit. It is com- 
ing to be recognized that if the greatest good of the 
greatest number is to be considered, no man should 
be allowed to kill in a day or a season more than a 
certain number of birds — ^liis share. The game belongs 
to the State, and the State presumably desires the great- 
est good of all its citizens, and wishes its game to go 
as far as possible and to furnish as much pleasure a§ 
possible to all its citizens; it is certainly within its 
powers to limit the quantity of game to be taken pre- 
cisely as it limits the period during which game may be 
taken. We may say, that to be absolutely fair, the 
State should divide up the game within its borders— 
which can be killed without injury to the game supply 
—and should allow to each gunner or each person 
wishing any of the game his relative proportion of that 
game. In other words, the State should issue a ration 
of game to its inhabitants. 
There are many States which have not yet reached 
the point of legislating for a bag limit. But since such 
legislation is likely to come and probably within a few 
years, we are inclined to think that it would be a fitting 
and a graceful thing were the owners of these private 
preserves voluntarily to establish for themselves with- 
out legislation, a limit for the birds to be' killed each 
season. It would be fitting, too, for such clubs and 
associations by their by-laws to abolish— as, indeed, 
many such clubs already have abolished — the ' shoot- 
ing of wild fowl in the spring. The members of such 
associations being commonly well-to-do, and presum- 
ably persons of intelligence and education, may be as- 
sumed to know perfectly well that wildfowl ought not 
to be shot in the spring, and that the number of birds 
to be killed in any season ought to be limited. 
It is easy to recognize how very strong is the temp- 
tation to take advantage of the rare days when birds 
are flying well, when at last there comes the opportun- 
ity to make up for all the dull days that have gone 
before. Here is a man, let us say, who has an oppor- 
tunity to go shooting once a year and for a single 
week. Perhaps for five days of that week, he sits in 
his boat or blind, and sees the clouds of wildfowl fly- 
ing, or resting in great beds on the water and never 
moving or coming near his decoys. On the sixth day 
comes gunnning weather, and the birds , pile into his 
stools so fast that his gun gets hot, and he has to 
wait for it to cool off. The stress of such circumstances 
might tax one's resolution; but even under such 
conditions it would be easier to stop shooting when 
one could say he had reached the prescribed limit, than 
it would be to lay down one's gun without any such 
gratifying consciousness. 
In view of game conditions, the gunner ought to put a 
limit on his shooting, and just as we advocated that 
a part of their season should be cut off in spring from 
the Long Island gunners, so we firmly believe that the 
members of clubs and associations controlling private 
preserves, the well-to-do men who spend their time and 
their money to protect the birds— though for their own 
uses — ought to be limited in their shooting, both .as to 
bag and as to time. , 
THE TARGET SHOOTING OUTLOOK. 
There are those who predict the decline of target 
shooting as a consequence of the prohibition of live 
bird shooting in a number of States, and of a certain 
degree of public sentiment against it. The signs of the 
times do not sustain the calamity prediction. The large 
number of target tournaments already held and to be 
held throughout the United States this year, show an 
increase instead of a decrease in the sport. 
The recent Interstate Association Grand American 
Handicap at Targets, held at Kansas City, is in itself 
an object lesson of the stability and breadth of the trap- 
shooting interests in the United States. It did not have 
half the number of entries of the live bird handicaps, 
held in Kansas City, last year, yet those who deduce 
a decrease in trapshooting from this difference of en- 
tries, have given the matter only a superficial analysis. 
The two events do not admit of comparison as an in- 
dex of the trapshooting situation. There were special 
reasons why the G. A. H. at live birds, held at Kansas 
City last year, should have a large entry. It was a 
new event in that region; it was held in a section of 
countrj' containing excellent field shots; it was held in 
a city centrally situated; it had the prestige of years of 
history, and the money rewards to the contestants 
were incomparably greater. Let us now consider the 
Grand American target tournament. It has not the 
money attractions that the corresponding live bird 
event had; target shooting in the West was an old, old 
institution, and, therefore, was not a novelty; and it 
could not draw on the field shooters as could the live 
bird shooting. Probably the true reason for the 
greater entry in the live bird event was the large sums 
of money to be won in it. Let the inducement be suffi- 
cient in the way of a reward and men will journey long 
distances on a possibility of winning. However, with 
nearly 200 contestants in an event, no one can there- 
from deduce a decline in interest and support of trap- 
shooting. With gun, gunpowder and ammunition fac- 
tories running to their utmost capacity, there must be 
a corresponding consumption of their output, all of 
which denote activity in the wholesome sport of trap- 
shooting. A glance at our column of fixtures will als'p 
be proof that- there is no cessation in the target inter- 
ests. 
STEPS FORWARD. 
If the cause of game protection receives a setback now 
and then, as was the case recently in Connecticut, its ad- 
vocates have yet abundant reason to congratulate them- 
selves on the continued progress which it is making. : 
Last week the New York Assembly passed'- Senator 
Brown's bill to prohibit the shooting of duclis in,, the 
spring, and it has now gone to the Governor for signature. 
It will undoubtedly be signed, for the Assembly passed it 
in response to an urgency message from the Governor. 
As finally passed, it excepts from its operation the brant, 
v/hich birds, as is well known, make their appearance in 
Great South Bay in shootable numbers only in the 
spring. The advocates and opponents of the bill have 
thus each won something of a victory, and may fairly^ 
feel satisfied. 
In our news columns reference has recently been made 
to the excellent game law just passed in Texas. While 
we have not received the text of this it is understood to 
prohibit the sale of game, to protect many insectivorous 
birds, to establish a bag limit, and absolutely to forbid the 
taking of mountain sheep, of which there are a few leift 
in Texas. 
Wyoming is reported to have put a ten-year close 
season on moose, and a five-year close season 
on antdope. The Wyoming winter in the Roclcy 
Mountains has been one of great severity, and unques- 
tionably a vast amount of game, chiefly elk, has perished 
by starvation. Forest and Stream has- more than once 
called attention to the fact that the settling up of the 
country south of Jackson Hole has cut the elk off from, 
their winter range, and the letters received by Mr. A. A. 
Anderson, Special Superintendent of the Yellowstone 
Forest Reserve, and printed in another column, show the 
terrible straits to which these animals are reduced. 
It is understood that Mr. Anderson has contributed out 
of his own means a large amount of money to be used in 
purchasing hay to feed these starving elk, an act of 
humanity which entitles him to the greatest credit. Mr. 
Anderson suggests that the recurrence of a period of star- 
vation like that of the past winter may be avoided in 
future by making provision for feeding the elk, arid this 
should be done, if it is impossible to open a way to these 
animals to their old time feeding grounds in the Colorado 
Desert. These feeding grounds are very likely useless 
now, even if the elk could get to them, because they are 
being more and more run over by the domestic sheep and 
turned into barren wastes where no vegetation grows. ^ 
George W. Van Siclen, of this city, who died last 
Monday, April 26, at the age of 62, was one of the 
well-known anglers of New York. He was for many 
years a member of the Willewemoc Club, whose club 
house was on the shore of Willewemoc Lake in Sulli- 
van county. Mr. Van Siclen was of the class of schol- 
arly anglers, and in 1875, desiring to add to his angling 
library a copy of Dame Juliana Berners' "Treatyse of 
Fysshynge," and finding that it would cost in the orig- 
inal edition of 1496 from $2,500 to $3,000, he brought 
out an American reprint, based on the text of the Eng- 
lish reprint of 1827. 
Mr. Joseph B. Thompson's consideration of the 
bearing of the recent Supreme Court lottery case de- 
cision upon the constitutionality of the Lacey Act, will 
be read with deserved attention, by all who are inter- 
ested in the operation of the Federal law. Mr. Thomp- 
son is a member of the New York bar, who has de- 
voted much study to the subject of game legislation 
and the principles underlying it; and by his published 
writings he has done much to advance a popular under- 
standing of tlitf theory of - g--e protective system. 
