220 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 19, 1903. 
"Farmers, country gentlemen, officials of the Govern- 
ment who have visited the country, all express their in- 
dignation at the wanton slaughter which has been going 
on everywherr by persons who seem to have the utmost 
confidence tliat they will not be caught and punished, an.l 
the utmost contempt for the law. 
"In some districts so serious has been the slaitghter 
of the young game that hardly ?. bird is to be seen in the 
course of a whole day's march. Ready sale for the game 
thus killed is found in Victoria, where enormous quanti- 
ties are regularly disposed of. Those persons who thus 
anticipated the opening of the game season were heart- 
lessly cruel in their operations ; it was not only the 
parent birds that were massacred, but in many instances 
the entire brood, too young even to tempt the appetite 
cf a starving cat. They seemed to be killed just for the 
delight of slaughter. 
"Stories innumerable are also told of the intolerable 
insolence of these lawless armed banditti, who in not a 
few instances turned upon the farmer or proprietor of the 
land on which they were trespassing and threatened to 
blow his head off if he said anoiiier word. The marvel 
seems to be that no conflicts with serious or even fatal 
consequences have ensued. 
"It is not only near Victoria that this extraordinary 
state of things has been going on, but from distant parts 
of the island and mainland come the same stories. From 
all these reports it would appear as if the provincial 
sportsmen who have waited patiently for the opening of 
the season according to law, will have somewhat poor re- 
sults for their tramps through the neighboring woods," 
It would appear from the foregoing excerpt that the 
offenders in this instance were not that class of so-called 
sportsmen who could buy immunity because of tiicir 
wealth from any violation of the law, but, on the other 
hand, were persons who felt themselves without any 
restraint froui the law, iind were making the most of 
iheir freedom. Ignorance may be a more charitable ex- 
cuse for them, and missionary work, with tracts as to 
the rights of game and animals, is probably the medium 
to avoid their conuniiliug repetition of their lawlessness. 
British Columbia as well as most of the rest of British 
North America has been looked upon as a vast national 
game preserve, to be a dernier rcssori for the sportsman 
when the "United States is teetotally played out. But the 
game-hog and market-hunter are evidently very much 
in evidence there, loo; so much so that the press finds it 
necessary to voice a protest. The N'ictoria paper sa>s 
editorially : 
"On several occasions lately representatives of the 
Colonist have been spoken to by visitors from various 
parts of the country in regard to tlie violations of the 
game act which are now creating so much bitter com- 
plaint. The ground taken by those gentlemen is that it 
is useless to try to enforce the provisions of the game 
act in the country if the storekeepers and retaiu'ateurs, 
hotel keepers and others in the large cities and towns 
are quite willing to handle the unlawful produce brought 
to them for sale by the poachers. 
"That this practice goes on at the present time to an 
extent that may surprise a good many people is a fact. 
As one protester put it : 'There is no exaggeration in 
saying that game of almost every kind is brought to the 
city every month of the year, is readily bought up at 
prices that appear to be satisfactory enough to the 
hunters, seeing that the traffic increases rather than 
diminishes every year, and is as regularly served to the 
public who tnay call for game, be the month what it 
mav, 
* It is notorious that in some restaurants in Victoria, 
game may be had at almost any time of the year by any- 
one who wishes to call for it. Those establishments seem 
to pride themselves on the fact that they can supply such 
orders. Something like the famous Palmer House of 
Chicago, whose boast it was, and is, that nothing on its 
yard-long bill of fare can be called for that it cannot sup- 
ply. There is no such thing as asking for something on 
the bill of fare and being told that it is just 'off.' So it 
is in some of our local restaurants and hotels; it is not 
possible to catch them without game on request. 
"In the opinion of those who have made a study of 
this urgent matter, there is only one way to stop the in- 
fractions of the game act, and that is to make it unprofit- 
able in such manner as the law may devise, for any per- 
son to supply game out of season in a restaurant or 
hotel." 
A correspondent in comment says: 
"During the past five years I have endeavored to get 
some members of the Legislature to have the Govern- 
ment amend the game act similar to the Ontario game 
laws, which provide that hunters must take out a license 
costing $2.50 each year. Along with this license is issued 
two tags, which entitle the holder to kill and transport 
two deer in the open season, each deer so killed to have 
a tag attached before any transportation company can 
carry the carcass on any conveyance whatever under a 
heavy penalty, I think it would be highly in the interest 
of British Columbia to have the game act amended like 
the following: Gun license, $2.50. Number of deer to be 
killed by any one person during open season, 6, Number 
of grouse, 50; pheasants, 6; elk, 2; caribou, 2; moose, 2; 
mountain .sheep, 4; and any other kind of animals added 
that are likely to become extinct. I am sure no true 
sportsman would object to paying the small sum of $2.50 
for the privilege of finding some game when he chooses to 
look for it. Besides, it would effectually put a stop to so 
much pot-hunting as is now carried on. I know one man 
who, about four years ago, killed and shipped to Victoria 
125 deer in three months and a half, selling some for 
fifty cents each. I also know some members of a certain 
gun club killing over 100 grouse in one day. Such 
slaughter as that is not sport. Then again, is it fair that 
a miner should have to pay $5 for a license to hunt for 
mineral, while the game of the Province can be hunted 
with impunity by anyone who chooses to buy some pow- 
der and shot? I think if the fish and game clubs would 
devote some of their energies in the direction I have 
mentioned, the trouble could soon be overcome. The 
money so collected from licenses would go quite a way 
toward paying for police protection during the close 
season." 
The swell restaurants and big hotels of large cities are, 
by their character, perhaps incentives to violations of 
game laws, but there are also probably some mitigating 
circumstances in which they are not such black devils 
as they are painted in that respect. Those institutions 
cater to people who have appetites or cravings that they 
want satisfied or gratified at any cost — price is no object. 
There are some people who want venison or some sort 
of game every day — the ordinary beef, poultry, pork or 
mutton being too plebian for their epicurean palates. The 
difference in the time of close or open seasons in different 
States wotild make it possible for these establishments to 
have game on their bills of fare, by importation, when it 
was "out of season" in the Slate where the hotel or 
restaurant is located. Cold storage plants can also make 
the "game in season" phrase perennial, 
Aiid there need be no necessity of the chefs passing off 
"delicate young ram cats" for wild rabbits or hares, nor 
for offering young crows for partridges, nor for tying 
long wooden bills on sparrows for imitation snipe. It is 
easy to pass young guinea fowl, young cavies, young pea- 
fowl, squab, capons, young turkeys, kids, lamb and veal 
for game and venison, but I would prefer them under 
tjicir true colors without the sauce and tag of deception. 
Still, it is the province of swell hotels and restaurants 
to cater to the appetites of their customers, and if I get 
"game hungry" at the wrong time of year I ought not to 
blame the cook if he appeases ray appetite with a clever 
"mock" or imitation. Most sardines are not sardines, but 
how mriuy people know the difference? Barnyard fowl 
may be fed and fattened so a,s to give their flesh a game 
flavor, further enhanced by dressing or curing, and by 
appropriate cooking. If tiie diner mistakes a ducklet, 
liuklct, cockerel or gosling for teal, quail or frog, or a 
piglet for a 'possum, what is the difference, so long that 
he is l)Iissful in his ignorance, and the check or chit calls 
for tlic figures or price of the real thing? 
But seriously, as a matter of fact, there is no dire 
menace to game, even if hotels and^ restaurants are per- 
n-.ittcd to have game and venison in their menus, pro- 
vided the laws are carried out strictly and relentlessly as 
to (he amount of game any hunter may kill. Most hotels 
and restaurants know who their customers are, and serve 
game without fear of being "peached" upon. Open per- 
mission to serve game might be iget in return with hon- 
est observance of the law, and in order to give customers 
a taste of game once in a while game could be reserved 
for the menus of Sundays and holidays, and not on week 
or ordinary days. I think that with the enforcement 
of proper game laws, there is not so much to fear from 
the hotels or restaurants as there is at any time from the 
game-hog, the poacher, and the out-of-season killer, or 
"sooner." The danger to game is from the man who 
hunts in an effort to make hunting a lucrative employ- 
ment or occupation, and the one who kills and finds his 
enjoyment in the number of pieces brought down, and 
of course the otte who kifls regardless of close seasons. 
Our legislation has not always been the wisest, and 
sometimes the laws of one State has been a detriment to 
it while the same favored commerce in an adjoining 
State, and sometimes it looks as if there was collusion. 
Laws that ostensibly were of a high moral principle 
sometimes are really viciously ulterior. Take, for in- 
stance, the matter of prohibition in Iowa, Kansas, and 
Nebraska. It forced out the brewing industry from those 
States and they lost thereby much revenue directly and 
indirectly, wfhile at the same time there has always been 
a large qunatity of liquor consumed in those States. The 
cfl'ect was to benefit the breweries of St. Louis and Mil- 
waukee by killing off the competition they might have 
had from the incipient brewing interests in Iowa, Kansas, 
and Nebraska. This statement may be challenged, but 
it is a reasonable proposition that financially, if not 
morally, those three States have been the losers by their 
past prohibition laAvs. Game laws sometimes work the 
same way. A law that bars non-residents from its State 
deprives its own people from incomes and revenues, and 
yet may not protect its own game. It may keep out the 
outsiders, but permitting game to be shipped, encourages 
market-hunting and illegal killing, demoralizing its own 
shooting or fishing community. States like Iowa and 
Illinois, where there is no large game, nor any public 
domain, may have very strict laws without hurting them- 
sclve.s, or they may have very lax laws and do themselves 
neither harm nor good, but the commission houses in 
Chicago may drain all the rest of the States of their sur- 
plus game for the trade and traffic to be derived there- 
from, to the detriment of some of those States. Game 
law legislation needs to be broad, deep, comprehensive, 
and yet on a simple and common sense basis. There is 
a complaint from nearly everywhere that there is already 
too much law-making covering every phase of criminal, 
political and civic life, and in some States there has been 
very much legislation, as affecting game and fish, without 
being effective for good. Laws are passed in one session 
that must be changed in the next, but to a man up a tree 
it looks as if game and the gentleman sportsman "gets it 
in the neck" instead of the law-breaker being given his 
just desserts. Sometimes the game laws are taken up in 
the Legislatures as a fiilibustering measure to retard or 
obstruct other iinatters, and while the legislators are 
seemingly struggling in dead earnest for the welfare of 
our wild, dumb brute friends, it is a bluff and a blind, 
and more than likely some game dealer finds a loophole 
left open for him by which he cati escape responsibility 
for infractions. The flaws and weak points of the new 
law are commented upon by the daily newspapers, the 
shooting and fishing clubs pass resolutions of denounce- 
ment, and we write letters of indignation to the organs 
of our craft, and after all we never seenr "to get tbere." 
iVleanwhile Bre'r Rabbit, Miss Turtle Dove, Quack, 
Honka, Bob White, Curlew, Mazama, Lightfoot, Velvet- 
horn, and Moss Cropper all wonder why they don't get 
better protection. 
As shown in my previous letter, the tuna fishing in 
California seawaters is already jeopardized, and there is 
complaint that the abalones are also threatened with ex- 
tinction. This year ^ some of the northwestern waters 
have shov/n an alarming decrease in the usual spring and 
suutmer runs of salmon. The scandalous waste of salmon 
is a notorious fact on the Pacific Coast. Sacramento 
River ran as high as 200,000 cases in a year. It has 
dwindled down gradually but steadily to a measly paltry 
15,000 cases a season, and the probabilities of a future 
betterment are precarious and uncertain. The diminution 
in some of the northern waters has been so marked this 
year that t}|ere if ^pi^sternation finiong the cawiers, and 
relief is asked for through artificial propagation in 
hatcheries. 
Reports from the Atlantic Coast would indicate that 
the peerless lobster is getting beautifully less, and it is 
also apparent that the popular cod has been about fished 
out. And I presume the same thing has happened to the 
diamond-backed terrapin. 
So r.apid is the decrease in game when once it starts 
on decimation through the vandal, iconoclastic, destruc- 
tive hand of man, that the decline in the United States is 
almost dramatic_ and startling. The passing of the pas- 
senger pigeon, bison and antelope, and the growing rarity 
of the bighorn are sad examples. Wild turkeys have dis- 
appeared from some States altogether. There are lakes in 
the Rocky, Sierra and Cascade mountains that were the 
home of rare trouts — the goldfin of Twin Lakes being 
one of them — that are either extinct or of such few num- 
ber now as to be the next thing to it. Swans and whoop- 
ing erane.s, once plentiful in certain localities, are not 
seen at all there now. Even the land terrapin is disap- 
pearing from the Mojave desert, and patriotism is not 
saving the eagle from impending extinction. "Sooners" 
have lately been detected killing pheasants so compara- 
tively recently introduced into Oregon, Washington and 
Crilisli Columbia. 
Time was when quahogs in Puget Sound between Seat- 
tle and Tacoma grew as big as cocoanuts, their shells 
sticking out like the ears on a man's head, and they had 
necks like rubber garden hose; they were the real article 
in rubber-necking, squirting and singing; but they were 
so fat and tender that they had to be cut up into steaks! 
But the farmers took to feeding these luscious clams to 
their hogs, and it's a much smaller clam that they use s! 
the clambakes at Port Townsend and Olympia nowadays.- 
Once the sweet-meated Golden Gate crab attained a size 
of two feet square; now, while stiU abundant in San 
Francisco, they are seldom seen above ten inches ! 
Even the harmless, useful, poetical, musical buH'Crog 
needs protection, for I hear complaints that this choice 
tidbit is getting scarce in places where once they existed 
in myriads. 
There is, perhaps, _ some show of the rabbit or hare 
getting-some recognition as an animal entitled to humane 
consideration, and it is to be hoped that the cruel, cold- 
bleoded rabbit drives in the West are now a thing of the 
past. Bunny was rounded up in these drives and a gala 
day made of the event when the rabbits were to be 
slaughtered — aye, murdered, massacred, ambushed, assas- 
sinated by a howling mob of men and boys armed with 
sticks, stones and clubs. Over in Oregon the wild rabbits 
are caught and delivered alive at a rabbit abattoir, 
humanely killed, and then packed in tin cans for export. 
Boiled Australian rabbit in tins has already fotmd a good 
market in British Columbia and Alaska. Belgian hares 
sell at the stalls in San Francisco markets at from 50 
cents to $1 each, and compared with a seasonable jack or 
cottontail, I think the comparison is in favor of the lat- 
ter, and if Belgian hares, slaughtered and dressed, com- 
mand a fancy price at the butchers' stalls, it seems to me 
that the wild animal ought to be more in demand, and 
this wholesale slaughter, just to get him out of the way, 
to cease. True, the rabbit is prone to multiply, and if 
let alone might become a nuisance, as he did in Australia. 
Bitt in this country, with the price of meats from farm 
animals at their present figures, there ought to be a good 
and steady demand for rabbit meat in competition to 
beef, pork and mutton. 
And one more word before I close. I notice the fish 
dynamiter is getting ubiquitous. He is the mo.st detest- 
able and depraved of all game destroyers. The following 
from t'he Everett, Wash., Record depicts him in these 
terms : 
"A man who will fish with dynamite is utterly 'ornery.' 
He would pick pockets if he had enough of the elements 
of manhood to be nervy, and chicken stealing is his long 
suit. The dynamiter is a relic of barbarism, worse than 
the Indian, a coward, a hog, a wanton destroyer of life, 
and without the faintest notion of good citizenship." 
That's a fierce denouncement, but is it not deserved? 
Wm. FlTZMUGGIlSrS. 
Pheasants in New York. 
For the second time in a decade Major W. A. Wads- 
worth, of Geneseo, has liberated a big brood of pheasants, 
with a view of restocking the fertile fields of the Genesee 
Valley with the same which once teemed in its hills and 
woods. The first stock numbered 1,500 birds, and they 
were let go to the wild in 1891. The second freeing, that 
of June 2 to July 4, this year, sent 3,500 sturdy young 
birds into the open. Besides these pheasants, Major 
Wadsworth, aided by George Bleistein, of Buffalo, and 
the Fall Brook Sportsmen's Club, has freed several hun- 
dred quail. These birds are protected by law until 1905, 
and it is expected that by that time their numbers will 
have increased enormously. 
The Genesee Valley was originally well filled naturally 
with game birds, such as partridges, woodcock, snipe and 
quail. In 1888 the sportsmen began to see that the unre- 
strained banging of green hunters from the city and vil- 
lages had practically shot out all of the game birds from 
Portage to the rapids at Rochester. Major Wadsworth, 
whose devotion to sports of all kinds has been recognized 
as one of his most noticeable characteristics, decided that 
the only way to save the valley from total denudation- 
was to restock it. He consequently employed a skilled 
English gamekeeper, and under his advice imported a 
large number of quail from Kansas and Mongolian pheas- 
ants from Oregon. These birds were set to breeding, and 
a year later he set free his first batch of pheasants. These 
birds soon accommodated themselves to their surround- 
ings, and penetrated all through western New York, to 
the surprise of many a farmer, who was puzzled to de- 
cide what kind of a bird it was he saw in the pasture 
lot. The wideness with which the birds have ranged is 
seen by the fact that only the other day a flock of pheas- 
ants was discovered in tihe fields north of Webster, in the 
upper part of Monroe county, fifty miles distant. 
In 1898 George Bleistein liberated about 500 quail on 
the east and west banks of the Genesee. They were Kan- 
sas and Nebraska birds, and, according to all reports, 
have thrived well. Several of the winters have been ex- 
fef§iYel^ severe, however, and Wrds had a liar4 tii^f 
