FOREST AND STREAIvt 
[Nov. 28, 1903. 
made more delicate, and this is easily done by thoroughly 
washing tlie inside with cold water and wiping with a 
cloth until the cavity is perfectly clean, for it is the clotted 
blood and other deposits that make ducks tascc "strong." 
The flesh of the edible wild duck, properly treated, is 
not "strong." We have revealed this fact at our own 
table to people who had an avowed aversion to wild duck, 
and did not know how sweet, tender, juicy, and delicately 
flavored it could be. 
The tastes of people differ as to dressing, but it is well 
to have it moist, and plenty of finely chopped apple or 
celery is excellent for this purpose. No duck, however 
.small, is as good without dressing as with it; but for 
those who do not care for it, a teaspoonful of currant 
jelly on the inside is sufficient. When the birds are 
placed in the roaster (breast down, to allow all the juices 
to remain in the thick meat of the breast), lay across the 
back of each duck two very thin slices of the best bacon 
you can get — vary the quantity according to the size and 
fatness of the birds. Always use a tightly covered roaster 
I0 rttain all the steam and flavor. This bacon, if it is of 
the right quality, will mellow the taste of the meat md 
add flavor to the gravy. Another caution : Do not roast 
the ducks toe long. Tv/erty minutes leaves the mei-.t 
very rare, and from thirty to forty minutes roasts it for 
the average taste. More than this in a good oven, with 
a covered roaster, will overdo it. Of course, ovens 
difl^er, and with a slow fire a longer time is required. 
All this is for home use, of course, as the operation has 
always been directed at our house, adding greatly to the 
pleasure and profit derived from our game. 
F. W. B. 
Staten Island Robin Shootets. 
Prince's Bay, N. Y., Nov. t8. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: The following will show how things go some- 
times— not always, but sometimes. It is from the Rich- 
mond County Advance : 
"As Game Protector Edgar Hicks boarded a Midland 
car at New Dorp on Wednesday evening, November 11, 
his attention was attracted by a bundle carried by an 
Italian. On investigation he found that it contained 
twenty-four robins. He then placed the Italian and his 
companion under arrest, and had them locked up at 
police headquarters, Stapleton. The men, who proved to 
be Charles Bresopti and H. Cantulppi, were arraigned 
before Magistrate Marsh the next morning and dis- 
charged." 
Now, these Italians felt bad; they did not want their 
names to appear in print, one of them especially. He said 
he was an editor of a newspaper. The words were put 
in their mouths that they were ignorant of the law, etc. 
When searched the editor of the newspaper had in his 
pocket a gun large enough to be mounted on the bow of 
the Cherokee for her trip to blockaded ports. An officer 
tried to have him punished for carrying concealed 
weapons : but no, he was a gentleman, and did not know 
it was against the law ; and he was cleared, and did not 
ask for a permit to do so again. 
This is only one case. Others have been different. But 
it's a bad precedent to have established. Now read the 
paper and see how they do it in Hoboken. It goes to 
show that when a man is violating the law in Jersey no 
song and dance act by his colleagues can help him out. 
Italians seem to have the right of way in the slaughter 
of our song birds. *** 
Game Presetves. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
By the heading over my last week's scrap I fear you are 
giving out a wrong impression. I am not opposed to 
game preserves of the right kind; but I object to any 
clubs having jurisdiction over ten or fifteen miles of coun- 
try, so that if a man wants to get across that region he 
must go a day's journey round. It would be a nice little 
arrangement if that part of the country should be settled 
up. 
If I were the autocrat of America, no club or set of 
men should own more than 5,G00 acres instead of 15,000 
or 20,000 which some clubs have. 
I cannot understand how an intelligent man who has 
the slightest regard for his fellow mortals can assist in 
framing such a set of laws as those by which the Bloom- 
ing Grove Park Association attempted to control the 
country round them ; and common sense should have 
shown them that they were unconstitutional. Moderate 
sized game parks are well enough, if properly managed, 
but if controlled by selfishness in such a way as to incite 
outsiders to acts of destruction by fire, and even the ex- 
tremity of murder, I am not in sympathy with them. 
DiDYMUS. 
St, AuuVStine. Nov. 21. 
Ramapo Valley Gfo«se. 
In 1890, or 3'ear thereabouts, Mr. Justus Von Lengerke 
killed seven ruffed grouse in one day in the Ramapo Val- 
ley, near Oakland, N. J. This has been the top valley 
record for many years. Many attempts have been made 
to tie or surpass it. This may seem, to the uninitiated, 
to be an easy matter. Those who have- shot in the Ram- 
apo Mountains know that it is not. The shooting 
is of the most difficult kind. However, on Wednesday 
of last week, Capt. A. W. Money, of Oakland, tied the 
record of seven rufl^ed grouse in the Ramapo Valley, and 
has a just feeling of satisfaction over the difficult per- 
formance. It will probably be over another decade before 
this record is tied again. 
The New York Deer Hounding: Law. 
The following resolution was passed unanimously by 
the Essex county supervisors last Aveek: 
"Resolved, That the Board of Supervisors of Essex 
county put themselves on record as favoring hounding, 
and the repeal of the Malby law known as the anti-hound - 
ing law, and that a copy of this resolution be forwarded 
their representatives in the State Legislature." 
This action is intended to assist Assemblyman Graff in 
his efforts for the repeal of the hounding law, and it will 
also serve to prove the falsity of the statement attributed 
jto Chief Protector Pond that Essex county wants a non- 
hounding law. Mr. Pond as an author and advocate of 
the law might naturally be expected to make such a state- 
ment, but every resident of Essex county knows it to be 
contrary to fact. The hounding law is not popular, 
and it is not enforced, and Protector Pond knows that it 
is not enforced. Why, then, continue such a law? If 
Protector Pond is consistent he should use his efforts for 
the repeal of a measure which he does not enforce and 
which seems to throw all game laws into bad repute. 
J. B. BURNHAM. 
Shooting Casualties in Ontario, 
The number of men shot in Ontario through being mis- 
taken for deer or through criminal carelessness, appear.s 
to have been larger in the deer hunting season which 
has just ended than in any previous one. It is hard to 
understand how any man whose sight is good enough 
lo. enable him to see and shoot deer can mistake a man 
for a deer unless he is drunk or partly so. It is possible 
that mo.st of the accidents have been due to the too com- 
mon idea among hunters that they are not fully equipped 
unless they carry whisky flasks. Whisky or other liquor 
is all very well in a hunting camp, to be used medicinally 
there or when the hunters come in chilled or wet; but 
the man who carries it in the woods along with his rifle 
is dangerous to all others in his neighborhood. We have 
laws to punish those who take human life through 
criminal carelessness. If they do not apply to the hunter.s, 
with or without flasks, drunk or sober, who shoot men 
they should be amended at once. — Canadian Champion, 
November ig. 
Carrier Pigeon Shot. 
Amagansett, L. I., Nov. 23.— On November 14 one of 
our young sportsmen shot at five birds flying high over 
his head, and accidentally, I suppose, wing-tipped one, 
which proved to be a pigeon. On its leg was an alumi- 
num band with the letters P. F. and the figures 41,940 
stamped thereon. 
The bird is alive, and will be returned to its owner by 
request. Dimon Conklin. 
— « — 
All communications intended for Fjrest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 
New Y« rk, and not to any individual connected with the paper. 
The Game Laws in Brief. 
is the standard authority of fish and game laws of the United 
Siaies and Canada. It tells everything and gives it correctly. 
See in advertising pages list of some of the dealer* who handle 
the Brief. 
Fish and Fishing. 
In Defense of the Pike, 
"A Friend of the Pike, who has written me a stinging 
criticism of the supposed position that this wolf of the 
water should be exterminated from the northern lakes 
and streams of Quebec, waxes quite warm in praise of the 
game qualities of Esox Itichts. He suggests that there is 
something of a conspiracy among modern writers on fish 
and fishing against the continued existence of the pike in 
angling waters, but reminds me that Dr. G. Brown Goode 
classed him among the game fishes, and that Mr. Tomlin 
thus eloquently defends him ; "I care not if this familj' 
are the sharks of fresh water, they are entitled to fair 
play. His Satanic Majesty is never so black as he is 
painted, so the Esox luciiis is cousin german to the 
Nobilor vulgate mascalonge, and partakes of his noble 
nature. He is a foeman worthy the steel of the most ar- 
dent angler. Some anglers call the family 'snakes.' I 
pity them. Go where pike can be found, fish for them 
with legitimate tackle, and give them a fair chance, and 
they will give just as much pleasure as any royal small- 
mouth bass that ever swam." 
My correspondent is altogether wrong in his assumption 
that I am anxious to see the pike exterminated from our 
northern waters. Like him, I have fished for it in Lake 
St. John and in the Peribonca River, from which the 
largest specimens reported in America, so far as I have 
been able to ascertain, haA'e been taken, one of which 
weighed 49 pounds and the other 42. And I have enjoyed 
the sport, though it had not the same attraction for me 
that the same art had as a boy, when I trolled for "Jack" 
in English waters. Nor am I able to agree with Mr. 
Tomlin that the pike will afford the same sport that the 
small-mouth black bass does. 
I had hoped that it had been made perfectly plam that 
my agitation for the destruction, or at least for the thin- 
ning out of the pike in the Peribonca River, was not be- 
cause of any antipathy to him as either a game or food 
fish, but simply because he stands in the way of his bet- 
ters, for whom his mouth is an open sepulchre. Dr. 
Goode, to whom my correspondent refers me, admits that 
the pike has few friends, and says that angler-fishculturists 
have good reason for their spite, since the hungry Esox 
is a sad foe to the proprietor of a fish preserve, and that 
until it has been banished from a pond, no other species 
can be expected to thrive. 
Trout and ouananiche abound in the Peribonca a'nd 
some of its tributaries, and plantings of both young sal- 
mon and ouananiche have, I understatid, been made of 
recent years in some of the smaller streams flowing into 
the river in which the largest of these pike are found. 
It is perfectly certain that there cannot be any sensibk 
increase in the other fish of these waters while the in- 
crease of the pike is permitted to. go on uninterruptedly, 
which means that the planting of young salmon and 
ouananiche where the pike abound, simply enables the 
pike to increase in number and to put on additional 
weight, as 1 pointed out in a former letter. 
The pike in these waters grow to so enormous a size 
and there is so much satisfaction in the killing of the 
huge tyrants, that I should really regret it as much as 
anybody else if some stretch of water was not left to 
them. But some of the tributaries of the Grand and Lit- 
tle Peribonca, and particularly the Aleck and the Riviere 
des Aigles are so admirably adapted for nurseries for the 
young of various varieties of the Salmonidse that it is 
scarcely reasonable to ask that they should be given over 
to the pike. 
However, even should the greater number of the pike 
in the lower stretches of the Great Peribonca be 
destroyed, there are many reedy and weedy localities 
above the Chute au Diable and between the eighth and 
ninth falls of the river, where the pike are always likely to 
be plentiful enough. Twelve to twenty pound fish are 
often taken here, and there are also very much larger 
ones to be seen and caught there, as well as in Lafce 
Tschotagama itself, some miles higher up the stream. 
The enormous natural increase of this fish is illustrated, 
by Buckland's statement that in a pike of 28 pounds the 
roes weighed 21 ounces and contained 292,320 eggs, while 
in one of 32 pounds there were 595,ooo eggs, weighing 
5 pounds. 
It is perhaps rather remarkable that there are no 
records of any such colossal pike as those found in Lake 
St. John waters to be had in the annals of American 
anglers fishing in the United States. I am inclined to 
ihink, with Dr. Gopde, that this may be due to the fact 
that large pike are usually pronounced by uncritical 
anglers to be maskinonge. Even Dr. Bean does not cite 
any very large specimens of the pike as having been 
killed in American waters. Referring to the 145-pound 
fish said by Mr. Pennell to have been captured at Bre- 
genty in 1862, and to the Scotch record pike of 72 
pounds, recorded by Daniell in his "Rural Sports," Di". 
Bean quotes Frank Forresters mention of individuals of 
16 to 17 pounds each in America, and the case of one 
caught in Lake George in 1889, which weighed a little 
more than 16 pounds. 
The pike of Lake St. John and the Peribonca take with 
equal avidity the spoon, phantom minnow, and either live 
or dead minnows or other small fish. They are lively'^ 
enough in these northern waters and make a prolonged 
resistance when hooked. Dr. Henshall is authority for 
the statement that they will rise to a large, gaudy fly. 
It has never been my luck to hook one in this manner,- 
though I have taken the dore or wall-eyed pike on a trout ^ 
fly. 
Many Americans object to the pike as food, declaring 
him to be bony and without flavor. Taken out of the cold 
northern waters of Canada and well and promptly cooked, 
however, he makes a very delicate morsel. 
"Roast him when he is caught," said Izaak Walton, 
"and he is choicely good — too good for any but anglers 
and honest men." There are various methods of doing 
this. For my part, I prefer the fish baked, with a forcing 
of bread crumbs, herbs, lemon peel, and butter. Thomas 
Barker, in his "Barker's Delight, or Art of Angling," 
written before the time of Walton, orders the pike to be 
stuffed with oysters and butter, and to be basted with 
claret and then with butter while roasting. 
It was this same Barker to whom Walton was largely 
indebted for what little he knew of fly-fishing, and who, 
by the by, was the first writer to speak of the sport some- 
times enjoyed in England of tying one end of a line 
around the wings of a goose, and baiting the hook at the 
other end for pike, so as to bring into conflict the goose 
on the surface of the water and the pike below, until the 
latter is tired out with its continual struggling. 
If the story of a pike which comes to me from Carling 
in the Georgian Bay district be true — and I have no 
reason to doubt its correctness — it will help to explain 
what becomes of a large proportion of the young pike 
that are hatched. An angler named Moor£ was out 
trolling with a daughter of Mr. Alex Alves, when the lit-, 
tie girl, who was holding the line while Mr. Moore 
rowed, felt a strike and handed the troll over to her 
companion. As he proceeded to draw the fish toward the 
boat, the line at first came easily, showing that it was a 
small fish that had been hooked, but a sudden tremendous 
jerk indicated that something unusual had happened, and 
the line was almost dragged out of his hands. It was 
gradually drawn up again near to the boat, when the 
heavy strain suddenly relaxed, and it seemed for an in- 
stant as if the fish had escaped, when again, as the troll 
was about to be lifted into the boat, the line was seized 
a second time and again released. Rapidly lifting the 
troll into the boat to examine the hooks and make a new 
cast, a small pike was swung into the boat, which had 
been all the time securely hooked, and in a great deal less 
time than it takes to tell it, a monster pike rose up along- 
side the boat, and following closely the troll upon which 
was the small fish, the larger one landed over the side into 
the boat. It was secured and killed and was later found 
to weigh twelve pounds. An examination of the small 
pike showed that its sides had been cut and torn by the 
teeth of the larger one, which had twice seized and tried 
to swallow it as it was being drawn toward the boat. 
How Cod Fishing is Caftied On. 
The system of prosecuting the cod fishery of Nova 
Scotia has undergone a considerable change during the 
last few years, so that ports which until recently sent out 
hundreds of fishing vessels have now lost all importance 
as fishing ports. Lockport and Shelburne are cases in 
point. Lunenburg, on the other hand, has become the 
greatest fishing port in Canada — in some respects in the 
world. It owns and fits out the largest banking fleet, as 
it is called, in the world, sending out nearly 350 vessels, 
registering over 30,000 tons and carrying over 5,000 men 
and boys. This great fleet annually lands, approximately, 
50,000,000 pounds of cod, which realizes a value of 
$1,500,000. The secret of the success of the Lunenburg 
people lies in the fact that they have adopted the co- 
operative principle in the fishing industry. The great 
majority of the vessels of the place are owned by those 
who sail them. The shares in these vessels are usuall.v 
by sixteenths, though some vessels have twenty-five or 
more owners. A sixteenth share in a new vessel is usually 
worth about $364, and the owner of it, in a good season, 
may make some $700 in a few months. 
Gulf Fisheries arc Threateted. 
The professional salt water fisherman, like too many of 
the fishers in fresh water, frequently act as if they be- 
lieved it beyond the arts of man to. exhaust the harvest 
of the water, despite the teachings of experience to the 
contrary. Some of the fishermen of the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence are. now. in a state .of alarm, and not without goo(i , 
