Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly J ournal of the Rod and Gun. 
CSpvright, 1904, BY Forest AND Stream Publishing Co. «' j 
Terms, |i A Year. 10 Cts. A Copy. I NEW YORK S ATU RD AY, M ARC H 1 2 , 1 9 O 4 . { No. 34lBROADwiYrNEVYoRK. 
Six Months, $3. ) ■ ■ ■'^ ' ■ ; ' 
- WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIMK J' 
A CORRESPONDENT scnds US this moving complaint and 
appeal: "I live in the town of Salina, bordering on the 
city of Syracuse. Game is very scarce here, and there is 
every reason for it to be so. I want a little advice. 
Every Sunday in the spring, summer, and fall, Italians 
flock into the surrounding country and shoot everything 
from a little wren to a crow or a sea gull. They are very 
fond of robins and meadowlarks. They even dynamite 
Lea Creek in the city limits. Is it possible to do anything 
to stop this?" : 
For relief from the Italian pot-hunter nuisance in this 
particular locality our correspondent should appeall, and; 
not in vain, to the local State game protector. If that 
official does not take the matter in hand, commumcation; 
should be had with the chief protector, J. Warren Pond, 
at Albany. For the suppression of the dynamiters, the 
Onondaga Anglers' Association, of Syracuse, would be, 
we are sure, glad to extend its co-operation. We advise 
application to these several parties, and shall look for a 
report of progress. What the individual cannot do, con- 
certed action may accomplish. The foreign shooters were 
formerly rampant in the neighborhood of Orient, on Long 
Island. Last year the Orient Gun Club was organized 
with fifty members for the purpose of abating the 
nuisance of the Sunday fusillades of the Italians, and the 
effect of the movement is tersely summed up in the re- 
port: "Since the club's organization Sunday has been a 
quiet day, and song birds have had perfect freedom to 
enjoy life." 
These depredations by Italians and other foreigners are 
just now engaging the attention of workers in the field of 
game protection very generally. In response to his recent 
paper on the depletion of bird life. President Alex. Star- 
buck, of the Cuvier Club, has received a communication 
from Chief Deputy Game and Fish Warden Charles E. 
Brewster, of Michigan, who declares it to be his convic- 
tion : "The source of the greatest danger to our song 
birds is, in my judgment, our foreign element. They 
come to this country imbued with the idea that here they 
will enjoy perfect and absolute freedom. To them a 
robin or a bluejay, a sparrow or meadowlark is of as 
large value as an article of food as a game bird of equal 
size. In this regard the Italians and Finns have proven 
especially destructive in our State." 
As in New York and Michigan, so in Massachusetts, 
whose Commissioners of Fisheries and Game are seeking 
to secure from the Legislature now in session a search 
law to enable them the more effectively to cope with the 
foreign gunner plague. Several pages of the current an- 
nual report are devoted to the exposition of existing con- 
ditions as an argument of the desirability of such a search 
law. We quote these salient paragraphs : 
To our minds there is no legislation for the protection of fish 
and game so much needed at the present time as a law which will 
give the right to search, with or without a warrant. There are 
many reasons why such a law should be 'enacted, the strongest of 
which, perhaps, is the pressing necessity of securing better pro- 
tection for our insect-eating birds than is now possible. 
The destruction of insectivorous birds is going on at a rate 
that threatens their extermination in the not distant future, or at 
least their serious decimation, to that degree that they can be of 
little practical vahie in checking the depredations of the numerous 
insect pests, prominent among which are the gypsy moth and the 
brown-tail moth. 
For several years recently natives of southern European coun- 
tries and Asia Minor have come to this State in large numbers. 
There is often a colony of them in the larger cities, and in cases 
where extensive industrial operations are being conducted in some 
of the country districts, as building railroads, reservoirs, etc., 
men of this class are often brought together; sometimes, there are 
camps containing hundreds of them. 
Wherever they are, these men generally develop a remarkable 
tendency to hunt when they can get away from their work— to 
hunt regardless of law, as a rule; and especially are they noted 
for killing insectivorous birds. It is true they sometimes catch 
small birds in traps, or by the use of bird lime, but the usual 
thing is for them to get possession of a cheap gun, some powder 
and shot, and then to go into the pastures and covers and shoot 
at anything that moves, although song and insectivorous birds 
are the special objects of their pursuit. It is not difficult to 
imagine the slaughter done by the groups who go out from the 
large cities, or by those who are temporarily assembled in the 
country towns; but it is a conservative estimate, that if this de- 
struction goes on much longer, practically unrestricted, the effect 
upon the numbers of our small birds will be seriously evident. 
Occasionally these men are caught in the act of shooting or 
trapping birds, and are brought into court, perhaps to be: fined to 
the limit of the law if convicted, but more' commonly with some 
other result. But, as the law now stands, one of these njen may 
have all his pockets stuffed with birds, and boldly walk by one 
authorized to enforce the law against shooting; and the latter, 
though he suspects the true condition, must stand helpless in the 
face of one of the most injurious and least excusable violations of 
the fish and game laws. 
It will readily be seen that the chance of actually witnessing a 
violation, of the law by shooting small birds is remote; and when 
there are so few active salaried deputies, little can be done to 
repress ■ this illegal work until proper and necessary authority is 
given to the officers charged with the enforcement of law. 
This description of conditions existing in Massachusetts 
will be recognized as a truthful picture of the small bird 
destroying Italian wherever he is herded together in tem- 
porary labor camps, or where he has opportunity to go 
abroad from city tenements for the ravaging of suburban 
fields. We have more than once found occasion to dis- 
cuss these conditions as existing on Long Island on the 
east of "New York city, on Staten Island to the south of 
Manhattan Island, in Westchester county on the north, 
arid in New Jersey on the west. 
Everywhere the foreign shooter is ubiquitous; and 
everywhere he is a problem which must be coped with. 
What shall we do with him? 
For one thing a search law such as they are dis- 
cussing in Massachusetts would do something. 
Something more would be done by a law absolutely for- 
bidding the possession of firearms in the fields in the close 
season for game. Exception could be made in favor of 
landowners on their own property, and their guests, and 
persons holding their written permission. As the song 
bird killers hunt in spring and fall, the enforcement of a 
law forbidding the carrying of arms in close season would 
cut off a very large part of the shooting. 
A third expedient— which has been adopted in Penn- 
sylvania—is a law which classes the Italian with the non- 
resident sportsman, and requires him to take out a shoot- 
ing license before he may carry a gun into the fields. The 
statute provides : 
"Every non-resident and every unnaturalized, foreign- 
born resident of this Commonwealth shall be required 
to take out a license from the treasurer of the county in 
which he proposes to hunt before beginning to hunt in 
any part of this Commonwealth. Each and every person 
not a resident of this Commonwealth, and each and every 
person who is an unnaturalized, foreign-born resident of 
this Commonwealth, shall pay a license fee of ten dollars 
*. * * said certificate shall not be transferable, and shall 
be exposed for examination upon demand made by any 
game protector, constable, or game warden of the State. 
Sec. 2. Possession of a gun, in the fields or in the forests 
or on the waters of this Commonwealth, by an unnatur- 
alized, foreign-born resident or a non-resident of this 
Commonwealth, without having first secured the license 
required by this act, shall be prima facie evidence of a 
violation of its provisions." 
Any one of these plans, and any other that may be 
suggested, must depend for its full efficiency upon policing 
the fields by a larger force of game wardens than is now 
possessed by any one State. But even under existing 
conditions, and with the forces at hand, any one of them 
could be made a valuable factor in mitigating this foreign 
curse which the Almighty has brought upon America. 
THE PASSING OF THE KADIAK BEAR. 
About twenty years ago America's greatest ungulate 
passed out of existence. If not the largest of mammals, 
it was at least one of the largest bearing horns and 
hoofs. Once stupendous in its numbers, and occupying 
a third of the continent, it then utterly disappeared. 
The extinction of America's largest carnivore is im- 
mediately impending, and probably cannot be prevented. 
Not only is it the largest carnivore of America, but per- 
haps of the whole world — the giant Kadiak bear. 
So far a-s known, this species is confined to the Island 
of Kadiak, in Alaska, where from time immemorial it 
has been hunted by the natives. As the country has 
been more and more fully occupied, and as the animals 
which furnish food and fur to the natives have grown 
constantly fewer in number, the pursuit of the Kadiak 
bear became constantly closer, so that a hunter visiting 
the island not long ago for the purpose of securing one 
of these bears has expressed the opinion that they were 
becoming very scarce. He spent eighty-seven days hunt- 
ing before he secured the specimen he desired. Each 
spring the hunters, whether Aleuts, Russians, or Ameri- 
cans, patrol the deep bays of the island looking over the 
snowclad hillsides in search of the tracks made by the 
bears when they first leave their dens, about the end of 
April. So complete is the natives' acquaintance with the 
habits of the bear, that when the tracks are found, the 
securing of the bear is almost a certainty. 
Hunted in each valley which they must visit for subsist- 
ence, the bears are becoming constantly scarcer, wilder, 
and better able to take care of themselves, and at last 
they would have been killed down to a point where so 
few of them existed that their hunting would have been 
abandoned, and they would have had the opportunity 
partially to reestablish themselves. But a new element has 
come into the question of their existence. Last year, -a 
large number of sheep were introduced at a point on 
Kadiak Island. They had not been there long before the: 
news of the new food supply spread among the bears of 
the neighborhood, and they gathered near the flock to 
feast upon them. The sheep herders endeavored to pro- 
tect their charges, and the result was that about a dozen 
of these great bears were killed. 
It is stated that this season more sheep are to be intro- 
duced at a number of points on Kadiak Island, and wher- 
ever they exist there the bears will gather to feast on the 
mutton. There, too, the shepherd will be present to 
protect the sheep, and the matter of getting all the bears 
that approach them will be one of very short time- only. 
Thus this introduction of the domestic sheep on the 
Island of Kadiak will sound the death knell of this huge 
bear, and in a few years he will be known only by the few 
skins and skeletons that may exist in the museums. 
Obviously no law can interfere to prevent men from 
protecting their property on Kadiak Island, and it is 
equally certain that no bear will shun a flock of sheep^ 
Inevitably mutton will be preferred to the roots of the 
salmon berry, and even to the salmon which come up the 
stream, and before long Kadiak Island will be bereft of 
its bears. 
No man again will see the sight once witnessed by an 
eminent ichthyologist, who, approaching Karluk Lake, 
cautiously raised his head above the brow of a hill and 
saw wandering about in the meadows bordering the lake 
twenty-five or thirty of these monstrous bears, each taller 
'did much heavier than a full grown steer. Is it any 
wonder that the ichthyologist with equal caution lowered 
his head, and, turning his back on Karluk Lake and its 
surroundings, sped swiftly campward? , 
But for the coming of these sheep the attitude of the 
Alaska people toward the Kadiak bears might have been 
expressed in the liturgical salutation, "Peace to thee!" 
The intrusion of the wool interests has changed all that. 
Consider the paradox of the situation. Bears are fond 
of mutton and wax fat on it. Sheep are defenseless, in- 
offensive creatures, and in the clutch of bruin absolutely 
helpless and passive. Considering the giant strength and 
rapacity of the one, the piteous weakness of the other, 
the introduction of sheep into a bear country might be 
considered the beginning of good things for the bears, 
the end of all things for the sheep. But the actual event 
is the very reverse. In the weakness of the sheep is the 
destruction of the bear. Human intervention means his 
doom. The Kadiak bear tragedy which is unfolding here 
in the remote corner of the Northwest is only in mimic 
stage setting the rehearsal of the world-wide tragedy 
which has been enacted since the time when man first 
turned sheep herder. As it is on the sheep ranges, of 
Kadiak to-day, so was it in the vales of Bethlehem, where 
the shepherd son of Jesse defended his flocks: 
"And David said unto^ Saul, Thy servant kept his 
father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took 
a lamb out of the flock: and I went out after him, and 
smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth : and'''»/hen 
he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and sj^aote 
him, and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and 
the bear." 
NEXT WEEK. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. By Raymond S. 
Spears. 
The Blow-Pipe Men of the Philippines. By a Manila 
Qorres,pondent. _ 
