Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, |3. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2 8, 190B, 
VOL. LXIV.— No. 4. 
No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
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garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
A NEED OF THE YELLOWSTONE PARK. 
The act setting apart the Yellowstone National Park 
was passed in 1872, but little public interest was mani- 
fested in that great reservation for several years after. 
All the time, however, people from different parts of the 
country were visiting it, and gradually it came to be 
known. About this time it occurred to certain money- 
making people and pgliticians in the East and the West 
that here was a large tract of country which some time 
would be of great public interest. Would it not be a 
good thing, they asked themselves, to get hold of this 
tract, to make some arrangement now, before it was 
known, by which it could be controlled by one group of 
men for ten or twenty years, or even for a longer period. 
The law permitted the Secretary of the Interior to lease 
certain limited tracts of country, and to do- pretty much 
anything else. 
Although the Yellowstone Park was thus in charge of 
the Secretary, neither he nor any of his subordinates knew 
much about it. There were a few printed reports, but 
the Park was a long way off, and absolutely inaccessible 
except by wagon or on horseback. In fact, only a little 
earlier, there was no wagon road into the Park except 
one from Virginia City, Montana, and travel through it 
was practically on horseback with pack mules. 
The group of men who thought that it would be a 
good thing to secure control of the National Park went 
about the work very quietly and judiciously, and offered 
to the Secretary of the Interior a number of harmless 
looking contracts and leases, some of which were signed. 
Even as long ago as that, however, there were other 
people who had seen the marvelous possibilities of the 
National Park, and were watching it closely, and 
when they learned of the harmless contracts and leases, 
they scrutinized them with such care as to discover that 
they were not so harmless as they seemed. A strong 
effort was made to have the leases canceled or modified, 
and this was done. 
From that time on for a good many years there was a 
perpetual struggle between two parties, one of which 
wanted the Park used for its own benefit and the other 
wanted the Park used for the public's benefit. Some- 
times it was a question of hotels, sometimes of establish- 
ing a cattle ranch within its boundaries, sometimes of 
running a railroad through it. It was a long and tire- 
some fight, but the friends of the Park "stayed with it," 
as the term is, and at last tired out the people who were 
trying to grab the Park for their own benefit, and now 
for some years there has been no effort to steal this part 
of the public's property. It may be doubted if ever again 
such an effort will be made. 
In its early history the Yellowstone Park for years 
suffered from lack of satisfactory appropriations and the 
curse of politics; but at length details from the regular 
army were stationed there, and an era of proper protec- 
tion began. From Captain Moses Harris twenty years 
ago to Major John Pitcher to-day, there has been a 
steady improvement in conditions in the Park. Each 
officer detailed there has had the benefit of the ex- 
perience of his predecessor, and it may truthfully be said 
that never has the Park been so well cared for as it is 
to-day. This gratifying state of things is of course 
a high tribute to the army, and shows that men of the 
highest class have been selected for a task which is both 
difficult and delicate. 
In Major Pitcher's recent report on conditions there, 
is a reference to the necessity of feeding the game. This 
must be done, for as the wild animals increase, the food 
supply for each individual must decrease, and although 
in ordinary seasons when the grass is good and the snow 
is light, there is still ample grazing for all these animals, 
z winter may soon come of deep snows, of crusts and of 
hard spring storms, which will sweep away thousands on 
thousands of elk, deer arid antelope, and will destroy in a 
month the results of all the thought, time and money 
that have been devoted to the preservation of game here. 
Major Pitcher should be given funds sufficient to enable 
him to irrigate certain extensive flats on the Yellow- 
stone River and its tributaries on which could be grown 
crops of hay to be harvested and held against some 
season of deep snows and bitter cold, when food will be 
greatly needed. These river valleys will grow thousands 
of tons of alfalfa or timothy, and are close to water, but 
ditches must be dug and crops sown and harvested, and 
for this work money is needed. The extraordinary suc- 
cess of the small alfalfa fields near Gardiner in attract- 
ing the antelope is an object lesson which shows what 
can be done in this matter. It is to be hoped that 
Congress and the Interior Department will unite in 
furnishing the needed funds to the Superintendent of 
the Park. All that is required is the money to make a 
start. Major Pitcher will do the rest. 
CURRITUCK DUCK SHOOTING. 
From time immemorial the great lagoons and broad 
waters lying between the fringe of the outer beach and 
the mainland along the southern Atlantic Coast have 
been a resort for wildfowl, and when the winter frost has 
sealed up the northernmost of these, the Great South 
Bay, the fowl pass on southward to Chesapeake Bay, 
Currituck Sound, and other open waters where food 
is abundant. To' such wintering grounds the fowl are 
followed by the gunners, who ply their trade all winter 
long, slaying great numbers of ducks, geese and swan. 
The number of the birds varies somewhat ; but if some 
shooting seasons are poor, others are extremely good ; 
and since the abolition of spring shooting in many States 
and Provinces, the fowl seem to be almost holding their 
own. 
Of these winter homes for wildfowl, Currituck Sound 
is the most famous, perhaps for no better reason than 
that it has been frequented by gunners of the Northern 
States since a time long preceding the Civil War. Each 
year many thousands of birds are killed, chiefly by the 
local gunners, who in large measure derive their living 
throup-h the Vv^inter from the fowl which they capture, 
but also a great many by visiting snortsmen — cltib mem- 
bers and persons who go to various resorts kept by 
natives and secure good shooting. There are still multi- 
tudes of birds in Currituck Sound, and each year the 
geese and swans seem to grow more numerous. Never- 
theless the constant s'unning, extended over many years 
and over manv months of each vear, is slowly teaching 
the birds wisdom, instilling- in them suspicion of the de- 
covs to which they once flew so unsuspectins'lv. and gen- 
erally causing them to act in such a manner that they are 
each year more difficult to secure. 
There have been seasons when the battery and the 
bush blind have almost driven the ducks out of Currituck 
Sound. From Back Bav, Va., southward over much of 
this water, batteries and bush blinds, each with a large 
stand of decoys, are scattered at frequent intervals. A 
great flock of canvasbacks, starting on its flieht north 
or south, descends to alieht among these decoys, loses 
two or three of its members, and flies on, to stoop to 
another bunch of decoys, and to be shot at asrain. This 
may continue for a distance of twenty or thirty miles, 
and the ultimate result must be to teach the birds to sus- 
pect all decoys and hence avoid them. Besides, the ten- 
ders of the batteries are always moving about, putting 
on the wing bunches of birds that may be sitting on the 
water, in the hope that they may go to the decoys. 
A wise move recentlj' made in Currituck Sound has 
been to set aside an area where batteries should not be 
used, and where it should be unlawful to disturb the 
birds on the water for the purpose of making them go 
to decoys. It is understood that at the present session of 
the Legislature Messrs. S. M. Beasley and Mr. Owens, 
the Senator and Representative from Currituck county, 
purpose to introduce a bill extending this area, so that 
it shall include all of Currituck Sound south of an east 
and west line drawn through the north end of Church's 
Island, to an east and west line drawn through Hog 
Quarter Landing. Within these limits no batteries are 
to be used, and it is forbidden to row, sail or propel any 
boat for the purpose of disturbing ducks sitting on the 
water. Such a law, if enforced, would measurably turn 
the waters indicated into a refuge for the birds, and 
would give the residents of Currituck county who gun 
there much better shooting than they have at present. 
It is to be hoped that this bill will pass. 
It is a matter of regret, alike to visiting gunners and 
those who make their living by following the Sound, 
that the efforts at wildfowl protection by the Audubon 
Society of North Carolina have not been more success- 
ful. The organization and machinery of the Audubon 
Society seem excellent, but it has failed in the choice of 
elScient wardens to patrol the Sound. From north of 
Knott's Island south to the end ©f Currituck Sound 
there is general complaint of violation of the game laws 
and inefficiency of wardens. Night shooting is common 
at many points in the Sound, as is also shooting oh lay 
days — not a violation of the law, unless done over decoys. 
We believe that the Audubon Society will before long 
take steps to improve present conditions. 
In this season when game eaten at hotels, clubs and 
private tables must almost everywhere be an illicit luxury, 
a common item of news is the report of a seizure of 
cold storage game. The papers the other day told of a 
St. Paul raid under the conduct of Executive Agent 
Sam. F. Fullerton, in which nearly 900 grouse were dis- 
covered and confiscated. They were in the possession of 
a St. Paul dealer with whom the game and fish com- 
missioners have had much trouble in the past, and this 
seizure is very gratifying, because it means that they have 
been successful when they had to deal with an offender 
who is described as one of the smoothest men and the 
hardest to catch they have had to do with for years. 
The fines which may be imposed are in the neighborhood 
of $10,000. A similar case of activity is reported from 
Sprina-field. Mass.. where six deputies of the State Game 
and Fish Commission the other day raided a refrig-erat- 
ing plant and seized thirty-seven partridges and five 
woodcock. The raid was made under the new Massa- 
chusetts law which allows the deputies to search places 
of business where it is suspected that game may be kept 
illegally, and in this instance the action was prompted by 
complaints made by local sportsmen. The case was con-, 
ducted for the prosecution by Ex-Commissioner E. H. 
Lathrop. Other seizures of illicit game have been made . 
in Worcester and other Massachusetts towns, demon- 
strating that the new search law is s-ivinar just the results 
that were hoped for when the Commissioners asked for it 
last winter. 
That is a peculiar situation in New Hampshire where 
the people of the southern counties have for several years 
been protecting deer that the ranp-e might once again 
be stocked as in the old days; and now that they have 
established a deer sunoly they are in a quandary as to 
what they shall do with them. If the protection shall be 
continued, the deer, already numerous, will come to be 
a deoredating nuisance. If an open season shall be pro- 
vided, the hunting country, which is also a settled dis- 
trict, will be invaded by hunters whose shooting will be 
a menace to human beings ; and under existing conditions 
it would be folly to allow men to go into the woods 
with high power rifles where the danger to people pass- 
ing on the roads or working in the fields at home is so 
great. In short, New Hampshire has undertaken to 
establish deer hunting in a region which is not adapted 
to the sport. The practical solution of the perplexing 
problem which confronts the game authorities will be 
awaited with interest. 
The Minnesota Historical Society honored itself not 
less than Mr. Nathaniel P. Langford. of St. Paul, the 
other day when it elected him to the Presidency. Mr. 
Langford, who takes the chair made vacant by the death 
of the late Judge Greenleaf Clark, has lived forty years 
in the West, and has been a life member of the Minne- 
sota Historical Society for twenty years and long its first' 
vice-president. He has deserved well of his fellow citi- 
zens in many ways, but we may well believe that the' 
proudest title that he bears is that of father of the Yel- 
lowstone Park. As one of its very earliest explorers, its 
practical founder, and its first superintendent, he has for 
nearly thirty-five years felt the keenest interest in that 
grand national possession ; and it must have been a great 
satisfaction to him during the past autumn again to visit 
the Park anc} tg sge it in the perfection of its prime. 
