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, $2. 
■( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 190B. 
( VOL. LXV.— No. 12. 
(No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
jThe Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. ^ Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre== 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natura. 
nhiect^ Announcement in first number of 
' * Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE SEASON. 
This is the season when the blood of the sportsman 
R courses more quickly. He is more alert, buoyant, vigor- 
ous, purposeful. The game season has arrived. 
The ripening harvests, the beautiful autumn tintings 
of matured vegetation, glorified here and there with 
bright purples, yellows and reds where Jack Frost has 
Jouched his chilly, sharp brush on the landscape, denote 
that the game birds are ready for the gunner, and that 
the game laws for a season will not long bar him whose 
pleasure afield is with bird dog and gun. 
The prairie chicken is the early bird of the season. It 
serves admirably to tune up the shooter’s eyes and nerves 
which, at first, are likely to be slow and dull from prior 
weeks of disuse of the shotgun. 
In the early season, the chicken is slow of wing and 
short of flight. Then, the shooter who cannot score well 
with the shotgun, is a bungler indeed. Its abode is in 
the open, hence the chicken is denied the opportunity for 
strategy afforded by a timber habitat, and has not the 
consequent immunities as enjoyed by its confrere of the 
I timber, the ruffed grouse. 
!|l Yet even with its slow and uniform flight opposed to 
I the skill of the shooter, the novice and the nervous 
gunner find that the problem is of abounding difficulties. 
^ They become hurried and flustered at the rise, aim badly 
I or not at all, shoot too quickly, then descant eloquently 
$ on their ill-luck, resolving to do better next time. Next 
I time they repeat the panicky performance. After a time, 
i nerves become steady from familiar associations, and 
K skill is acquired from practice. 
While the chicken is an easy mark in the early season, 
■; it is one of the most difficult birds to kill awing later 
1 after true fall weather has set in. A few frosts, a steady 
j cold wind for a few days, and the tame bird of the early 
is season is transformed into one of the wildest. It then 
y will flush yards ahead of the trailing dog, often out of 
r gun shot. At best it affords then the hardest of shooting. 
i Wild and heavily feathered, strong and swift of wing, it 
e, is a bird with powers to test to the utmost the skill of 
I the most clever shot. When the high winds of fall set 
[j in, it congregates in large packs, and the shooting of it is 
tj practically over for the year. 
I On Sept. i6 the ruffed grouse season opens in New 
^ York. In some of the neighboring States the open sea- 
i) son begins earlier, in some later. 
The ruffed grouse is justly esteemed as being the super- 
I lative of the game bird family, the ultima thule of sport 
:,| and of epicurean titbits. 
However skillful one may be as a wing shot in the 
I open, such is no index whatever in respect to his expert- 
tj ness in ruffed grouse shooting. 
I Strategic, infinitely cunning and courageous, swift and 
f ' strong of wing, the ruffed grouse is a prize only for him 
il| who is quick and sure in the use of the shotgun. In the 
I heavy cover which is its choice of habitat in the open 
I season, only the briefest glimpse of it is afforded when 
J it takes wing. The successful shot must snap it on the 
instant or mourn a lost opportunity. Let there be a tree, 
! a ledge, a fence available, and it strategically swings be- 
hind it, shielded from the shooter and from danger. 
Yet in the open, where at rare times it is discovered, 
tempted to forsake, briefly, dense cover while seeking- 
berries, or other appetizing food, it is as easily bagged as 
is the prairie chicken. Deprived of trees, ledges, etc., its 
cunning avails nothing, and in fair, open shooting it falls 
fin easy prey. 
He who aspires to succeed well in the pursuit of the 
ruffed grouse, should eschew the chokebore. A short- 
barreled gun which will make the widest pattern, con- 
sistent with even and proper distribution, is the gun for 
the successful grouse shooter. 
The quail, as a bird for the sportsman’s consideration, 
is a happy compromise in attributes, between the prairie 
chicken and the ruffed grouse. It makes its habitat both 
in cover and open.- It has a much wider distribution 
throughout the United States than has the prairie chicken 
or the ruffed grouse. Though less in size, it vies with 
its confreres of timber and prairie in beauty of color 
and in delicacy when prepared for the table. 
While the quail has not the wonderful cunning of the 
ruffed grouse in cover, it nevertheless has such swiftness 
that the skill of the best shot is taxed. He who is suc- 
cessful then needs to be quick and accurate, a difficult 
combination in snapshooting. 
In the open, the quail is not extremely difficult- to bag 
over points of setter or pointer. Yet, even in the open, 
the successful sportsman must need be skillful. 
The full-choke gun is frequently used on quail. A more 
improper selection could not be made. A modified cylinder 
is by far the better. The greater number of quail are 
picked up within thirty yards of the shooter, and many 
birds are killed in the air within twenty yards of him. 
One need target a full choke gun at twenty yards to 
demonstrate its unfitness for the close shooting of quail 
or ruffed grouse. 
THE PLANK IN NEW ZEALAND. ■ 
The principle of the “Platform Plank” has made its 
way around the world as far as New Zealand, where a 
proposition embodying it is now under consideration in 
the form of an amendment to the game act providing 
that “the sale and export of native or imported game 
shall be prohibited for a term of three years.” As the 
shooting resources of the country are for the most part 
due to the enterprise of the Otago Acclimatization 
Society, which has been for the past thirty-nine years 
engaged in stocking the covers with foreign species, we 
may feel the heartiest sympathy with their present con- 
tention that a non-sale system should be adopted to have 
its part in game preservation. Thanks to the work of the 
Society, California quail have become an established 
species; and Virginia quail have been introduced. What 
strikes us as a more notable achievement than any other 
with wild birds, is the successful introduction of wild 
geese and wild ducks, which are now fairly established 
and quite able to take care of themselves. Last year for 
the first time they were allowed to be shot, and it is said 
that under antipodean conditions they are displaying all 
the wariness and circumspection shown by them in the 
rest of the world. A consignment of Canada geese has 
been added to the stock this year. 
IN A CITY CHURCHYARD. 
The parks of Manhattan Island attract a multitude of 
birds during the spring and autumn migrations and many 
species remain to breed. Even the churchyards have their 
feathered visitors. Mr. B. S. Bowdish has recorded in 
the Auk some interesting statistics which are the results 
of observations made by him in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 
The churchyard attached to St. Paul’s Chapel is in the 
lower part of the city and in the very midst of the tur- 
moil and uproar and hurly-burly of the town. The plot 
comprises an area of 332 x 177 feet; 120x78 feet are 
occupied by the church edifice, and another structure 30 
feet wide, across the yard, is occupied by the school 
building; the open space thus left being but a tiny bit of 
green for the birds of passage to spy out amid the mass 
of masonry and metal surrounding and overtopping and 
inclosing it. The churchyard lies between Broadway on 
the east, with its vast volume of traffic, and Church street 
on the west through which runs the elevated railway. It 
is bounded on the sides by Vesey and Fulton streets, both 
crowded and busy thoroughfares. 
There are many trees — among them the noble Wash- 
ington elm, a survivor of eight trees planted in 1766, the 
vear when the church was completed — and much shrub • 
bery ; but for all this one might fancy that the shy wood 
drvellers would not venture to pause here where the hub- 
bub is rarely stilled and where the sights and sounds 
alil^e must be both unaccustomed .and alarntin^, In this ' 
restricted and unpromising field Mr. Bowdish has in three 
seasons’ observations noted no less than forty species, 
comprising 328 individuals. The observations have been 
made for the most part in the few moments of the noon 
lunch hour, and occasionally in the morning. 
This is manifestly an instance of one’s finding what he 
is looking for and making the most of one’s opportuni- 
ties. It is not more interesting as an ornithological record 
than as an admirable illustration of intelligent seeing; for 
this bird lover here in the midst of New York’s turmoil 
and bustle has seen more of bird life intelligently and 
appreciatively, and with the reward which comes of in- 
telligence and appreciation — more than ten thousand 
others have noted who, constantly surrounded with an 
abundance of bird life, have not the eye to see it. 
TO BANISH GLOOM. 
He was grouty, as was plainly to be seen when he came 
into the car, and what he said tO' his wife was unheard by 
others, but that it was ugly was eyident from his face, and 
not less from hers, for she assumed the expression one 
sometimes sees on a woman’s face in public, when she is 
stung to the quick by a brutal remark, but by reason of 
her pride tries to brave it out and smile and make others 
believe that she is happy. “That man ought to have a 
month in jail,” commented the younger of two fishermen. 
“No,” said the elder one, “what he wants is not jail, but 
a week in the woods. That is the thing to straighten 
him out, and make the world look pleasant to him and to 
make him look pleasant to the world.” 
In which there is much of truth. If a man is not 
glumpy by nature, if ugliness and sourness and a ten- 
dency to scowl are not ingrained in his constitution, the 
woods treatment is likely to eradicate the sourness and 
send him home a changed man. What appears to be 
innate meanness of spirit and ugliness of disposition may 
be nothing more than an abnormal condition brought 
about by being toO' long in a rut. The remedy is sim- 
plicity itself — a change of scene and association. There 
is no more complete and engrossing change than to revert 
to the simple life of the woods ; nO' more engrossing occu- 
pation open to the average man than the luring of fish 
from the water or the hunting of game. When one is. 
absorbed in the scheming to land his fish he is not just 
then thinking of anything else. The rest of the world 
is blotted out, the attention is devoted to that one thing. 
The change of thought is complete, and that change is 
rest, the most wholesome rest, and recreation the most 
efficacious and lasting. Camp is a place of restoration 
and readjustment. With such results assured, to go fish- 
ing or shooting as one’s taste may incline, is sometimes a 
moral dutjc No one has the right to be disagreeable to 
family and friends and associates because he is out of 
health, for by taking a week or a month 'off shooting or 
fishing he could become himself again and dispense smiles 
instead of scowls; and cheery greetings in place of surly 
grunts, and show a smiling presence instead of throwing 
a wet blanket over the company. 
The steady decrease of the prairie chicken is not entire- 
ly due to the destructiveness of the shotgun. The plow is 
a contributory destroyer. While agriculture, within certain 
limits, is a benefit to the chicken inasmuch as it furnishes 
a food supply, if carried beyond those limits it is a harm. 
The chicken needs a certain amount of wild land in which 
to nest and find shelter. If the plow in a certain locality 
is worked so thoroughly as to appropriate all the soil to 
agriculture, the balance between a food supply, breeding 
ground and shelter is destroyed, and the chicken has to 
face a sterner problem of existence in consequence, one 
which year by year tends to the extermination of the 
chicken in such locality. The plow and the shotgun com- 
bined, under the present liberal use accorded the latter in 
a long open season will exterminate the chickens in time 
to a certainty. The restrictions legally imposed by a close 
season and a limited bag are far short of the restrictions 
necessary to establish a proper balance between repro- 
duction and destruction. 
The reproductive powers of the chickens are relatively 
unequal as opposed to the long open season and the de- 
structiveness of the modern skillful sportsman. Hence, 
in the years of the future the chicken will progressively 
decrease in number as it has in the years of the past, if 
more stringent and greater protection is not accorded it, 
