April, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
185 
taken to protect them. Two institutions — one local, 
the New York Zoological Society, the other national, 
the Boone and Crockett Club — have recently united 
in offering rewards for the conviction of anyone 
killing antelope in Oregon. 
The establishment of this refuge is a matter of 
great interest to all sportsmen, naturalists, and 
persons interested in wild life protection, and each 
one ought to bring to bear on the authorities at 
Washington — the Secretary of the Interior and the 
President — whatever influence he can exert in its 
behalf. This sage grouse refuge should be set aside 
without delay. 
REPORT OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 
'“THOSE interested in the conservation of game birds 
A w ill do well to look through the Annual Report of 
the National Association of Audubon Societies for 
1919 (T. Gilbert Pearson, Secretary) especially the 
report of Herbert K. Job in charge of the Depart- 
ment of Applied Ornithology, incorporated therein. 
A photograph of starving black ducks being fed in 
Maine catches our eye ; as also the opinion of E. H. 
Forbush concerning the Kingfisher: — “It is well- 
known that Kingfishers sometimes destroy young 
game-fish, particularly when such fish are tame and 
kept in enclosed ponds, but those who pursue the 
Kingfisher for this reason do not take into consid- 
eration the fact that it destroys as many minnows 
which are said to eat large quantities of the eggs of 
the game-fish. No doubt the Kingfisher is more or 
less destructive to fish in artificial ponds, but prob- 
ably, in the long run and under natural conditions, 
it does no harm to the fish interests.” Many fisher- 
men who have enjoyed the companionship of an old 
Kingfisher along some forest brook will be pleased 
to learn that they need not consider him an enemy. 
The interests of intelligent sportsmen run parallel 
with those of the Audubon Societies to such a de- 
gree that it is well for each to be in touch with the 
other. 
BIOLOGICAL SURVEY WORK 
17 ARLY in January Major E. A. Goldman set out 
*-* for New Mexico and Arizona, and while in Ari- 
zona investigated the condition of the elk intro- 
duced a few years ago in the Sitgreaves National 
Forest, and which are said to have done well there. 
Almost too well, one might say, for last summer a 
shout went up from some people in Arizona asking 
for an open season on these elk on the ground that 
they had increased to the number of three hundred. 
It was said for a time that the state game warden 
urged the granting of a short open season, but none 
was given. Major Goldman’s report will be 
awaited with interest. 
While the appropriation for the enforcement of 
the Migratory Bird Law is altogether inadequate, 
the Biological Survey is doing much good work in 
showing offenders that such a law exists. A large 
number of convictions have been had under the law 
— about two hundred and eighty or more. In De- 
cember three violators in Wisconsin pleaded guilty 
to the charge of shooting wild ducks between sun- 
down and one-half an hour before sunrise, and 
were fined $100 each. Men pleading guilty before 
the federal court at Detroit, Michigan, to selling wild 
ducks were fined, one $500, the other $250. In the 
neighborhood of Currituck Sound, North Carolina, 
where night shooting and fire lighting has been 
notorious for years, five violators were arrested and, 
it is said, have been heavily fined. 
Early in the winter it was feared that the great 
drought and the early coming on of cold weather 
and snow would cause severe losses to the herds 
of Yellowstone elk which come South to the winter 
elk refuge. In view of this the Secretary of Agri- 
culture authorized a transfer of funds to the Bio- 
logical Survey, so that it was able to provide 
about two Thousand tons of hay. Since then the 
winter has grown much milder and the elk are re- 
ported to have gone back into the hills. 
An individual who trespassed on the winter elk 
refuge, and who killed an elk November 28th, paid 
a fine of seventy-five dollars. 
The Montana National Bison Range was ten years 
old last October. It contains now nearly three hun- 
dred buffalo, more than one hundred and twenty-five 
elk, thirty-three antelope and thirteen deer. The 
animals are in good condition and are certainly 
worth a visit by anyone who goes out to their 
country. 
AMERICAN SMALLBORE LEAGUE 
17 OR years men have attempted to promote rifle 
1 shooting by telling others what they ought to do 
and then waiting for someone else to do it, forgetting 
that the man who fails to put his doctrine into 
practice can not reasonably expect others to act on 
his advice. The Great War made it all too evident 
that something radical and effective must be done 
to cause the public at large to become actively inter- 
ested in rifle shooting as a national sport. 
For the past fifteen months a full set of ranges 
have been kept constantly in operation at the FOR- 
EST AND STREAM SHOOTING SCHOOL over 
which guns and ammunition, distances and targets, 
ideas and methods were tried out with both veteran 
shots and green men. The fruit of this labor is the 
finest set of outdoor, smallbore ranges in the country, 
two of which can be operated regardless of weather 
conditions, and the outfit as a whole is a concrete and 
actual demonstration of what can and ought to be 
done to make marksmanship a major sport. Nor 
was the smallbore principle confined to rifles; our 
force of experts also turned their attention to the 
shotgun, and just as winter closed in we got some 
results with the 410-bore that exceeded all expecta- 
tions, and during the past winter there have been 
equally interesting developments with a new type of 
air gun and the service dotter. 
This does not mean that the old line weapons were 
neglected. A complete gunfitting outfit, tryo traps 
and five-trap layout for shotgun instruction under 
field conditions were also installed and put into oper- 
ation, together with a hundred-yard ballistic range 
for testing hunting rifles and various other original 
pieces of equipment, backed up and sustained by a 
compact, yet complete machine shop specially 
equipped for experimental work. 
In founding and developing this institution we 
have simply followed the broad and unselfish policy 
that has guided the destinies of this magazine for 
over forty years, that of rendering the sportsman 
of the country a substantial and enduring service. 
We have now turned the results of our smallbore 
experiments over to an unfettered organization, The 
American Smallbore League, that was brought into 
existence to act as a National Headquarters for those 
who want to shoot, yet can not obtain facilities ex- 
tensive enouerh to nermit the use of the big guns. 
