n EARLY SHOOTING DAYS i 
(| p EAUTIFUL as are these Indian summer days, 
' j ^ lovely as are the woods with changing colors, or 
hillsides dotted with the bright green of low cedars, 
the dark hue of bayberry or the red of huckleberry 
bushes, these are not the best days for shooting. 
The sun shines warm and bright, a haze is in the 
‘ air, and he who goes abroad with gun feels more like 
sitting down, on the hillside and dreaming over the 
beauty of the landscape than |jUstily tramping for 
birds. 
Besides that, the prairie chickens have packed 
and are wild, the ruffed grouse are in the midst of 
the “crazy season,” and the quail have not yet set- 
tled down to their winter feeding grounds. True it 
is that the squirrels are active and if one finds a 
piece of woods where nuts are plentiful he may get 
many shots; true it is that many ducks have come 
on and that along the seaboard they are even plen- 
tiful, yet the warm weather takes the energy out of 
man’s muscles and he cannot put into his day afield 
the drive which in these times of game scarcity is 
needed to secure even a few birds. 
A little later, when a storm has washed the haze 
' out of the atmosphere and tom the leaves from the 
trees, and when keen frosts harden the ground each 
night, driving before them from the north wild- 
I fowl in numbers and woodcock not a few, then it 
• is that the gunner, filling his lungs with the cool, 
crisp air, can start out early and tramp long and 
‘ late, ransacking cover after cover and returning at 
, night with a weight in his pocket which shall lighten 
and comfort his homeward way. 
In the Middle Atlantic States October and Novem- 
ber, as open seasons for upland birds are much 
! better for the birds than they are for the gunner. 
' And yet we cannot complain of this, for in these 
days the favors should be sho\\Ti to the game and 
I not to the man who hunts it. 
I 
NO TRESPASSING ALLOWED 
I T is a Well-Known tact that the words which are 
contained in the title of this editorial, or their 
equivalent in meaning, are becoming more and more 
j common on the fence posts which border our farm 
I lands. It is also a truth that the words carrj’’ a 
meaning of considerable importance to those inter- 
ested ; and those interested are all who love the free- 
dom of the woods and rivers. They are interested 
in these words because the rapidity of their multipli- 
' cation in the past few years points to the fact that 
soon there will be very few farms from which sports- 
j men are not barred. 
The meaning of the words is evidently clear ! Al- 
though there may be an occasional word misspelled, 
we infer, upon beholding the sign, that we are not 
wanted on the premises. And the questions at once 
arise: Is this farmer or owner unusually hard- 
hearted and brimful of cussedness, or has somebody 
given him a reason to so plaster his fence corner 
with this hideous reminder? 
Probably only one owner in every hundred puts 
a sign on his land because there is hatred for the 
sportsman in his heart. Ninety-nine owners have 
posted their land because they have been forced to 
do so on account of the annoyance they have suffered 
at the hands of people who have trespassed. 
The man who maliciously destroys property, the 
one who destroys it unwittingly and at the same time 
is not man enough to confess to the o’wner and make 
it good, and the boy who wantonly destroys, are 
making it necessary for the farmer to post his land 
to-day. There is plenty of evidence, sadly enough, 
to show that the sign-post is justifiable. The evi- 
dence ranges all the way from “chicken killed” to 
“horse shot.” 
Those who maliciously do damage, those who do 
damage and do not make the loss good, those who 
fail to leave the floor of nature clean for the next 
beholder, are harming not only themselves in the 
eyes of the farmer; they are throwing suspicion 
upon, and doing harm to the true sportsmen who are 
out for the love of God’s handiwork, who believe in 
fair play, and who leave the camp clean. 
So the clean sportsman must bend all his energies 
against the irresponsible person who would cheat 
him of his heritage. He must teach his children and 
other children about the property rights of the other 
fellow. Otherwise it will soon happen that there 
will be but few places, and very few at that, where 
he may worship at the shrine. 
The average farmer is very glad to ^ve permis- 
sion to responsible people to go over his fields. In 
fact, he seems to know that responsible people, if in 
doubt as to their bearings, usually ask permission. 
But unless the responsible sportsmen use their ener- 
gies to help the farmers protect their lands against 
invaders, the time is not far off when all our farms 
will be adorned with no trespassing allowed. 
TIN HATS AND THE DEER SEASON 
'T'HE New York Sun printed the following con- 
versation which was overheard in a railway train 
in New York State recently: 
First Man : I saw a lot of cots, blankets, surgical 
supplies, etc., consigned to a hospital in Utica. They 
must expect a rush in business. 
Second Man: Yes; you see we have no buck law 
in New York now. You don’t have to see horns. 
Bang away at anjffhing. So I guess the up-State 
hospitals are getting ready for an influx of wounded 
hunters. 
Don’t throw away the old tin hats, boys. They 
may come in handy during the deer season. 
BAG LIMITS 
OPORTSMEN who are inclined tO be proud of 
their skill seem to feel that if they bring home 
any number of birds below the number proscribed 
by law, it is in a way himiiliating to them and two 
or more vie with each other in a friendly way. 
When, as with wild-fowl, the number is twenty-five 
per day, in some States, and a party shoots for sev- 
eral days and each member brings in the limit every 
day, the intended effect of the law is lost. In short, 
if every man who shoots is generally successful in 
bagging the limit, then that number must be re- 
duced until the bag limit really means something. 
Let us all think of game preservation first and 
of big bags afterward when we have opportunities 
to make high scores. The best way is to regard the 
limit as a reminder to count heads when the bag 
grows hea\’y and then stop if the number is ample 
for all our needs. The law is intended to restrain 
the greedy, not to remind good sportsmen that they 
must kill just so many in order to maintain their 
prestige among their neighbors. 
