Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1906. 
( VOL. LXVII—No. 17. 
I No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre¬ 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
Objects. Announcement in first number of 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14,1873. 
A BAD PRACTICE. 
How true “love me, love my dog” is, only those 
accustomed to the constant companionship of in¬ 
telligent hunting dogs can ever know. While it 
is not our present intention 'to defend those who 
are fond of dogs against those who profess that 
they are not, we cannot help asserting that the 
bond of sympathy and affection between the 
sportsman and his favorite dog is so strong that 
the loss of the dog seems scarcely less than a 
calamity to the man. And only men who have 
hunted with well trained dogs can sympathize 
with a fellow sportsman who loses his companion 
through accident or evil design on the part of 
another. 
To the public a dog is a dog, nothing more, 
and the loss of one now and then elicits no com¬ 
ment. Let a man go on a shooting trip and tie 
his horse to a roadside fence, to find it dead on 
his return from the fields, shot by the owner of 
the land, and a great commotion would be stirred 
up; but if the land owner shoots the sportsman’s 
dog its master gets little sympathy, and he may 
even be told he had no business to go on another 
man’s land. 
This is very similar to something seen every 
day on busy streets. The pedestrian, taking his 
own safety in his hands, darts in front of horses 
drawing heavy loads, is perhaps jostled, and fear¬ 
ing personal injury, does not call the driver, who 
may have failed to stop his horse, to account, but 
vents his spite on the dumb animal and goes his 
way quickly. In short, the man who shoots 
another’s dog would inflict similar punishment 
on its owner if he had the courage, but lacking 
this, tries to injure him as much as possible in 
the only other way open to him. 
This seems to us a very unjust and unsatis¬ 
factory way to accomplish an end, but it is one 
that has been and is being practiced wherever 
the sentiment against hunting game with dogs 
has grown strong. In some places there is a 
sentiment against the use of horses in fox hunt¬ 
ing, and dogs are shot by those opposed when¬ 
ever an opportunity is presented. In other states 
hounding deer is steadily being condemned, but 
friends of the reform movement are not strong 
enough to secure anti-hounding laws, or may 
have been defeated in their efforts, and they 
swallow their disappointment and shoot the 
hounds whenever opportunities to do so without 
being seen arise. 
We could cite numerous instances where sports¬ 
men have been made the victims of strong local 
sentiment in the manner described. There may 
be some excuse for the killing of dogs by game 
wardens in a state where hounding deer is pro¬ 
hibited, for it is difficult to get the owner of a 
dog to acknowledge the fact, but to gain a point 
by slaughtering valuable dogs seems very poor 
policy at best'. 
In time hounding deer will be made unlawful 
in all of the states of the North, and perhaps in 
the South as well; but forcing matters with 
charges of buckshot, smacks of black hand 
methods, and no man will ever have the right to 
say that his neighbor shall hold the same opinion 
that he holds. 
THE ADIRONDACK DEER LAW. 
The new law relating to deer shooting in the 
Adirondack region is evidently growing more un¬ 
popular as the open season passes on to its end, 
on Nov. 15. Perhaps the principal objectors are 
sportsmen who have made it their practice under 
the old law, to fish in that region in August, and 
when the deer season opened, on the first of Sep¬ 
tember, to hunt deer for a week or more, then 
break camp and return to their homes and busi¬ 
ness cares; hotel men, who had the steady patron¬ 
age of sportsmen for as long a time as the latter 
could remain in the woods; guides, who were 
employed steadily during the fishing season and 
then until cold weather set in by hunters. 
Many sportsmen cannot be away from business 
during the summer and again in October, nor 
can they remain in the woods until the present 
season opens, on Oct. 1; and some of these tell 
us they cannot, therefore, hunt deer at all this 
year. They argue that in September the foliage 
saves the deer, and under the old law compara¬ 
tively few were killed in that month. On the 
other hand, they claim, and with good reason, 
that more deer were killed in the first half of 
November than in the whole month of Septem¬ 
ber, under the old law, and maintain that if it 
is necessary to make laws calculated to save the 
deer from being thinned out too rapidlv, the sea¬ 
son should be open during September and Octo¬ 
ber only; and further if it should also be deemed 
necessary, that a limit of one deer in the open 
season for each person be made. Of course the 
hotel men and the guides object to the new law, 
for both prefer to see sportsmen in the woods 
as long as possible, and they know that those who 
go home at the end of the fishing season may not 
return in October for the hunting. 
Sportsmen returning from the Adirondacks, 
and correspondents as well, claim that the dis¬ 
satisfaction mentioned is resulting in a lack of 
respect for the present law, at least in certain 
localities, and that more deer are being killed 
than would be the case if all parties concerned 
were contented. 
If the present law was passed as a protective 
measure, and not in the interests of a few, as 
charged in some quarters, no doubt more deer 
could have been saved by closing the season on 
the last day of October, making its length just 
two months; and if this failed, by limiting a 
man’s kill to one deer each season. 
A long time contributor, who' in years past de¬ 
voted many happy months to western explora¬ 
tion, and is looking anxiously for the time when 
he can make one more “round up,” writes regret¬ 
fully of the change which has come over the 
country in these latter days: “Four years ago,” 
he writes, “I took a run out and found that it 
is hard to get into'such a ‘West’ as I had known 
in my former trips. The railroads have made 
great changes and it is hard to realize how great, 
unless one was there thirty years ago.” 
It is an experience painfully common. The 
old West exists only in memory, and as in the 
memory it is more attractive than it was in actual 
reality, so too it is a West for the loss of which 
nothing of the new can make full compensation. 
The first permanent European settlement es¬ 
tablished within the bounds of the United States 
was at St. Augustine, Fla., and it is an interest¬ 
ing fact that in the vicinity of the old Florida 
town primitive wilderness conditions remain to¬ 
day practically as in the early days. Anastasia 
Island, a long stretch of land separating the 
Matanzas river from the sea, is in large areas 
an unreclaimed and irreclaimable wild land; and 
here the United States Government has just es¬ 
tablished a forest reservation known as the 
Anastasia Forest Reserve. The tract set aside 
contains several thousand acres and is covered 
with a diversified forest growth. The preserve 
was originally suggested by Dr. DeWitt Webb, 
of St. Augustine, and to his forethought and 
activity its establishment was due. 
>1 
A circular issued by the Department of Agri¬ 
culture reports that in 1905 nearly 10,000 hunting 
licenses were issued to non-residents; in seventeen 
states and three Canadian provinces 511,905 
licenses were issued to residents; and the total 
amount paid for licenses in the states and the 
provinces exceeded $600,000. Idaho leads with a 
total for the year of $127,988. License receipts 
are usually devoted to game protection; but in 
some cases they go to the school or road fund. 
* 
It is cruel of Commodore Gregory to puncture 
that Anticosti Island wild goose egg story. For 
years we have been scanning the north land for 
some substantial evidence that the comforting 
yarn of wildfowl egg barreling for albumen pur¬ 
poses was true. The comfort of it would lie in 
the feeling that denunciation of the Alaskan or 
Anticostian plunderers in the remote wilderness 
would divert attention from our own excessive 
slaughter on our home grounds. 
Massachusetts loses on an average $60,000 
worth of timber every year by forest fires. Forest 
fires are most commonly due to railroads. It is 
a tremendous price to pay for the neglect of pre¬ 
cautions and preventives which are within practi¬ 
cable adoption, if only public sentiment shall de¬ 
mand them. 
