944 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 15. 1906. 
The Season in North Carolina. 
Raleigh, N. C., Dec. 10. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: Secretary T. Gilbert Pearson, of the 
North Carolina Society, brought to Governor 
Glenn some extremely handsome English pheas¬ 
ants, which were killed on the preserves of Mr. 
W. Gould Brokaw, of New York, in Randolph 
county, near Greensboro, in a hunt on Thurs¬ 
day, this being really a drive in the English 
style. There are over 3,000 pheasants on Mr. 
Brokaw’s preserve. Beaters went through the 
undergrowth and drove the birds, which were 
shot as they flew over the party,, composed of 
Mr. Brokaw and his friends. When 100 birds 
had been killed, the shooting stopped. These 
birds have spread into three counties, and it is 
hoped a law will be enacted to protect them. 
Mr. Brokaw warmly favors this aqd says the 
best method will be to impose a gunner’s tax 
of $10 on persons who shoot imported game 
birds. He says he will pay this license just as 
other people do, and that by this protection 
the birds will spread everywhere over the State 
as they have spread in Washington and Oregon. 
To show what protection of game will do, it 
may be stated that Mr. George Gould says that 
on the preserve on Thanksgiving Day thirty- 
one coveys of partridges were flushed before 
lunch. 
Secretary Pearson says that arrangements are 
to be made for a meeting of the Audubon So¬ 
ciety and of sportsmen at Raleigh about Jan. 
15, when the Legislature is in session, to con¬ 
sider the matter of a uniform law as to the close 
season for partridges. It is the desire to have 
it end Nov. 15 and to begin March 1, as it is 
found that many birds are not fully grown by 
Nov. 1. Some counties allow shooting from Oct. 
15 to March 20, and in three counties there is nO 
law at all. The game wardens are very active 
in preventing the shipment of birds out of the 
State and at Charlotte and Greensboro they 
kept such careful watch that a few days ago 
nearly 1,500 birds which shippers at these places 
had arranged to get out could not be sent, and 
the would-be shippers had to have them hauled 
off and thrown away. At Greensboro a game 
warden was on duty all night watching the sus¬ 
pected persons. 
The shooting season has been on a month in - 
nearly all counties in North Carolina, though 
Mecklenburg, Buncombe and a few others have 
an open season which begins Dec. 1. In the 
main the weather has been unfavorable, having 
been almost all the while dr-y and very warm. 
There seems to be plenty of birds in most sec¬ 
tions, and they are very well grown now. The 
pea crop, which is important for them, was, 
however, almost a failure, owing to the ten days 
of rain which followed frosts in October, and 
ruined almost all this crop. However, there are 
other good pickings for the birds, and in the 
east there is very little chance of snow being 
deep enough to cut them off from food. It is 
quite notable this autumn that there is a small 
crop of acorns, nuts, locusts, etc., while last 
year the trees were loaded. The old reliable 
persimmon is abundant, this never failing. 
But little has been doing on the coast, as prac¬ 
tically no ducks worth speaking of have as yet 
come in, owing to the warmth of the weather. 
A number of new game wardens have been ap¬ 
pointed by the Governor. Some counties along 
the coast have three or four now. It remains 
to be seen what sort of protection they will 
give. Some hunters have come in from other 
States to shoot, mainly in the central part of the 
State, where there are preserves and where the 
hunting clubs or individuals often pay the State 
and county taxes on large areas of land which 
the farmers then protect for them. I am told 
by a well-known Durham sportsman that he is 
very sure some men in that section have vio¬ 
lated the law against trapping and netting par¬ 
tridges, and an officer has gone there to make a 
still hunt for the offenders. There are also vio¬ 
lations of the law in Buncombe county, where 
the season opened Dec. 1. Pot-hunters have 
been out, particularly during the past ten days, 
and strings of birds have been offered for sale 
in Asheville. There is only one game warden 
for that large county, 'and it is almost im¬ 
possible for one man to cover so much territory. 
A good many grouse are being killed in 
Wilkes, Ashe and other counties, in the foot¬ 
hills of the Blue Ridge. They are in very fine 
condition. Many turkeys have been killed in the 
State and large numbers of deer, the season for 
the latter having been on some time. Bear 
hunters are abroad in the extreme east and 
west. 
Curator Brimley, of the State Museum, was 
out during the past ten days at the lakes near 
Havelock, but found poor sport, as the ducks 
had not come in. In that remarkable section 
he finds all sorts of game, from alligators to 
ducks. In one of these lakes is the large colony 
of cormorants already reported. Mr. Brimley 
secured some remarkable photographs of it, and 
these were recently shown on stereopticon 
slides. It seems that there will be a number of 
sportsmen from the north in the State this sea¬ 
son, notably at Pinehurst, where plenty of birds 
are reported. General F. A. Bond will have a 
number of them at his lodge in Robeson 
county. Fred, A. Olds. 
The California Situation. 
San Francisco, Cal., Dec. 1 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: The California Fish and Game As¬ 
sociation, at its recent convention at Monterey, 
called for legislation still further protecting 
game and fish, and asked by resolution for the 
prohibition of the sale of wild ducks and for a 
bag limit of twenty-five birds per day. 
The resolutions have greatly excited the mar¬ 
ket hunters, and some of the daily newspapers 
have taken the side of the market men, denounce 
game laws as for the benefit of the rich man 
as against the poor, and accuse the protective 
association of trying to turn the great State of 
California into a province of merry England. 
Some of the game wardens take the same view, 
and one of them is quoted as saying, “I came 
from a country that has the strictest and most 
unjust game laws in the world—where a poor 
man has no opportunity to even taste a bit of 
game—but if laws were enacted as proposed by 
the Monterey meeting, the law of England would 
not be in it.” 
The persons arguing on different sides of 
game protective questions in this State seem, 
I am -sorry to say, more disposed to quarrel 
and call each other names than.to go to work 
and reach a basis of agreement on which all 
may unite to protect the rapidly diminishing 
game. No adequate system of protection will 
ever be attained by persons who confine them¬ 
selves to calling each other pot hunters on the 
one hand, and on the other a privileged class. 
Furthermore, newspaper reporters who de¬ 
clare that there is no need of further restriction 
on the shooting and sale of ducks take a very 
narrow view. When they write that the birds 
are so numerous at times as- to be a pest to the’ 
farmers, and thus intimate that they should be 
destroyed in great numbers, they forget the 
lessons learned too late in other parts of the 
country, where once game was as abundant as 
it is now in California, but where to-day none 
exists. 
It has been found in other States that when 
the sale of game is forbidden, his occupation 
is taken away from the market hunter, and so 
the worst enemy of the game was removed. 
. F. M. 
Wood Buffalo in Danger. 
Recent reports from the extreme northwest, 
received by Mr. Fred White, the Comptroller of 
the Northwest Mounted Police, state that the 
wood buffalo, often spoken of as the Peace River 
buffalo, are becoming very scarce and that now 
they are seldom seen. 
It has long been reported that wolves were kill¬ 
ing all the calves annually born to this herd, 
and now it is said that the wolves are killing 
the cows. This, if true, is a misfortune for 
which no adequate remedy has as yet been sug¬ 
gested. 
Save the Deer. 
Jamestown, N. Y., Dec. 1 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: In your last issue your correspondent 
Juvenal says that I have misunderstood and mis¬ 
represented his position in relation to the Ad¬ 
irondack deer law. This fact would probably be 
of no great consequence, save that the deer 
law is a matter of gravest importance, and such 
a line of argument as that of Juvenal’s, claim¬ 
ing as he does to voice the sentiments of a con¬ 
siderable number of sportsmen, seems to me a 
proper subject for further review and discussion. 
Ignoring his humorous sally as to what I 
thought he said, let us again analyze his com¬ 
munication of Oct. 20 and fairly summarize what 
he did say. First, he states at some length that 
the present law is unpopular with the Adiron¬ 
dack residents and summer visitors. Next he 
says that the time for providing venison for 
the Adirondack resident’s table is postponed and 
his chance for earning honest dollars by guid¬ 
ing is almost wholly taken away. 
Then follows the statement that many summer 
visitors could hunt in September, blit not in 
October, and most of these, adds he, are satis¬ 
fied with one deer in a season. Next he is sure 
that the legitimately-to-be-considered interests 
of the hotel and boarding house keepers are on 
the side of an open September. Then he sub¬ 
mits evidence that the law is being extensively 
violated by hunters who will not respect any 
law that does not give them September shooting. 
“Thus much for the facts—now for the opinion,” 
says Juvenal. In this opinion he advocates 
opening September and lengthening the season 
by two weeks, to meet the Adirondack idea of a 
“reasonable” law. If found necessary, restric¬ 
tive measures should be applied later. In other 
words, he would first increase the opportunity 
to kill, and then when the game begins to thin 
out, apply the doubtful remedy of limit—an old 
false theory of game protection which admits 
its own fallacy and carries its own condemna¬ 
tion. 
And it is upon this flimsy foundation of 
specious argument and shallow pretext of “the 
greatest good of the greatest number” that 
Juvenal and his “many intelligent sportsmen” 
would frame a deer law! Think of relaxing a 
game law because the curtailment of privileges 
is locally unpopular, because the guides cannot 
make so much money, because the summer 
visitors cannot wait-, because the hotel men need 
more profits, and last, but not least, because 
the law breakers will respect only such legisla¬ 
tion as will make an open season long enough 
to cover the period of their depredations! And 
yet forsooth, Juvenal complacently assures us 
that a law pandering to this sort of .clamor 
“would effectually preserve our noble game.” 
It is a deplorable fact that the covers of this 
country are being stripped of game by laws 
based upon just such selfish local considerations 
as those argued for by Juvenal. It is a still 
sadder story that Juvenal’s creed has all too 
many disciples, a fact that many a game-de¬ 
pleted* commonwealth has discovered to its 
sorrow. 
Let us earnestly hope, however, that in-the 
great enlightened Empire State, Juvenal’s fol¬ 
lowing will be confined to his disgruntled Ad¬ 
irondack residents, guides, summer campers, 
hotel men, and law-breaking neighbors of what¬ 
ever ilk, and let us also hope that thoughtful 
sportsmen will stand for a deer law based upon 
more worthy considerations than the selfish 
clamor of local interests insidiously cloaked 
under the specious plea of “the greatest good of 
the greatest number.” W. A. Bradshaw. 
Oklahoma Cxpeditiousness. 
Everet Hite, at Breckenridge, Okla., _ killed 
quail Oct. 5, ten days before the beginning of 
the open season. Information reached . State 
Game Warden Watrous on Oct. 31, who imme¬ 
diately had Mr. Hite arrested who entered a 
plea of guilty and was fined $25 costs in Judge 
Witson’s court at Enid. Watrous. 
