144 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 2, 1913. 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
Charles Otis, President. 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. W. J. Gallagher, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENCE — Forest and Stream is the 
recognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in¬ 
formation between American sportsmen. The editors 
invite communications on the subjects to which its pages 
are devoted, but, of course, are not responsible for the 
views of correspondents. Anonymous communications 
cannot be regarded. 
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THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
MAKING THE MOST OF IT. 
It is a wise and comfortable philosophy that 
teaches us to make the most of what we have, 
and be content therewith; to accept thankfully 
the small things that are at hand rather than 
weary our hearts with longing for the greater 
things which we cannot reach. 
If we cannot have the loaf, let us eat the 
crust, and be assured that with a healthy appe¬ 
tite we shall find it sweet and wholesome. 
If the land of large game and the rivers of 
the salmon are as far from us as the sunset and 
the sunrise, and long paths that lead to them, 
there are pleasant, if narrower, fields and woods 
and bright waters nearer to us that we have over¬ 
looked when our eyes were on the peaks and the 
gilded clouds. 
Let us school our desires to moderation and 
learn to be satisfied with whatever these limited 
hunting grounds may give us, and they will sur¬ 
prise us with their bounty. We may study the 
book of nature the closer when the pages are 
few and always at hand. 
Gilbert White found an ample field of obser¬ 
vation in his own parish, and Thoreau discovered 
more in the fenced acres of Concord woodlands 
and in its tamed river than in the vast forests 
and wild streams of Maine. 
In truth, a man may see much of nature 
without traveling far, for she will reveal her¬ 
self in some degree to whoever approaches as 
a true lover, for many of her charms need only 
the eye of love to see them, and to such an ear 
she gives the music of her voices. She displays 
charms that never grow old in all time nor stale 
with continual presentation—the budding and 
bursting of leaf and flower, their growth and 
change, the gorgeous ripening, the dun decay, the 
ghosts of shrubs and trees—specters, hut never 
repulsive, always graceful and virile with promise 
of resurrection, and over all these changes the 
sun, the blue sky and painted clouds, or the gray 
and somber canopy; through all the perpetual 
shifting of light and shade. 
For him who listens without far seeking are 
the songs of the wind among the trees, of the 
rushing brooks, of ripples kissing pebbly shores, 
of birds that woo their mates, the shrilling and 
droning of innumerable insects, all in most har¬ 
monious discord. 
If we may not content ourselves with the 
gentle sportsmanship which needs not blood to 
satisfy it, we may at least imitate it in our 
moderation. The skill to find game comes with 
a knowledge of its habits, and is a finer art than 
the skill required to kill it. The scarcer and 
warier the game, the subtler must be the wood¬ 
craft, while a moderation in killing is enforced 
that, if practiced in the days of abundance, 
would have preserved it. 
One may have but little to show for his 
skill wfith the gun, and yet be the skillfullest of 
hunters. It is a greater achievement to see the 
partridge drum, or the woodcock probe the swamp 
mold, or to catch the wild duck asleep, each in 
its fancied seclusion, than to bring down game 
from its startled flight, as the mere marksman 
may by the score in a battue. One so finding 
his game may take home with him something 
sweeter and more enduring than its flesh, some¬ 
thing finer than its plumage; may take from the 
mink, the muskrat and the unseen otter a richer 
spoil than their fur in some secret of their lives, 
and yet, if he will, leave them and the wild world 
no poorer for all he takes. 
But if, after all such philosophizing, we can¬ 
not be content without tangible trophies, let us 
be assured that a little well, earned is to be 
valued more than cheaply gained superfluity, and 
so be satisfied. 
If we may not have salmon nor trout nor 
grayling, nor so much as bass, there are pickerel 
and perch and bream in the streams we know. 
The fewer they are, the warier and the greater 
the skill that is needed to take them, and the 
greater the triumph of capture, and between bites 
the more time for contemplation, w'hich is a part 
of the true angler’s pastime. Let us be content 
if it is the larger part, and so in all our recrea¬ 
tions make the most and the best of what is 
vouchsafed us. 
SHORT CUTS TO THE WILDERNESS. 
Railroads and wagon roads give easy and 
quick access to old-time fishing waters where 
in years gone by it was necessary to pack in over 
an ill-defined and arduous trail, or perhaps no 
trail at all. And reaching the journey’s end one 
finds comfortable hotel accommodations, where 
formerly not a board had been sawed nor a 
shingle split. But with all the improvement 
and progress there is wanting the solid fun of 
the old excursions. No railroad car, however 
luxurious, can quite compensate for the charm 
of the wilderness tramp, and no hotel, however 
well conducted, can furnish the comfort of the 
lean-to with the camp-fire. This is an age of im¬ 
provement and progress and development, and 
the charm and delight of one woodland resort 
after another are being improved and developed 
into oblivion. The sportsman-tourist naturally 
resents the building of a summer caravansary on 
the shore, where season after season he has 
hunted for shore birds, or the building of a 
steamboat on a wilderness lake he has fondly 
called his own, but his resentment is as unavail¬ 
ing as that of the Arran Islanders who lament 
the multiplication of lighthouses and the sub¬ 
stitution of iron for wood in shipbuilding be¬ 
cause the two agencies diminish the supply of 
wreckage on which they and their fathers be¬ 
fore them have in part subsisted. 
FAT, SLEEK GUIDES. 
According to an editorial in the New York 
Sun, the Adirondack guides are w T ell nourished, 
and will this season afford good shooting. We 
feel constrained to remind our neighbor that 
there is, even thus early, a closed season on 
Adirondack guides, and that the Conservation 
Commission is using its-every effort to see that 
even the sleekest, best nourished guides are per¬ 
manently protected. 
Reports from the Adirondacks show that the deer 
are fat and vigorous, the bucks with unusually well de¬ 
veloped antlers, their good condition promising splendid 
sport this fall for city hunters. 
In addition to this, the guides are in better shape 
than ever before, having been well nourished since the 
last hunting season. They seem splendidly prepared, 
their physical condition offers every inducement to rifle 
range experts and other experts in the art of tracking 
and shooting. 
Altogether, most profitable and satisfactory autumn 
sport is to be expected in northern New York. 
And must we gently remonstrate with so 
good a sportsman’s friend as the New York 
Sun that the .season may be satisfactory and 
beneficial, but it cannot be profitable, in the 
generally accepted sense, and furthermore no 
true sportsman of the present time expects profit 
from his shooting trip. All this being aside from 
the fact that in the Adirondacks the sportsman 
stands a sleek, well-fed chance of being shot in 
the back as substitute for the buck. 
A man fifty years of age is not too old to 
take up shooting as a recreation, even though 
he may never have handled firearms and is total¬ 
ly ignorant of their use. There is health to 
be found in shooting, and strength to come of 
days in the field, and cheerfulness and lightness 
of heart and a braver spirit to be won in the 
fields and woods tramping. When by rational 
indulgence in such manly pastimes mental and 
physical upbuilding may be gained, it is a moral 
obligation resting upon every man to avail him¬ 
self of them. And it is not too late to begin 
even though one be on the shady side of fifty. 
In every town to-day is a gun club where the 
gun’s acquaintance may be made and the eye 
tuned up over the traps that throw the elusive 
clay target. 
Hunting Song. 
BV ROBT. G. FIELDS. 
Over the hilltop, down the dell, 
Through the clean sedge and the mats of weed; 
An old cob pipe and a woodsy smell— 
This is the life I lead. 
Bark of the squirrels in the frosty morn, 
Whirr of the quail ’neath a seedy hand; 
' Whistles of doves from the rows of corn, 
Songs of the unkempt land. 
Scramble of squirrels, and a rising shot; 
Whirr of the quail ’neath a steady eye; 
Whistle of doves and a lucky pot— 
Playing to live or die. 
Trailing my dogs, I wander along, 
Follow the lead of the pups that know; 
Humming the lilt of my makeshift song, 
Over the hills I go. 
