400 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 27, 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. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3 a year; $1.50 for six months; 
10 cts. a copy. Canadian, $4 a year; foreign, $4.50 a year. 
This paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States. Canada and Great Britain. Foreign 
Subscription and Sales Agents—London: Davies & Co., 
1 Finch Lane; Sampson, Low & Co. Paris: Brentano’s. 
ADVERTISEMENTS: Display and classified, 20 cts. 
per agate line ($2.80 per inch). There are 14 agate lines to 
the inch. Covers and special positions extra. Five, 
ten and twenty per cent, discount for 13, 26 and 52 inser¬ 
tions, respectively, within one year. Forms close Monday 
tn advance of publication date. 
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. 
FALL SHOOTING NUMBER. 
In our last special number we tried to tickle 
the literary palate with retrospection—articles of 
forty years ago. In our next issue, which will 
be the fall shooting number, we have aimed at 
the incomer, shooting well ahead. One import¬ 
ant feature to the man getting ready to hunt 
will be a series of articles by game wardens in 
every State in the Union and in Canada, telling 
of game conditions this year in their respective 
States, with advice as to the best section in 
each State where a bag is certain. Another in¬ 
valuable piece of material will be game laws 
revised for 1913. A wealth of special articles 
will include ‘'Game Birds in New York State,” 
by Prof. George F. Guelph; ‘‘After Moose in 
New Brunswick,” by G. L. Langstaff, a big-game 
hunter who makes an annual trip into Canada, 
and tells lots of things you should know. 
Golden Gate has covered for us one of the 
greatest shooting and fishing territories in this 
country, the Feather River district in California. 
He has illustrated with a map telling where to 
go and how to get there. To those who have an 
apprehension that our own Adirondacks are all 
“'shot to pieces,” Paul Brandreth, whose writ¬ 
ings on the Adirondacks are well known to the 
regular Forest and Stream readers, has de¬ 
scribed the Long Lake section as “a sportsman’s 
Arcady.” ‘‘Deer Hunting in Louisiana,” a State 
little known to deer hunters ‘‘up North,” is in¬ 
timately described by L. W. Mitchell. Quarter¬ 
master Sergeant Milton Heckert, Fourteenth 
U. S. Artillery, tells his experiences after a 
shooting trip in Texas and the Philippines, and 
it is mighty enjoyable. Most of us enjoy a 
back to nature shooting story such as Frank 
L. Bailey has been writing from time to time, 
so we persuaded this keen young writer to 
tell us a good duck shooting story, and he has 
done it artistically. Tt is entitled, “The Flight 
of the Little Gray Coots.” “Wrinkles” is the 
title of a camping and shooting paper by “Old 
Marooner,” whose writings mean facts to Forest 
and Stream readers. Then, too, we have—well, 
we have more good articles than space to de¬ 
scribe them, so we will leave the rest to surprise 
you next week. The issue will be generously 
illustrated with photographs, and because of 
its great popularity the painting by Lynn Bogue 
Hunt, foremost American game bird painter, 
which appeared in colors on one of our special 
numbers last year, will be repeated. Order early 
from your newsdealer. 
CLAY TARGETS AND GAME PROTECTION 
We do not know that any naturalist, carry¬ 
ing his investigations to the very verge of 
humanity, has yet discovered a race of beings 
who did not possess, in some rude degree, at 
least, a form of sport. E. B. Tylor, an ingenious 
and hard-working English student of the early 
history of mankind, has shown that the approved 
sports of our boyhood were common among races 
which were long ago blotted from the face 
of the earth. The savage child in the dawn of 
human development finds amusement in substan¬ 
tially the plays which satisfy the civilized in¬ 
fant, and the mature man of to-day mimics in 
his sports the toil of his ancestors. The signifi¬ 
cance of modern games is suggestive. The strug¬ 
gle of Church and State, noble and people, upon 
the chessboard is only the bloodless and mean¬ 
ingless picturing of conflicts which once cost 
blood and treasure. The boys who play “prison¬ 
ers’ base” on the green are submitting to cap¬ 
ture which once meant death. The archery tour¬ 
nament at Boston the other day was a striking- 
contrast to the tournament of bow and arrow 
which might have been beheld there about one 
hundred years ago. 
An outline sketch of the development of 
national amusements would make an entertain¬ 
ing volume, of which not the least instructive 
feature would be the study of mechanical in¬ 
genuity devoted to supplying by artificial con¬ 
trivances the place of natural agencies of sport. 
Indoor rowing machines take the place of boat 
oars, and the man who has never sniffed salt 
water may develop his biceps by paddling his 
own canoe. As the gun is the most universal 
sporting implement, we would naturally look for 
the greatest effort devoted to compensate the de¬ 
struction of game. And accordingly, when the 
guns and shooters outnumbered the birds, Bo- 
gardus came to the rescue with his glass ball 
substitute. To enable sportsmen to see the tangi¬ 
ble success of their skill, the clay disc was sub¬ 
stituted, both because of cost and the fact that 
speed and angles made more toward natural bird 
flight. The direct influence of the substitution 
of clay birds for live birds has been remarkable. 
Thousands of men have been induced to pur¬ 
chase guns and to acquire skill with them in 
aero saucer practice, who, without such inexpen¬ 
sive and easily obtained targets, would have 
known only in a general way the muzzle from 
the breech. 
The game protective merits of the clay 
saucer have never been duly recognized. To 
secure a shot or a number of shots is the ob¬ 
ject of long tramps with gun and dog. If a 
man. instead of a weary and possibly disappoint¬ 
ing trudge, can go out into his back yard and 
be sure of a hundred difficult shots at discs, the 
chances are largely in favor of his preferring 
that to the field excursion. 
It is not altogether fanciful to anticipate a 
time when the live bird trap in the few States 
now permitting it shall have become obsolete, 
and live bird trap shooting only another of the 
old sportsman’s reminiscences. In this the his¬ 
tory of trapshooting would be following, in its 
way, the development of all games and sports. 
THREE RAH’S AND AN R. 
The months with an “r” have come again, 
and with them the advent of the oyster. How¬ 
ever humble the bivalve may be individually, 
collectively he is a power in the land. No liv¬ 
ing thing in the waters under the firmament has 
so much notice bestowed upon him in the way 
of annual newspaper eulogium as this denizen 
of the two shells. With the universal exaltation 
of man’s spirit, which comes with the first of 
May, is mingled the poignant regret at the cut¬ 
ting off of the oyster, and the melancholy which 
attends the days of fall time is ever in a measure 
mitigated by the return to our tables of this 
same tried friend. 
Oyster dealers and other interested parties, 
we see, put forth their views in the newspapers, 
attempting to ridicule the well-founded prejudice 
against eating oysters during a part of the year, 
which has been facetiously limited to the months 
without the magic “r.” As a matter: of course 
it is impossible to set the limits in such an in¬ 
stance so definitely that we can say to-day you 
may eat, to-morrow you may not eat. But that 
there is a season in the natural life of the oyster, 
when its use as an article of food should be 
abstained from, common sense as well as science 
abundantly demonstrates. 
For the proper protection of the bivalves 
also, and to give them an opportunity to rest 
from the drain upon them, such an interval of 
rest is highly necessary. 
- : - 
LADIES IN CAMP. 
If Eve did not enjoy the Garden of Eden a 
great deal more than did her Lord and Master, 
she was no fair prototype of her sex. A woman, 
bless her, will see more beauty in a wayside weed 
than the man who walks with her would discover 
in a whole conservatory of exotics. So we have 
always found that in the woods the girls had 
a thousand ways of finding pleasure where their 
masculine escorts would only yawn and look 
bored. When the better halves of creation do 
go off alone by themselves, no matter in what 
part of the world it may be, they always man¬ 
age to find more of the Garden of Eden than 
ever was discovered by the Orientalists and 
Eastern explorers. Just now we note that a 
party of some half dozen young New England 
girls have pitched their tents on the shores of 
a New Hampshire lake, where they have estab¬ 
lished a community something like the fabled 
island of the Amazons. They are fitted out with 
tents, horses and carriages, boats and all camp¬ 
ing paraphernalia, while a man servant does the 
heavy work. The time is spent in fishing, row¬ 
ing, driving, etc., with singing, reading, recita¬ 
tions and games. The camp is very fittingly 
termed “Camp Gumption,” and each member of 
the band calls herself “a gump.” May their 
tribe increase. 
