Dec. 13, lyij- 
FOREST AND STREAM 
757 
The first action of a new cook on arriving in 
a camp is to rearrange everything in the cook¬ 
house in a different manner than his predecessor 
thought was the way of ways. He may refer to 
the former incumbent as a blacksmith or a filthy- 
brute, only he may not use quite such a mild ex¬ 
pression, and the entire force will, for policy, 
agree with him. Deep in his heart he knows 
that the former man may have been a first-class 
cook, but we all have our little failings. The 
floors cleaned again and the cook table shifted, 
the cook begins to look after his own comfort. 
First he remodels his bunk. The cook sleeps 
near, or in, the cook-house, but his bunk is a 
separate apartment in itself. Curtains for Win¬ 
ter, fly net for Summer, shelves around the in¬ 
terior inclosed space and the inevitable alarm 
clock, for the cook is a very early riser. Many 
are the mural decorations. Anything at all is a 
wall decoration, from newspaper and magazine 
clippings to labels from tin cans. The mattress 
will probably be of pine needles and the entire 
bunk is a joy to behold. Next comes the con¬ 
struction of the easy chair. Built of poles and 
canvas, it is a marvel of simplicity and comfort 
for the real camp cook is a Jack-of-all-trades. His 
hours of ease are not many, but he well knows 
how to take advantage of them. 
The cookhouse proper is so crowded that it 
is a wonder that the autocrat therein can find 
room to move, yet he does move and at marvelous 
speed. He has the conquest of waste motion 
down to an exact science. He can build a cun¬ 
ning contrivance to lessen ’his own labor or he 
can get a lunch ready at a speed unknown to 
any but the experienced camp cook. The inevita¬ 
ble pork and beans are brought forward. A pan 
of bacon is boiling, tinned potatoes are warming, 
the tea or coffee is ready, and in a very few 
minutes the travelers are sitting down to a com¬ 
plete meal. Cans are opened with two blows of 
a butcher knife and pies lifted from the oven 
with a deft jab of a specially twisted iron. He 
can broom scrub a floor while the tea is brew¬ 
ing, or rather boiling. In Summer he kills flies 
by leaving rotten meat outside the door and pour¬ 
ing boiling water upon the hapless victims. A 
barbarous death but very effective. He knows 
how to coax a fire on a day when even a smudge 
won’t burn, direct the scraping of a fish by hav¬ 
ing- it nailed to a board by the tail; it is note¬ 
worthy that this is as far as he ever enters into 
the operation; provide proper sanitation for the 
cook-house, act as doctor in time of need; keep 
track of the supplies in his store-house in a way 
that would puzzle an accountant, but which is 
most accurate, nevertheless. He can rebuild a 
stove, provide against the danger of fires and 
build a wood-rack so that one stick of wood 
only will fall out at a time. He knows how to 
contrive a lantern by punching candle holes in 
the side of an old coffee tin, and he can mend 
boots and blow a dinner horn or ring a tune on 
a triangle. He understands how to kill and dress 
a steer, though it is seldom that he is called 
on to act in this capacity. He burnishes tin pans 
by rubbing them with moss or grass, and knives 
by thrusting them into the ground. He crushes 
macaroni, another staple, by the simple and quick 
method of jumping upon the bag. He toasts 
bread by putting the bread upon the red hot stove 
itself. There is really no reason why he should 
not, because the stove is perfectly clean and he 
is far too busy to waste time with a toasting 
fork. His system is just the same regardless of 
the size of the gang; it’s a case of the quickest 
way is the best way. 
The true camp cook usually has a warm spot 
in his heart for pets. In nearly every camp there 
is a tame rabbit, a squirrel, a kitten, or, best loved 
of all, a pup. The cook’s dog is by far the best 
trained dog for miles. Fie has hours and hours 
spent on his doggy education and he becomes 
most knowing in the moods of his master. When 
everyone is away from camp between meals, then 
is the cook’s dog’s time, indeed, but when meal 
time approaches the first action of Mr. Dog is to 
hide. 
Camp cooks command good wages. It is not 
uncommon for the cook in a large camp to be 
paid nearly, or quite as much as the boss, but 
the cook, like most stars, is a fickle man. A 
sudden impulse and he is gone. The wise camp 
boss soon learns the symptoms of cook departure: 
Dissatisfaction with the food he has to use; ex¬ 
cessive irritability; an acute dislike for that par¬ 
ticular part of the country; fancied grievances 
and more and more exacting as to promptness 
in response to the dinner call. The tired engineer 
walks back to camp faster at night, when these 
symptoms begin to appear, rather than offend his 
cook, though he well knows that in the middle 
of any meal there may be a horribly blasphemous 
outbreak from the vicinity of the stove and the 
early departure of his cook. 
The cook in town is no longer a despot. He 
is too blissfully happy in spending his “stake” 
to care anything at all about dignity and as soon 
as the money is spent back he goes to his king¬ 
dom. Camp cooks are of all kinds; big, little, 
fat, thin, profane, virtuous, drunken or sober, 
jovial or melancholy. Generally intelligent and 
sometimes well rea'd. One and all they go to a 
camp with expressed contempt for their prede¬ 
cessors and leave with pity for their successors. 
They are a likeable class of men, generous and 
care free, for with all his faults the cook in camp 
is really a wonderful man. 
Chas. L. Pitts. 
268 Havelock St., Toronto, Can. 
Private Parks Do Not Protect Game 
C OMPLAINTS come from various quarters 
that wealthy men and clubs are buying- 
up great tracts of Adirondack lands for 
the purpose of excluding the general public from 
hunting there. The owners and members of the 
so-called “parks” and clubs assume that the aver¬ 
age local or city hunter is bent on the extermina¬ 
tion of wild birds and animals and cares for 
nothing except the size of the bag after a day’s 
shooting; that, consequently, the people of this 
state look to the owners of “posted lands” as the 
ultimate saviors of our surviving game supply 
and have by statute given them certain hunting- 
privileges not enjoyed by the ordinary citizen, 
with permission also to enforce these rights as a 
favored class against other sportsmen who may 
seek the state’s game and fish in the Adirondacks 
in open season on this protected land. 
Let us see whether there is any real founda¬ 
tion for a law permitting a person or corporation 
to enjoy and exercise this special privilege. Sec¬ 
tion 212, chapter 488, New York Laws of 1892, 
as amended by chapter 319, New York Laws of 
1896, states in substance that a person owning 
or having the exclusive right to shoot, hunt or 
fish on lands or lands and water and desiring to 
devote same to the propagation or protection of 
fish, birds and game, shall publish a description 
of said lands and waters for a certain number 
of weeks in the county newspaper, together with 
a notice that said premises will be hereafter used 
by the owner as a private park for propagating 
and protecting fish and game. This notice ends 
with a clause expressly forbidding any person 
from setting foot on said tract or shooting or 
taking any game or fish therefrom at any time 
under penalty of fine or imprisonment or both. 
Now, why should a club deem it necessary 
to resort to this harsh and unfriendly attitude 
against brother sportsmen and anglers? Up to 
the time of the application, it had, in common 
with the farmers and local hunters, hunted the 
people’s deer, grouse, and other animals in the 
forests and clearings of its property and taken 
trout, bass and pike in its streams and lakes 
during open seasons, and in its 'pursuit of game 
had freely followed same beyond the limits of 
its property and killed and taken it on the landj 
of adjacent owners, who had pursued a similar 
policy from the earliest days of this Republic 
in pursuit of game started on their own lands, 
and the kindest of feeling everywhere prevailed 
With the advent of the so-called private- 
preserve law the idea of exclusion seized upon 
the owners of certain hunting lands in the Ad¬ 
irondacks. They looked with jealous eyes upon 
the success of sportsmen upon their premises and 
sought by legal means to exploit the state’s game 
for their profit, by prohibiting all hunters from 
enjoying a day’s shooting with rifle or gun on 
their lands, unless paid a substantial sum there¬ 
for. 
They, accordingly, attempted to exclude the 
duly licensed citizen hunter by taking advantage 
of the legislative Act passed in their favor. Now 
this statute, like other state laws restricting the 
common-law right of its citizens to take wild 
game and favoring certain individuals therein to 
the exclusion of all the rest, starts out with the 
premise or condition that one who owns or has 
