824 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 27, 1913. 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company 
Chas. A. Hazen, President 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. Charles L. Wise, Treasurer. 
22 Thames Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENCE:- Forest and Stream is the 
recognized medium of entertainment, instruction and informa¬ 
tion between American sportsmen. The editors invite com¬ 
munications 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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Entered in New York Post Office as Second class matter. 
FROM NESSMUK’S COUNTRY. 
Forest and Stream will begin next week one 
of the most interesting and fascinating series of 
articles that it ever has had the pleasure of offer¬ 
ing its readers. The series will deal with the ex¬ 
periences of noted hunters and trappers who as¬ 
sisted in opening to civilization the western and 
northwestern portions of Pennsylvania which, at 
the time these men flourished, was a veritable 
hunting and fishing paradise, as indeed some por¬ 
tions of it continue to be to this day. 
The articles in question will be from the pen 
of Dr. W. J. McKnight, the well-known historian 
of Pennsylvania. Dr. McKnight is still living at 
an advanced age, although mentally and physically 
as active as most young men of the present gene¬ 
ration. His reminiscences, obtained at first hand 
while he practiced as a pioneer physician of 
northwestern Pennsylvania, open a new field of 
pleasant reading to the outdoor man of to-day. 
Forest and Stream has often been asked when, if 
ever, the fascinating contributions of Nessmuk 
would be duplicated in the columns of this paper. 
We are glad to say that the hope is now a cer¬ 
tainty, and since Dr. McKnight’s articles will 
cover the very region which Nessmuk made 
famous, namely, that portion of Pennsylvania 
purchased from the Six Nations by the Fort 
Stanwix treaty of 1784, they will prove.a continu¬ 
ation in part of the narratives which ended when 
Nessmuk died. The first article will deal with 
the career of Bill Long, the “king hunter of Penn¬ 
sylvania,” who died as late as 1880, and whose 
lifetime hunting record is said to have included 
400 bears, 3,500 deer, 2,000 wolves, 125 elk, and 
other game in proportion. 
THE CLOSING YEAR. 
The year now rapidly closing has been one 
of unprecedented activity among those fond of 
the out-door life of the forest, field and stream. 
Among other things it has witnessed a much 
longer outdoor season than usual, showing that 
our people are realizing more fully than ever that 
out-door life is no longer a sort of summer resort 
or picnic affair of a couple months’ duration. 
The early spring found students of nature 
tramping the hills and woods in comfortable out¬ 
ing clothes, carrying packs containing good 
things for a lunch beside some tiny wayside camp¬ 
fire. Late autumn sees the wild fowlers still 
busy, and all through the summer there was such 
activity afield and afloat, by men, women and 
children as was seldom known before. The time 
is passing when people can say they are unfami¬ 
liar with the woods and waters all about them 
save from occasional views from some vehicular 
conveyance. For years the steady concentration 
of the youngsters in the big cities and towns has 
brought adverse comment from educators, lectur¬ 
ers and writers. To-day it cannot be denied that 
the movement toward the open is the logical re¬ 
sult of a revolution against all work and no play, 
and too close confinement within brick walls 
girted about by paved streets. 
Everything points toward this, our cities are 
becoming choked to an intolerable extent. Im¬ 
provement in automobile facilities and in all of 
the equipments necessary to pleasant life in the 
woods and about our lakes have brought the lat¬ 
ter much nearer home in point of time and cost. 
Burning the candle at both ends, it is now under¬ 
stood must cease, at least for part of the spring, 
the summer and winter. It has been shown that 
shooting and fishing are pleasures for all, and 
they are being indulged in as at no other time in 
the history of civilization. 
And this brings a forceful conviction of the 
good things that come out of the propagation of 
game and fish. Angling, particularly, appeals to 
increasing numbers with the flight of time. Fish 
propagation has become a science that is thor¬ 
oughly understood. The Government, the states, 
the great railways and the general public, all are 
working in harmony to restock waters depleted 
through lack of foresight and lax laws. The pro¬ 
pagation of game fishes is now realized by all 
honest lovers of the sport as a necessity, also that 
its scope must constantly be extended and en¬ 
larged. On every farm in the state there should 
be when possible, a fish pond, and in the years to 
come this will be largely the case. 
The propagation of prairie chicken, quail, 
grouse and important species of feathered game 
is more expensive, requires greater care, but is 
fully as practical, as our wardens are demonstra¬ 
ting. At first it may seem that shooting game 
reared on the preserves smacks of old world 
methods, but that cuts little figure—it is a prac¬ 
tice born by necessity. And there, too, is much 
difference between this and the older countries 
across the seas, for we have the territory and the 
proper facilities in the way of range and cover, 
which renders it possible to permit nature to take 
her own course uninterfered with, and the end 
desired is sure of accomplishment, and the watch¬ 
word for 1914 should be, preservation and propa¬ 
gation. 
The reports made once in awhile by zoologi¬ 
cal societies and other organizations in the inter¬ 
est of the natural history study are valuable in a 
way, but one cannot read them without smelling 
book dust, where the pure air of out-of-doors 
ought to be, and feeling that they are based upon 
scattered and somewhat insignificant details, 
rather than upon the larger and generally more 
influential facts of nature and life. This is espe¬ 
cially true as to what has been done in the matter 
of accounting for the disappearance of certain 
kinds of birds, the golden-eye duck, the golden 
plover, Esquimo culew and others. But the sports¬ 
man. he who gets out in the heart of nature’s 
wilds and sees and hears and reasons for him¬ 
self, is the man to deduct truthful conclusions. 
He knows that it is not the gun that has been the 
main agent of these birds’ vanquishment, and will 
tell you the farmer’s drains, the sluice ways, irri¬ 
gated ditches and filled in swails, whereby vast 
acres of watery feeding grounds have been made 
dry, have killed countless numbers and forever 
driven away the rest. Fifty years ago the sloppy 
prairies and queachy bog lands immediately 
around Omaha, were the haunts of incomputable 
swarms of migratory wild fowls, cranes, geese, 
ducks and plover. Now but precious few are 
seen, not because they have been shot off, but be¬ 
cause this resting and feeding ground has been 
made unavailable. Even the smaller sandpipers, 
kildeers, bitterns and inferior waders, never much 
shot at, are just as scarce and for the same rea¬ 
son. Hundreds of small ponds and streams, once 
their favorite banquet places, are now as dry as 
a bone. 
Amateur trap shooting is the one winter sport 
that has become universally popular of late, and 
no outdoor pastime has attracted so many recruits 
within the last two or three years, especially in 
the east. From an insignificant amusement it 
has developed into something like international 
importance, for undoubtedly the amateur cham¬ 
pionship held at Travers’ Island in December 
each year has no equal as a shooting spectacle. 
Men in all the walks of life are to be found on 
the firing line at this annual tourney, such as mil¬ 
lionaires, merchants, doctors, lawyers, and pro¬ 
fessional men of every grade, so that with short 
shooting seasons on game birds and long seasons 
on clay birds, with streams well populated with 
game fish, the outdoor man during the coming 
year is in a fair way to be made happy. 
ICE FISHING IN LAKE GEORGE. 
Albany, Dec. 19.— At a hearing before the 
Conservation Commission, held at the offices of 
the Commission, Dec. 18, on the application- of 
the Board of Supervisors of Warren county, for 
the taking of perch through the ice in the waters 
of Lake George during the winter season of 1913 
and 1914, the Commission granted the petition, 
provided that such taking shall be for personal 
use only and that shipment or sale thereof shall 
be prohibited, and that nothing in this order shall 
be construed to sanction the use of tip-ups in the 
waters of the lake. 
How are they going to stop taking of all 
kinds of fish under such a permit? Lake George 
is nearly 30 miles long, and there is but one pro¬ 
tector. And can’t the fish be taken in any quan¬ 
tity, and what’s to stop the sale?—[Editor.] 
QUATRAINS OF A DUCKSHOOTER. * 
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 
I love to dwell on what sometimes befalls: 
This morning, when the sky’s soft bending walls 
Were flushed with dawn, I heard the swish of 
wings, 
And the wild music when a mallard calls. 
O sweet Diana, what a sight was there! 
A dozen of them wheeling through the air, 
The green heads flashing in the morning light, 
And they of Nimrod hidden unaware. 
With what precision did I slowly rise 
And greet them lighting to their great surprise! 
I saw their faces, white and blanched with fear, 
And the buglike popping of their frightened eyes. 
I picked a drake that with back pushing feet 
Assisted progress in its wild retreat, 
And when I fired it fell with such a thud 
As when two fat men in their passing meet. 
And lo! a strange thing happened in my sight— 
The flock exploded, as if dynamite 
Had blown it up, and each duck went his way 
As all the blown parts of a cracker might! 
I poked my gun here, there and everywhere, 
But saw them vaguely, though the day was fair; 
I fired a shot or so, but nothing dropped, 
And watched them flock again in high mid-air. 
I know what happened—it is very good; 
I hit the cap duck, which one never should; 
Nor can I dwell upon it save to laugh. 
I sometimes chuckle. Anybody would. 
