Jan. 17, 1914. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
83 
Frank Forester Foresaw Game Destruction 
A Forecast, Written Sixty-Six Years Ago, Worth Reading Today 
O N the occasion of commencing, it is now 
several years ago, a series of papers in 
a leading monthly magazine, “On the 
Game of North America, its nomenclature, 
habits, haunts, and seasons; with hints on the 
science of woodcraft”.—I introduced the subject, 
by the following general remarks, and it ap¬ 
pears to me that, inasmuch as they are not only 
still applicable, but have in effect become more 
and more evidently true, owing to the lapse of 
time since their publication, during which the 
evils complained of have increased tenfold, 1 
cannot do better t'han repeat them, as entirely 
germane to the matter, and as aptly intro¬ 
ductory to that which is to follow. 
“There is perhaps” I remarked, “no 
country in the world which presents, to the 
sportsman, so long a catalogue of the choicest 
game, whether of fur, fin, or feather, as the 
United States of North America; there is 
none, probably, which ‘ counts more numerous, 
or more ardent, devotees; there is none, cer¬ 
tainly, in which the wide-spread passion for the 
chase can be indulged, under so few restrictions, 
and at an expense so trifling. 
“Yet all this, notwithstanding, it is to be 
regretted greatly that there is no country in 
which the nomenclature of these ferae naturae, 
these roving denizens of wood, wold and water, 
is so confused and unscientific; none, in which 
their habits are so little known, and their sea¬ 
sons so little regarded; none, in which the gentle, 
craft of Venerie is so often degraded into mere 
pot-hunting; and none, in which, as a natural 
consequence, the game that swarmed of yore 
in all the fields and forests, in all the lakes, 
rivers, bays, and creeks of its vast territory, 
are in such peril of becoming speedily extinct. 
“That in a nation; every male inhabitant of 
which is, with but rare exceptions, a huntei, 
and ready with the gun almost beyond example, 
this should be the case, can be explained only 
by the fact that, as I have said before, little 
is known generally of the habits of game; and 
that the rarest and choicest species are slaught¬ 
ered inconsiderately, not perhaps wantonly, at 
such times and in such manners, as are rapidly 
causing them to disappear and become extinct. 
“That such is the case, can be proved in a 
few words, and by reference to a few examples. 
The most evident, perhaps, of these, is the ab¬ 
solute extinction of that noble bird, the Heath- 
Hen, or Pinnated Grouse, Tetrao Cupido, on 
Long Island, where, within the memory of our 
[This article, written in 1848, is so start- 
ingly accurate in many of its conclusions that 
the lesson it conveys is as pertinent now as 
before. Happily the great change in sentiment 
with reference to preservation of game and the 
better understanding of dire results following 
former indifference have been effective in pre¬ 
venting destruction, but conditions as Frank 
Forester described them continued until within 
a very few years ago and would have continued 
yet, had it not been for the good work of in¬ 
dividuals and associations in having better laws 
enacted and seeing that they were and are en¬ 
forced. The excuse for publishing the article 
is that as a conservation sermon it is worth 
reading, reflecting upon and remembering.— 
Editor’s Note.] 
elder sportsmen, they might be taken in abund¬ 
ance at the proper season, but where not a 
solitary bird has been seen for years. In the 
pines on the southwestern shores of New Jersey, 
and in the oak-barrens of northeastern Penn¬ 
sylvania, the same birds were also plentiful 
within a few years; but now they are already 
rarae aves; and, after a few more returns of the 
rapidly succeeding seasons, they will be en¬ 
tirely unknown in their old-accustomed places.' 
The same thing is the case, in a yet greater 
degree, with regard to the Wild Turkey. It 
is not yet half a century since these birds, the 
noblest wild game of the Gallinaceous order, 
abounded on the slopes of the Warwick and 
Musconetcong Mountains; in the Shawangunks; 
and, in a word, throughout the whole length of 
the great chain, which connects the White 
Mountains of the north, with the Alleghanies 
proper. I have myself conversed with sports¬ 
men, in the river counties of New York, who, 
in their boyhood, thought less of killing their 
half-dozen Wild Turkeys in the morning, than 
we should now-a-days of bagging as many 
Ruffed Grouse. At present, with the exception 
of a few stragglers which, I believe, still exist 
on the Connecticut, about the rocky steeps of 
Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke, and a single 
drove, which are reported to be seen occasion¬ 
ally among the hill-fastnesses at the lower end 
of the Greenwood Lake, on the frontiers of 
New York and New Jersey, none are to bt 
found until we reach the western regions of 
Pennsylvania. And, in fact, as a bird of sport, 
they are not, any where on the eastern side of 
the great Apalachian chain. 
The Deer and the greater American Hare, 
which turns white in winter, are likewise 
already extinct in many places, * where both 
could be captured, within the last twenty years, 
in such numbers as to afford both sport and 
profit to their pursuers. 
In New Jersey, and in New York, south of 
the forty-second degree of north latitude, with 
the exception of a small number carefully pre¬ 
served on the brush-plains of Long Island, the 
Deer, Cervus Virginianus, has ceased to exist. 
And it requires no prophetic eye to see the day 
when this pride of the North American forest 
shall have ceased to have its habitation any 
where eastward of Pennsylvania; unless it be 
in the remote northern forests of Maine, in 
the mountains of New Hampshire and Ver¬ 
mont, and in that small district of New York, 
lying between the head waters of the Hudson, 
Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence, and the 
eastern extremity of Ontario—which latter tract, 
owing to its singularly rugged and unproductive 
character, will probably contain the Deer, the 
Moose, the Cariboo, the Panther, and even the 
Beaver, after they shall have become extinct, 
even in the far West. 
It has been alleged, and by many is doubt¬ 
less believed to be true, that the increase of 
population, the spread of cultivation, and the 
transfiguration of the woods and wastes into 
corn-lands and pastures, are in themselves an 
all-sufficient and irremediable cause for the dis¬ 
appearance of all the various kinds of game, 
the extinction of which the sportsman and the 
naturalist alike deplore. 
Were this the case, it would be needless to 
waste words on the subject—but so far is it 
from being the case, that with regard to very 
many kinds of game—several of those already 
cited, and others, which, though still numerous, 
will ere long be in the same predicament, so 
rapidly are they decreasing—-'the very converse 
of the proposition is true. 
The Wild Turkey, the Pinnated Grouse, 
and its congener, the Ruffed Grouse, as also 
the much rarer bird of the same order, com¬ 
monly known as the Spruce Partridge—the very 
existence of which was unknown to Wilson— 
all unquestionably do make their homes in the 
wilderness, 'the last-named there exclusively. 
But all the others, without exception, prefer 
the vicinity of cultivated regions on account of 
the plenty and choicer quality of the food; and 
are found nowhere in such abundance as in 
those localities, which afford the combination of 
rough wild lying-ground, with highly cultivated 
land, on which to feed at morn and dewy eve. 
Thus, in the Eastern States if you are in 
pursuit of the Ruffed Grouse, the surest places 
where to flush your game will not be the depths 
of the cedar swamp, or the summit of the 
mountain horrid with pine and hemlock, but on 
the slopes and ledges falling down to the cul¬ 
tivated vales, and in the skirts of briary wood¬ 
lands, or in the red-cedar knolls, which re¬ 
main yet unshorn in the midst of maize and 
buckwheat fields, which never fail to tempt this 
mountain-loving bird from his native fastnesses. 
In like manner, in 'the West, it is on the 
prairie, but in the vicinity of the boundless 
tracts of maize and wheat, which the industry 
of the white man has spread out over the hunt¬ 
ing-grounds of the Indian, that the Pinnated 
Grouse is to be found in millions; and the 
Turkey in similar situations, where the forest 
encircles the yet isolated clearings of the agri¬ 
cultural pioneer. 
Thus, of these three species, it is untrue 
that the spread of cultivation, unless in so far 
as that involves the increased numbers and in¬ 
creased persecution of the cultivators, has any 
detrimental effect on their propagation, or in 
anywise tends to decrease their numbers. For 
centuries yet to come, let American industry 
develop and extend American agriculture as 
rapidly as it may, there will be woodlands and 
wilds in abundance to furnish shelter for any 
quantity of game; and there will always be 
fastnesses innumerable, which never will, be¬ 
cause they never can, be cleared, owing to the 
roughness of their surface, and the sterility of 
their soil. 
Other species of game, so far from flying 
cultivation, or abhorring the vicinity of civilized 
man, are literally not to be found except where 
the works of the ox and the man are conspicu¬ 
ous ; never being seen at all in the wilderness 
proper, and giving cause for some speculation 
as to their whereabouts, their haunts, their 
habits, if not their existence on the continent, 
previous to the arrival of civilized man, from 
realms nearer to the sun. 
Neither the Woodcock nor the Quail, Scolo- 
pax Minor, and Perdix, sive Ortyx Virginiana, 
are ever found in the depths of the untamed 
forest, aloof from human habitations; though 
both genera frequent, nay require, woodland, as 
a sme qua non, for their habitation. Moreover, 
