Feb. 22, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
235 
In other words, these market gunners wish to 
profit at the expense of the duck shooting of 
the whole .‘'tate of New York. 
“When the United States Senate has just 
passed a bill for Federal protection of migra¬ 
tory birds, in support of wbich testimony con¬ 
cerning the disastrous results attending spring 
shooting was presented by practically every game 
commissioner and every prominent naturalist 
and sportsman in the country; when the people 
throughout the nation are becoming thoroughly 
aroused to the necessity for restricting shoot¬ 
ing in order to save from destruction the valu¬ 
able natural resources represented by our migra¬ 
tory birds, it is not the time for market gunners 
and a few so-called sportsmen to attempt to 
pass a law permitting them to break the rules 
against killing in the breeding season which any 
true sportsman would respect whether forced 
to do so or not.” 
If the Legislature of New York State passes 
either of the bills introduced by Assemblyman 
Fallon and Senator O’Keefe, after having sent 
a concurrent resolution to Congress endorsing 
the Weeks and McLean bills for Federal pro¬ 
tection of migratory birds, it will not only put 
itself in a ridiculous position, but it will have 
dealt a direct blow to the cause of conservation 
which it will be impossible to justify in the eyes 
of any right-thinking citizen of the State. 
The North Carolina Game Law. 
Hendersonville, N. C., Feb. 6 .—Editor 
Forest and Stream: I wrote you some time 
ago that an effort would, I thought, be made to 
place this State in line with other States in the 
matter of a State-wide game law. I fear we 
shall again be disappointed. From what our 
county member writers me, it looks like the same 
old crazy quilt—the county system—every county 
for itself and the devil take the hindmost. It 
seems a pity that experience counts for so little 
in a thing so important as this is—the conserva¬ 
tion of our game. Certain it is that the county 
laws accomplish little, if anything. Our season 
opened Jan., i, and empty shells were in the 
fields, but not a covey of birds could I, with 
the help of my setter, find in a stretch of a 
mile and a half of country that several years 
ago I could have bagged from ten to twenty 
partridge (quail) easily in a short afternoon 
shoot. 
A game law without game wardens, who 
attend to their business, is a farce and nothing 
more. Guns could be heard in any direction 
from or before the first day of November, 
which no doubt accounts in a large measure 
for the few partridges to be found after Jan. i. 
During the second week of the month myself 
and a friend tramped nearly all day in the Flat 
Rock neighborhood and I never even got a shot 
at one. 
On Jan. 2 three of us in another part of 
the county managed to bag twenty-four, and 
this is the best I have seen this season. I fear 
the trappers of partridges think that a real ef¬ 
fective and wise game law will stop trapping 
and aid the true sportsman, hence better no law 
than a good one, if the birds cannot be trapped 
and sold. Numbers of robins have come and 
have heard them singing. 
Ernest L. Ewbank. 
An Open Winter. 
E.vgle Lake, Essex County, N. Y., Feb. 10. 
—Editor Forest and Stream: This has been an 
open winter here thus far. Up to Feb. i we 
had only six inches of ice in this lake, away 
up 1,100 feet above Lake George in this same 
county. Since then the cold weather has thick¬ 
ened the ice about four inches more, and all are 
at work getting it into houses of the summer 
residents. 
Large catches of perch are made through 
the ice, one of sixty and another of eighty hav¬ 
ing been lately made. The bait is usually min¬ 
nows or perch eyes. 
There were a large number of deer all about 
here last fall, and very few were shot, owing 
to lack of tracking snow this year. The Ticon- 
deroga-Schroon stage has run on wheels all 
winter so far, something unheard of before, in 
the writer’s memory, at least. The grouse are 
seen daily feeding in the tops of the “hard 
hacks” and birches, and offer a most tempting 
mark. They are “budding,” as their feast in 
the tree tops is called locally. There were more 
birds of this kind in this section last year than 
have been seen for twenty years. The law 
against unrestricted bags and the non-sale of 
game is one cause for their abundance. Another 
cause is the scarcity in this part of the town 
of the devastating hedgehog, which goes nosing 
around among the nesting birds in the spring 
and ruins hundreds of nests, eating every grouse 
egg in his way. I noted also where ten or twelve 
fine hemlock trees were destroyed, all close to¬ 
gether, by this rodent, the other day. An effort 
should be made to have the bounty of twenty- 
five cents per hedgehog killed restored by our 
county supervisors. Unless this is done, these 
animals will destroy our outlying corn fields 
again, and we shall soon see the grouse diminish¬ 
ing again until they become almost exterminated, 
as they were prior to this year. 
The Conservation Commission is trying to 
stock our covers with pheasants from the State 
farm, but the birds will have little show for re¬ 
production, unless these “quill-pig” pests are ex¬ 
terminated. In some parts of this town it was 
formerly impossible to have any field sweet or 
evergreen sweet corn on account of the ravages 
of these pests. One weighing more than forty 
pounds fell to a steel mink trap set by the 
writer, who baited him right in a garden patch 
of corn in this town. 
The Eagle Lake Property Owners’ Associa¬ 
tion is interested in a project to have the com¬ 
mission erect a fishway at the outlet of this 
lake, to save the quantities of pike and bass 
that go over the small dam there every spring 
in spawning time. This has gone on until the 
lake is almost depicted of large pike. They all 
get into the creek and are either speared or die 
of starvation. A few small ones run down to 
Paradox Lake, I am told. Sportsman. 
England’s 1912 Season. 
One more game shooting season has come 
and gone, and, taken on the whole, the season 
of 1912-13 has proved at least rather better than 
a fair average one. Grouse were both plentiful 
and free from disease, and some record bags 
have been made on the more celebrated moors. 
Partridges also were numerous in many dis¬ 
tricts, although of course the heavy rains of the 
summer played havoc with the young broods 
in the low-lying districts, especially in certain 
portions of East Anglia. Pheasants, both hand- 
reared and wild, did remarkably well, and un¬ 
usually heavy bags have been shot at Holkham, 
Elveden, Raynham Park, Bylaugh Park, Quiden, 
Tichborne and other well known preserves. The 
law still permits the shooting of wildfowl until 
and including March i, while a little sport may 
still be had with the wood pigeons and rabbits. 
It is almost time to stop shooting the latter, 
for we have already seen a nuniber of young 
rabbits running about outside the coverts and 
warrens.—Shooting Times and British Sportsman. 
• IN BERING SEA. 
Waiting for the tide to fall in order to get around a bluff point. A game warden’s work in Alaska is not 
the same as in the States. 
Photograph by J. C. Tolman, Senior Ciame Warden, Kenai and Alaska Peninsula. 
