336 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 15, 1913 
cently used an idea that it would be well to in¬ 
corporate into the warden service of this State. 
A plain muslin placard printed in an ink that 
will stand after being rained upon contains a 
digest of the Virginia game laws. This warden 
has tacked up hundreds of them over his entire 
district. For keeping the laws before the people 
of his district, particularly the hunters, nothing 
could be more effective. Doubtless some of 
these placards would be torn down, but enough 
of them can be kept in sight to keep the law 
fresh in the people’s minds. 
A thorough knowledge of the law makes 
the people the wardens of- their own game and 
fish. John Jones is more or less concerned 
about the thoughts his neighbors hold of him. 
He would rather be known as a law observer 
than as a law breaker. If his neighbors know 
the law and catch him infringing upon it, or 
about to, the healthy moral tone arising from 
the fear of the finger of contempt will have a 
lot of pressure in holding Jones in line. Jones 
can never tell who among the people is going 
to act as an agent of them and report his in¬ 
fringement. The more thoroughly the law is 
known, the harder will be his chances of suc¬ 
cessfully evading it, and the more certain his 
chances of detection while trying to scout it. 
It is upon the same principle of a perfect 
understanding of the law by all the people mak¬ 
ing a warden of each of us that the great good 
comes from in sportsmen’s organizations. In 
all of us the spirit of fair play is uppermost. If 
Jones belongs to a sportsmen’s club and “soon- 
ers” a little on the season, forgets the limit, and 
otherwise rides over the law, he is requested to 
resign. 
There never has been a time when so many 
notices about the game laws appeared in the 
papers of this State. These should still further 
be followed up by the wardens in giving ad¬ 
vance notice of the closing and opening of sea¬ 
sons. Articles showing the improved game con¬ 
ditions in sections where law observance has 
been good would find room in every county 
paper. 
In my immediate locality I have tried to 
show the trappers that the number of pelts they 
would secure would be the same whether they 
began catching animals before or after the sea¬ 
son opened if all observed the law regarding the 
opening date. This season there was not a 
single fish house on the ice in this locality be¬ 
fore the 15th day of December, and on the day 
spearing opened, every spearer had his license 
or had made application for it. So much for 
a campaign of education locally carried out. 
This season has been exceptionally favor¬ 
able for the prairie chicken hunter. As usual 
there were a number of arrests for shooting 
before the opening day. But the shooters who 
live in the chicken breeding country will not 
permit pre-season shooting. The majority of 
them are landowners. They do not break the 
law themselves and will not tolerate infractions 
by others. The opening day of the chicken sea¬ 
son is generally set aside as a sort of holiday 
when farm and ranch work is dropped, and the 
pursuit of chickens made a sport in which the 
whole country takes part. Then the work of 
the farm is pressing again and until completed 
in the fall very little shooting is done. In the 
last five years there have been a gradually les- 
{Continued on page 352.) 
Hunting in California. 
BY GOLDEN GATE. 
Berkeley, Cal., Feb. 28. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: Throughout the entire valley sections 
of the State temperatures ranging from fifteen 
to twenty-five degrees above zero have been 
registered and sportsmen have witnessed the 
novel sight of ponds covered with a sheet of 
ice, and the uplands white with frost. Water 
is very scarce and duck shooting is limited to 
a few favored sections. Green feed is also con¬ 
fined to a few districts and geese are to be 
found in but a limited area. A heavy rain is 
badly needed to scatter waterfowl and to start 
a growth of green feed. 
Quail shooting has improved in practically 
all sections of the State during the past month, 
but the sport falls far short of what it formerly 
was. This bird has suffered more than any 
other from the introduction of the automobile 
as a means of rapid conveyance and to pre¬ 
serve it from extinction is one of the problems 
that confronts game officials. The writer is of 
the opinion that the setting aside of game pre¬ 
serves on which no hunting is allowed will ac¬ 
complish this better than by any other method. 
The California valley quail responds readily to 
protection of this kind and is a rapid breeder 
when unmolested. At the country home of the 
writer, where hunting is prohibited on account 
of the live-stock, quail are very numerous and 
not only feed with the poultry in the farmyard, 
but roost in the trees at night within a few 
paces of the house. In the surrounding terri¬ 
tory the birds are scarce. 
Since October, 1907, the California Fish and 
Game Commission has paid mountain lion 
bounty claims, on 1,721 lions. Humboldt county 
leads the list with 353 lions, with Trinity second 
with 198 and Siskiyou third with 162. A move¬ 
ment is now on foot to increase the bounty to 
$40 with the idea of inducing professional hunt¬ 
ers to take up the' work of exterminating the 
lions. 
One of the largest mountain lions ever 
killed in the vicinity of Occidental was slain 
recently by Willie A. Hendren, a fourteen-year- 
old lad who sighted the beast feeding on a 
large buck near the Hendren farm house. 
The hide of a black deer now graces the 
office of the Fish and Game Commission at 
Sacramento, the deer having been killed several 
weeks ago in El Dorado county by an Indian. 
The hide will be mounted and placed on ex¬ 
hibition with the albino deer killed recently in 
Trinity county. The hair is almost jet black, 
shading to lighter brown on the stomach. 
The request of the Redding Game Associa¬ 
tion that fifty elk be brought from the Yellow¬ 
stone National Park to the Shasta Forest Reserve 
is to be compiled with and the animals will be 
transferred this winter. The Oregon authorities 
have objected to the transportation of the elk 
on the ground that the Wyoming elk is a dif¬ 
ferent species from the Roosevelt elk that in¬ 
habit the Pacific Coast country and there would 
be danger of their intermingling. The United 
States Biological Survey has asked that the 
passage of the elk through Oregon be allowed. 
Joe Venchura and Manuel Silvera were 
arrested recently in Marin county for hunting 
without a license and were fined $25 each. 
Six hunters were arrested one day recently on 
this same charge and four demanded jury trials. 
The San Mateo county branch of the Fish 
and Game Protective Association has elected 
officers as follows: Chase Littlejohn, Presi¬ 
dent; Guy P. Hull, Vice-President; H. W. 
Lampkin, Secretary, and A. S. Ligouri, Treas¬ 
urer. 
The Fish and Game Protective Association 
of Stanislaus county has been formed at 
Modesto with officers as follows: President, 
Di C. Wood; Vice-President, W. W. Gray; 
Secretary, D. C. Davison, and Treasurer, 
Henry Garrison. 
A Plumas county branch of the California 
Great Fish and Game Association has been 
formed at Quincy, and the mountain sports¬ 
men have come forward with a number of sug¬ 
gestions for changes in the fish and game laws. 
Protection of the mother bear and cubs until 
Oct. I, a bounty of $40 on mountain lions, a 
bounty of $25 on wildcats and a fifteen-day 
season on deer are among the measures advo¬ 
cated. J. D. McLaughlin, of Quincy, is secre¬ 
tary of the organization. 
A Game Bulletin will be issued shortly by 
the California Fish and Game Commission, and 
this will contain a number of reports by experts 
on game conditions in California, as well as 
data on the work that has been done toward 
conserving wild life during the past two years. 
Among the reports will be one from W. N. 
Dirks touching upon the work of the State 
game farm, a report on “California Valley 
Quail,” by Harold C. Bryant; an article, “The 
Introduction of Foreign Game Birds into the 
San Joaquin and Tributary Sections,” by A. 
D. Ferguson, and “Educating People to the 
Need and Value of Wild Life Conservation,” by 
Gretchen L. Libby. 
More About Fur Seals. 
Washington, D. C, March 1.—Editor 
Forest and Stream: No prettier picture has ever 
been drawn of the “blind leading the blind” 
than is that one you published in your issue of 
the 15th ultimo under the head of “More About 
Pur Seals,” on pages 203-204. 
Raleigh Raines has not held the reins very 
tight on his horses. I’ll admit, and has not kept 
in the middle of the road, but Charles Sheldon 
has actually ditched his team. 
Sheldon says: “Facts: Upon an exhaustive 
hearing the House Committee on Foreign Re¬ 
lations reported the bill out without any amend¬ 
ment for a closed season.” 
Is Sheldon right in his statement as above? 
No; the House bill as reported did not carry an 
amendment for a close season, but it was 
amended on the House floor, so as to carry a 
closed season for one year; and, then, so 
amended, passed by the House, Feb. 15, 1912, 
and sent to the Senate. This one-year amend¬ 
ment was put in with the distinct understand¬ 
ing that the Senate would add five or ten years 
to it, which came to pass. 
Sheldon says also in his “facts” as above 
cited, that “the Senate Committee held no hear¬ 
ing whatever.” 
Is Sheldon right in this statement? No; 
the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Chas. 
Thayer, asked for a hearing, and on Feb. 22 he 
spent three hours in close communion with that 
Senate Committee vainly trying to persuade 
