FOREST AND STREAM 
775 
A FEW HOT AND TIMELY WORDS ON 
CALIFORNIA “SPORTSMEN.” 
It is of considerable interest to read in a re¬ 
cent issue of the “Breeder and Sportsman,” pub¬ 
lished in San Francisco, Cal., that Sacramento 
“sportsmen" are preparing to hold another big 
wild goose stew, for which wild geese will be 
killed by wholesale, and many thousands of them 
used in a great feast such as as done in 1912, 
though this one planned for 1916 is to be on a 
much grander scale. A preliminary meeting of 
200 “sportsmen” was held under the auspices of 
the “Big Goose Stew Club,” which proposes to 
conduct the affair. It was declared the big stew 
was too much of an advertising proposition for 
Sacramento to permit it to be dropped. It will 
probably require 10,000 wild geese to pull off 
this big feast. 
While this slaughter is going on in California, 
the hunters of the Mississippi River Valley are 
prohibited by the Federal regulations to even 
kill one goose or duck at any point on or over 
the waters of the Mississippi River between 
Minneapolis, Minn., and Memphis, Tenn., pre¬ 
sumably because it is necessary to prevent the 
extermination of the nation’s supply of ducks 
and geese. At the same time wholesale killing of 
waterfowl is progressing in several Southern 
States during the season when the migratory 
fowl are forced there by severe winter weather 
farther north. 
What kind of sportsmen can lend their influ¬ 
ence to promoting wholesale game destruction 
merely for advertising purposes, and what do 
these hunters think is the opinion of other people 
in the United States, who hold entirely different 
ideas about what constitutes “sportsmanship?” 
Are they trying to exterminate the wild geese, 
and do they think the hunters of other States 
like to read of such game slaughter, when all 
over the nation there is almost universal senti¬ 
ment for game conservation? 
If Mississippi Valley hunters are deprived of 
killing even a small bag limit for their own pri¬ 
vate use, why should not the whole State of 
California be made a “closed zone” perpetually, 
like the upper Mississippi River, when California 
“sportsmen” seem to be entirely devoid of any 
sentiment of migratory game conservation, such 
as is demonstrated by the Big Goose Stew Club? 
This is a very poor kind of advertising publicity 
for the State of California to send broadcast to 
the world. Can it really be possible that there is 
no legal means of preventing it? If there is no 
legal means, is it not possible to shame these 
“sportsmen” into abandoning this practice? Sup¬ 
pose every other State should decide to hold an 
annual “big stew” of wild ducks and geese, and 
change their laws so as to permit it, what would 
become of the nation’s game supply? 
If it is desired to exterminate the geese and 
ducks quickly, we might have a national con¬ 
test annually to determine which State could get 
up the biggest stew, or even go farther north 
with the idea, and make it an international af¬ 
fair, while the supply lasts. 
These associations don’t know what they are 
missing in the form of entertainment “a la stew.” 
Let the joy be unconfined. Viva la stew, viva 
la California sportsman, viva la Federal game 
law. —E. T. Grether, “Rod and Gun” Editor “St. 
Louis Globe-Democrat.” 
AN ANCIENT PHILADELPHIA FISHING 
CLUB. 
With reference to a recent discussion upon the 
oldest angling society in existence, it is not at 
all unlikely that it is to be found not in the Old, 
but in the New World; not in comparatively an¬ 
cient Britain, but in the United States of Amer¬ 
ica. The old Leckford Club at Stockbridge might 
have occupied the position in England had it 
held out, but I know of no society that can claim 
more antiquity than the “Schuylkill Fishing Com¬ 
pany of the State in Schuylkill.” There is in 
existence a consecutive history year by year of 
the club or company from 1732 to 1888. The 
little society of sportsmen set up on a grand scale 
of imitation. It called itself a colony, then a 
state, and even now its members are governors, 
council, and citizens. Their first sporting hut 
was a “court house” on the west side of the 
Schuylkill River near the city of Philadelphia. 
The Girard Avenue Bridge now crosses the river 
at that point. In 1748, when the court house was 
built, the.place was “a wilderness, its denizens 
the fowls of the air and the fish, which in in¬ 
credible quantities filled the river.” In 1812 the 
“State in Schuylkill” built a second house, which, 
after nearly a century of use, is still occupied. 
The members called it a castle, and in 1822, the 
passage of the fish being stopped by an obstruc¬ 
tive dam, they moved it down-stream. Again 
in 1887 the castle was taken apart and moved up 
to its present site on the Delaware River, the 
ground leased to “the colony of the State of 
Schuylkill” being at the junction of the Wissa- 
hickon Creek and Schuylkill River. Among the 
curious photographs of documents over a hun¬ 
dred years old, portraits of past governors, re¬ 
prints of journals, clauses of constitutions, etc, 
a pretty fair idea can be formed of the good 
times these “colonists” had. The first gala day 
of the sporting season was May 1, and the cus¬ 
tom was for meetings for fishing and fowling to 
be held on Thursdays once every two weeks until 
October. The ancient seal of the corporation, a 
very primitive implement, is still preserved, and 
the salutary regulations adopted were all solemn¬ 
ly by it stamped. The elections were very seri¬ 
ous affairs, and at the close of the poll there was 
a dinner, at which the fare consisted of “rounds 
of beef, barbacued pig, sirloin steaks, and the 
productive industry of the angler and the fowler, 
accompanied with flowing bowls of good punch, 
lemonade, and Madeira, with the enjoyment of 
a pipe and tobacco, cigars being in those frugal 
days an unknown luxury to the young colonists.” 
The entire bill for an election day for eighty- 
four persons in 1748 was a matter of £6 18s. 8d., 
and the items include four gallons spirits at 7s. 
6d.; one gallon wine, 10s.; pipes and tobacco, 2s. 
6d.; 200 limes, 15s. Primitive exceedingly were 
the early customs. _ Rambler. 
OUTLAW BUFFALOES HEAD FOR BAD 
LANDS. 
Topbar, S. D.—A squad of cowboys have been 
searching in this territory for buffalo belonging 
to the Scotty Philip herd, which recently broke 
away from some men who were endeavoring to 
drive them from the herd into the railway stock- 
yards at Philip. It is thought the buffalo have 
made their way to the bad lands on White River, 
where they will be secure from pursuit for an 
indefinite period. More than 50 buffalo have 
escaped from the Philip pasture. 
HERMAN’S 
HERMAN’S 
“The Army shoe is to my mind the best shoe 
ever made.”— Chas. J. Lisle, in Forest & Stream, 
November, 1915. 
“There is no better footwear for sportsmen. 
The perfect model.”— Horace Kephart. 
You can have a pair of these perfect shoes 
from one of our 4,500 dealers or direct from us 
postpaid for $4.50. Fit, comfort and service guar¬ 
anteed. State size and width usually worn. 
Jos. M. Herman Shoe Co., 6 Bo S A ton" 
The New U. S. Army Shoe 
MUNSON 
LAST 
MUNSON 
LAST 
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