552 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 7, 1911. 
session is palpably beyond the bounds of a mere 
act of regulation, and as such, it is a plain, pal¬ 
pable abridgment of his privileges and immuni¬ 
ties and is unconstitutional and void, and is no 
more law than though it had never been enacted. 
For a number of years I have been studying 
from very imperfect records as might be obtain¬ 
able for the purpose, the conditions of the wild 
life as they prevailed in the country during the 
early days of the nation. There is ample record 
and evidence of the fact that game of all kinds 
was very plentiful, and this, of course, is a 
matter of common knowledge, but I have been 
attempting to get hold of some sort of exact 
data in reference to the supply, and have now 
found one instance of which I desire to treat 
herein. 
This study has only served to convince me of 
a self-evident truth, and that is, that the great 
majority of those uncouth, hardy and untrained 
men who were a source of such terror to the 
British regular soldiers during the Revolution¬ 
ary War, were hunters of game. I find in every 
instance that the colonists who did the dead¬ 
liest execution with their rifles all came from 
the game country. Here in Vermont our own 
Green Mountain Boys could pick off a British 
red-coat at every shot, while on the other hand, 
the British regulars who were trained in pre¬ 
cise marching and maneuvers of display would 
usually waste considerable ammunition without 
fatal results. Investigation shows a similar con¬ 
dition in other parts of the country at that 
period, and nothing did the enemy fear more 
than a motley, undisciplined body of men from 
the game sections of the colonies. As I have 
said, it is difficult to get an accurate idea of 
the enormous amount of ga'me the early pioneers 
shot, but those who lived in the mountain coun¬ 
try evidently passed all of their time in fall and 
winter in hunting and trapping. The land was 
fairly teeming with game of all kinds, and this 
game furnished our forefathers and their families 
with fresh meat, clothing and a means of ex¬ 
change in place of money. 
Now, this constant pursuit of game with the 
rifle, with its attendant hardships and dangers, 
served to make our forebears dangerous an¬ 
tagonists for any army in the world, especially 
if that army was compelled to attack them upon 
their own stamping grounds. These hunters 
could endure long marches and many hard¬ 
ships. They understood the ways of feeding 
upon the country as they marched, and could 
make themselves a camp and be comfortable 
anywhere. Finally, when they came within 
sight of the enemy, they knew how to seek cover 
and care for themselves individually. Being ac¬ 
curate judges of range, they waited quietly and 
patiently until the conspicuous red-coats ap¬ 
proached sufficiently near for careful aim and 
then they fired. The result was sure death and 
disaster to every victim of their skill. 
All this—if nothing else—should impress upon 
us the necessity of saving our game, or rather 
conserving 'the supply, to encourage hunting, 
tramping in the open under hard conditions and 
acquiring skill in the use of firearms. Of what 
value is a well trained militia, as advocate^! and 
safeguarded by our State and National consti¬ 
tutions, if the individuals of the same are not 
skilled in handling their arms, and how can that 
individual skill be so well acquired as in the 
pursuit of game? 
My late discovery, mentioned above, has solved 
another problem in history. We have all read 
of the famous Kentucky and Tennessee riflemen 
who, under General Jackson at the battle of New 
Orleans, mowed down the columns of the finest 
body of regular soldiers that Great Britain could 
send over here in 1815. It is not remarkable that 
those men were such “dead shots,” when we 
learn of the enormous amount of game which 
fell to their guns in the early days. Here is a 
bit of corroborative evidence of history which 
tells the tale: In 1788 it appears that in the 
mountain section of East Tennessee the in¬ 
habitants formed themselves into a separate 
State and called that section the “State of 
Franklin.” At that time money was scarce 
with which to pay the officers of the new State, 
so in October of that year the Legislature of the 
“State of Franklin” enacted the following law 
to provide for the compensation of their 
officers: 
“Be it enacted by the General Assembly of 
the State of Franklin, and it is hereby enacted 
by the authority of the same, That, from the 
first day of January, A. D. 1789, the salaries of 
the civil officers of this Commonwealth be as 
follows, to-wit: 
“His excellency, the governor, per annum, 
one thousand deer skins; his honor, the chief 
justice, five hundred, do. do.; the attorney-gen¬ 
eral, five hundred, do. do.; secretary to his ex¬ 
cellency, the governor, five hundred raccoon, do.; 
the treasurer of the State, four hundred and 
fifty otter, do.; each county clerk, three hundred 
beaver, do.; clerk of the house of commons, two 
hundred raccoon, do.; members of assembly, per 
diem, three, do. do.; justice fee for signing a 
warrant, one muskrat, do.; to the constable for 
serving a warrant, one mink, do. 
“Enacted into law this 18th day of October, 
1788, under the great seal of the State.” 
Reading the above should be equivalent to a 
full answer to two important questions, viz.: 
How did it happen those Tennessee riflemen 
were such excellent shots? And how is it the 
game has disappeared so rapidly? What an 
enormous number of deer there must have been 
in that section of the country in those days. 
Taxes were all paid there in deer, raccoon, 
mink, muskrat, otter and beaver skins. 
Harry Chase. 
A Woman on Conservation. 
Last year when the Forestry Department of 
the General Federation of Women's Clubs 
changed its name to Conservation Department 
with a broadened field of work, Mrs. Emmons 
Crocker, chairmaan of the department, declared 
that the change of name did not mean a change 
in the purpose of the work. In her report she 
says: 
“While we realize that forestry is the very 
foundation of the conservation of all natural re¬ 
sources; that bird life is closely related to for¬ 
estry because birds are the great natural pro¬ 
tectors of the trees as well as other vegetation ; 
that water—the most vitally important natural 
resource, it being absolutely necessary to all life 
—comes next in order of conservation, we feel 
that conservation should be still further ex- 
1 Dnded. 
“In connection with ‘waterways’ the great pri¬ 
mary waste of soils, erosion, has already neces¬ 
sarily been treated. Now, waste by depletion, 
which is caused by continual use of the land 
without proper fertilization, is to be taken up; 
rotation of crops and scientific tillage and fer¬ 
tilization urged, for we feel that .the time has 
passed for the farmer to have a moral right to 
do as he chooses with his own. We have reached 
that point where the life of the nation depends 
upon the intelligent cultivation of the land. The 
people have a right to demand that it be so tilled 
that it shall increase in fecundity rather than 
diminish.” 
She speaks of the prospects of the farmer of 
the future and his education, and of the waste 
of minerals. On the protection and increase of 
wild life she has this to say: 
“We encourage the raising of fur-bearing ani¬ 
mals in the North, where fur reaches its best 
development, as an industry, because it will tend 
to relieve the pressure brought to bear on wild 
life, and proves a profitable business in these 
days of increasing demand for furs of all grades. 
“The breeding of game is also advocated. It 
will greatly augment the income of the farm, 
with but little additional output, and, as in the 
case of the fur-bearing animals, tend to curb 
the destruction of the wild. 
“We call attention to the depredation of sea 
and inland water life, and the necessity of fur¬ 
ther measures to assist its propagation.” 
Range of the Long Bow. 
Budleigh, Salterton, England, Sept. 15 .—Editor 
Forest and Stream: The range obtained with 
an arrow by Dr. Robert Elmer, as described in 
your paper of the 2d of September, was certainly 
very great for the present period, and probably 
unsurpassed, if even equalled, by modern archers, 
but it was doubtless often exceeded by British 
archers at the time when the bow was an im¬ 
portant weapon of war. 
In the reign of Henry VIII. an act of Parlia¬ 
ment was passed prohibiting yeomen from shoot¬ 
ing with the butts at a shorter distance than 220 
yards, and they were ordered to practice regu¬ 
larly on Sundays and saints’ days. Laws had 
been made hundreds of years before that time 
to compel every master to provide his appren¬ 
tice with a bow and two arrows, and every father 
to give each son a bow of his own height at the 
age of seven years, and a larger one annually 
until he was full grown. 
This system insured an enormous development 
of the muscles specially used when drawing a 
bow, so that numbers of men could use weapons 
far exceeding those of modern times, which 
seldom have a pull of more than sixty pounds. 
Air English gentleman named Nicholson, author 
of “Fifty Years in South Africa,” states in that 
book that when at college in Cambridge he was 
passionately fond of archery and practiced until 
he could use a bow of ninety-five pounds pull. 
With this he obtained a range of four hundred 
yards and found that at forty yards he could 
shoot an arrow, with a pyramidal steel head, 
through an iron shovel. We can thus believe 
that many of the tales were true which described 
the ancient “cloth yard’ shafts” as piercing steel 
armor and attaining ranges almost incredible to 
modern archers who only occasionally practice 
with the bow. J. J. Meyrick. 
