Dec. 23, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
903 
The Adirondacks. 
Little Falls, N. Y., Dec. 19.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: I believe that nearly every one 
who understands the actual conditions in the 
Adirondacks will agree with Forest and Stream 
when it says, “Hands off the Adirondacks.” It 
is not yet time for the public to permit logging 
on State lands, for the moral force behind honest 
administration of those lands is not of sufficient 
strength to compel justice to the public and ex¬ 
cellence in the development of the timber stands. 
The way in which the State is going about the 
attempt to flood Adirondack State lands shows 
that there is little to be expected for the public 
if the personally interested parties are to be 
permitted to have their way in the location of 
the dams, and in the compensation to be given 
the State for the priceless possessions which are 
demanded by the water power crowd. • I know 
of no more remarkable thing than this persistent 
and bare-faced demand that the State build mill¬ 
ponds for men who confess that they cannot 
afford to build the dams themselves. They want 
the State to pay out good money on an under¬ 
taking that they say they cannot make profit¬ 
able, if they pay the money themselves. 
Mr. Pinchot is unfortunate in his references 
to the Webb and Whitney private preserves as 
good examples for the practice of forestry, and 
as illustrations for the public to look at—from 
the far side of trespass signs—to see what can 
be done in the Adirondack timber. 
Does Gifford Pinchot know the scandalous 
story of lost Adirondack State lands? Has he 
looked into the matter of how the Webb preserve 
came by that vast territory? Has he found out 
by what means the State was prevailed upon to 
pay the Webb association vast sums of money 
for lands to which the State might very well have 
made claim as its own property in the beginning? 
The public does not seem to be well aware 
and Mr. Pinchot must have forgotten, the whole 
wretched story of Adirondack State lands, to 
have referred to the Webb preserve in whose 
limits are thousands of acres which the State 
lost years ago. What title has the Whitney 
estate to those fine townships across which it is 
squatted, and how did it acquire those titles? I 
am astonished that Mr. Pinchot should use those 
two preserves as examples of what can be done 
in the forestry line in the Adirondacks. 
There are plenty of suits against the State for 
lands that the. State is holding. Just the other 
day sundry folks filed mining claims on State 
lots, among others east of Forestport. The 
State, however, rests at its ease, and makes no 
attempt in the courts to recover any of the 
lands it lost in those shameful years of official 
negligence in the eighties. The land pirates 
make raid after raid on State lands, but the 
State contents itself with doing nothing toward 
testing the titles of the men and companies who 
got their lands by methods that are perfectly 
well known throughout the Adirondacks. 
I do not think that Mr. Pinchot, who fought 
so well against the land grabbers in the national 
domains, is aware of the fact that ir, the Adi¬ 
rondacks the same thing was played on a smaller 
scale. Certainly, if he had known it, he would 
not have referred to one of the most questioned 
of Adirondack preserves as an example for the 
public to look up to and regard with fine exulta¬ 
tion over the forestry. 
The State's tree work is excellent, but there 
is little enough of it done, and the State can do 
far more good in planting its denuded and 
skinned areas than in turning over to the ruth¬ 
less hands of the spoilers the good timber that 
it now has. 
A department that lets a man like John B. 
Burnham go, and a State that fails to reward 
him for his unexampled good work with an 
appointment to the supreme commission, cannot 
be trusted to treat the public squarely in the mat¬ 
ter of logging on State lands, and I am exceed¬ 
ingly sorry to see that Mr. Pinchot recommends 
removing the constitutional protection of the 
forests — the constitutional protection which 
neither prevented wholesale theft of timber from 
State lands, nor sent the captured culprits to 
jail, though two “little fellows” did go up, as 
a kind of sop to the public demand for justice. 
There is no more important thing in the mat¬ 
ter of New York conservation than keeping the 
loggers off State lands, and in preventing the 
State from building millponds at public expense 
for private water powers. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
Hunting Dogs—Grouse. 
Hendersonville, N. C., Dec. 16. —Editor Forest 
and Stream: I promised to report the result of 
a case taken to the State supreme court on the 
setter and pointer dog law for this county. This 
was taken up by five young men who appealed 
from the decision of the circuit court here. 
The law makes it a criminal offense for a 
pointer or setter to be at large in this (Hender¬ 
son) county from March to January, and the 
penalty fixed by the law is both fine and im¬ 
prisonment for its owners. It was thought un¬ 
constitutional that the owner of a pointer or 
setter should be, under this law, placed in prison 
for such an offense while no other dogs are 
covered by the law. Very apparent discrimina¬ 
tion, but the supreme court upholds the law. 
On what grounds I do not know, as the test of 
the decision has not yet come to the clerk of the 
court here. Personally I do not let my setter 
run at large at any season of the year and I 
do not think other dogs should, either, but be¬ 
cause—say by accident—it gets out, it is pretty 
severe punishment for me to be sent to jail and 
compelled to pay a fine while my neighbor’s cur 
can go anywhere at any time. 
January is near at hand now and quail shoot¬ 
ing in this county can then be legally indulged 
in. If I can get away I want to try to bag a 
brace of ruffed grouse in an adjoining county 
next week for Christmas. 
I do not think I ever wrote you of a singular 
and very interesting little experience I had some 
years ago with one of these birds. To begin 
with, years before I had learned a few things 
affiout “my friend the partridge.” For instance, 
that in spring and fall the cocks select a log 
and a certain part of the log on which to per¬ 
form or drum and always face down hill to¬ 
ward a thicket or place of refuge and run at 
the sound of a creeping enemy, while they stand 
and look at or for a loud walking figure. Well, 
a brother of mine came home for a visit and 
brought a repeating rifle with him. He wanted 
to have a try at game. I told him I knew where 
an old cock grouse drummed and would take him 
to it. We walked out of town a mile and a half 
to a field surrounded by woods. This field we 
crossed and stopped inside and leaned on the 
rail fence to listen. Inside of five minutes the 
old cock drummed. I then told my brother to 
give me ten minutes and I would walk about 
400 yards down the fence and cross it under the 
hill, and if he frightened the bird it would cer¬ 
tainly come to me. After ten minutes he was 
to cross the fence, walk about fifty yards at 
right angles to it, and at about forty yards to 
his left he would see an old well-rotted log and 
midway of it the grouse would be, provided he 
did not scare it without a shot. 
I took a position with my back to him some 
400 yards away, just under a little rise of ground 
with a little run—called a branch in this coun¬ 
try—just in front of me, and a thicket of rho¬ 
dodendron and kalmia. 
I sat for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes till 
at last I heard the sharp crack of his rifle and 
then pat, pat, pat as the bullet came through the 
small trees behind me and fell from the top of 
the tree at the base of which I sat. I reached 
over and picked it up hardly three feet in front 
of me, and to do so almost lay down on my face. 
I picked it up a battered bit of lead. 
As I raised myself again to a sitting position 
the grouse rushed by on swift wing not three feet 
away, and had I expected it could have knocked 
it down with my gun barrel. It is evident I 
figured this bird out pretty close, but my brother 
did not do his part well. He said that he only 
made the grouse out on center of the log after 
quite a while, taking the bird for a knot. He 
never saw it fly and never knew how it got 
away. I took a quick chance shot at it as it 
entered the thicket. I never saw it again. 
On reaching home I told this story to my 
wife, handing her the smashed bullet while 
I spoke. When I finished I asked her for it, 
but her reply was, “I did not think you wanted 
it and threw it into the fire.” A pity. 
Ernest L. Ewbank. 
Maine Game. 
Ansonia, Conn., Dec. 7 -—Editor Forest and 
Stream: At the last moment I changed my plans 
for my vacation this year and went to a little 
known place called Big Scoulis or Big Matamis- 
coutis properly, lying west of Seboois, south of 
Nollesemic and west of the Lincoln railway 
station, in Maine. 
Five years ago I counted over a hundred deer 
along this lake, but this year I was lucky to get 
two in fifteen days. Bears were plentiful, there 
was an abundant beech nut crop and I was fortu¬ 
nate enough to get a fair one. 
Moose were numerous from the number of 
signs, but the preliminary fifteen days’ deer shoot¬ 
ing makes them very wary, and all we could do 
was to scare them a little bit more. 
Partridges were very plentiful, more so than 
ever. I am rather pessimistic regarding the out¬ 
look for deer in Maine. The guides have the 
excuse of hard, noisy hunting, poor food, etc., 
but my opinion is that the indiscriminate killing 
of bucks, does, lambs and the illegal killing for 
lumber and sporting camps and by summer 
visitors has more to do with it. 
These two lakes, Big and Little Matamiscoutis, 
hold huge pickerel and white perch (nothing 
else). No camps on big lake; one old lumber 
camp on small lake. Henry W. Owen. 
