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Forest and Stream 
Terms. $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy.. ^EW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 20, I9O9. \ o. J 
Six Months. $1.50. I _____ 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Gborgh Bird Grinkell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary. 
L.OUIS Dean Speir, Treasurer. 
127 Franklm Street, New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
'federated SPORTSMEN’S CLUBS. 
Efforts have been made in the past to form 
national associations of sportsmen which might 
influence local and federal legislation. None of 
these were successful for the fundamental rea¬ 
son that they did not come near enough to the 
individual .sportsman to touch him in matters 
he was really interested in. They dealt in glit¬ 
tering generalities, but said nothing about the 
particular brook, pond, swamp or cover in which 
the individual sportsman took his recreation. 
They began at the wrong end of the line. 
A National Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, 
if properly organized and directed, has in it 
great possibilities for the protection of fish and 
game and the conservation of the natural re¬ 
sources of the country. 
Scattered all over the country are individual 
organizations of sportsmen, some of them doing 
effective work in their own localities, others 
existing only as names. Back of these various 
organizations, however, in every State and in 
every county are great numbers of earnest sports¬ 
men, most of them willing to work for the 
general cause, provided they can be shown how 
to work effectively. Properly directed, these 
sportsmen may become a superbly effective force 
and perform a mighty work. They can nevei 
be induced to perform this 'work by lecturing 
to them from a distance on the general beauties 
of game protection, but they can be made to 
feel an enthusiasm for work done close at home, 
where, if good results follow that work, these 
results are evident. Unless they see results their 
interest will soon fail. 
A National Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs 
can be successful only if founded on local in¬ 
terest. The clubs must first be organized in, 
towns, the clubs of towns should form a county 
association, and the county associations should 
constitute a State association. The State asso¬ 
ciations, working together, will form a national 
federation which may wield a power so great 
as to be irresistible. 
Dr. F. S. Honsinger, of Syracuse, has had an 
extraordinary success in organizing the clubs of 
the New York Fish, Game and Forest League, 
and in his hands their number has increased 
from thirteen to over eighty. He believes that 
this same work can be done in other States and 
has expressed a willingness to take up the work 
for other States and see whether it cannot be 
pushed to a successful conclusion. 
A competent organizer, such as Dr. Honsinger 
has shown himself to be, taking hold of this 
work for the whole country and pushing it with 
the enthusiasm that he feels for the cause and 
the joy that he takes in the work, may accom¬ 
plish things that will revolutionize the work of 
game protection and preservation for the coun¬ 
try. Sportsmen will do well to carefully con¬ 
sider this whole matter from all points of view 
and may profitably consult Dr. Honsinger on the- 
subject. 
WOMAN IN THE FIELD. 
It seems only a few years since it was un¬ 
heard of for a woman to cast for trout, to fol¬ 
low the dogs over stubble fields or through 
swamps, to climb lofty mountain peaks or to hold 
the tiller of a racing yacht. We have changed 
all that. More and more, now-a-days, women 
are coming to share in the outdoor recreations 
of men to the great benefit of men and women 
alike. The time is not distant when the help¬ 
less fine lady that was mirrored as the ideal 
heroine of the literature of fifty years'ago will 
be absolutely unknown—as unheard of as that 
literature. 
A sympton of this changed attitude of the 
public mind and practice is the fact that to-day 
some of the most charming writers on outdoor 
life are women. To realize this we need not 
go far afield, remembering only such delightful 
contributions as Mrs. Ridley’s “A Woman on 
the Trap-Trail,” Miss Paulina Brandreth’s 
charming articles on hunting, and other sketches 
that have recently appeared in Forest and 
Stream either written by women, or recount¬ 
ing adventures in which women have taken part. 
It is good for all of us when women are suffi¬ 
ciently enthusiastic about outdoor life to tell of 
it from the woman’s side, a point of view which 
is novel to the mere man and which usually 
possesses a great charm for him. Most men 
are wholly blind to many things which a woman 
sees clearly; she possesses certain intuitions 
which are hers alone, and which give her a 
ready and clear comprehension of many things 
that the average man can approach only by slow 
and clumsy methods—if, indeed, he can approach 
them at all. 
As women take more and more to the 
practice of outdoor sports and the observation 
of outdoor matters, we may look for many more 
delightful contributions from their pens which 
will always be welcome to readers of Forest 
AND Stream. 
Let us hear more then from the women who 
fish, or shoot, or study nature, or sail their own 
boats. Not a few of them have messages to 
give that will be gladly read, and that will 
broaden the view of us all and increase our 
pleasure in outdoor things. 
THE PAST WINTER. 
The mild spring weather, so remarkable this 
year, does not appear to be confined to any one 
locality. In the Southern States the season is 
a month ahead of its usual time. The early 
spring birds have long been present in the north 
Atlantic coast States, while in Montana, on the 
flanks of the Rocky Mountains, wild geese were 
reported as going north as early as Feb. 28 , and 
they have been going ever since. 
Mild as the weather has been over a large part 
of North America through much of the past win¬ 
ter, the cold was intense with much snow in the 
high mountains of the West, and in the far 
North also the winter was bitter. Up to the 
first of January the weather in the fur country 
was mild, but Colin Fraser, a fur trader, who 
has recently returned from Ft. Chippewyan, says 
that there this has been the hardest winter seen 
in twenty years. For a period of fifty days be¬ 
ginning the first of January the thermometer 
never registered above 38 degrees below zero, 
and for days at a time it remained near 50 de¬ 
grees below zero. Among the Indians there was 
great suffering caused by the cold and by a 
lack of food, for this year it seems that no fish 
were to be caught; moreover, the catch of furs 
was a failure. 
The California anglers are to be congratu¬ 
lated on the passage of the bill which gives 
striped bass protection during their breeding 
season. Under the old law there was a weight 
limit only. The minimum was three pounds, and 
this applied to taking, possession and shipment. 
Under the favorable conditions which encour¬ 
age rapid growth and large size in California 
fish, the striped bass has multiplied rapidly m 
a few years, and countless large specimens have 
been taken, but even in California nature will 
not withstand a steady drain on her resources 
every month in the year. 
The Louisiana Game Commission has adopted 
the water wheel invented by Dr. James A. Hen- 
shall, of the United States Fisheries Bureau. 
It is’ to be used as a fish screen for ditches m 
the rice fields of the State._ This wheel is not 
patented, is very simple in construction and 
operation, and unlike wire screens, does not 
become clogged with leaves and driftwood, but 
game fish will not pass by it. 
Less than a fortnight away is April first, the 
actual opening day for trout fishing in several 
States and a day which the anglers of other 
States look upon as the turning point in the 
seasons and a time to begin active preparations 
for their trout campaigns. 
