48 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 13, 1912. 
Work of the New Protective Ass’n. 
Over three thousand dollars, mostly in pay¬ 
ment of one dollar yearly membership dues, 
has already been received by the American 
Game Protective and Propagation Association, 
according to figures given out from its offices 
at III Broadway, New York city. Although 
little more than two months have elapsed since 
its incorporation, the association has lent valu¬ 
able aid to the cause of game protection, and 
sportsmen from all over the country, real¬ 
izing the necessity for prompt and concentrated 
action if our fish and game are to be saved 
from extinction, are hastening to enlist under 
the National standard. Over a dozen life, and 
a number of club memberships have been se¬ 
cured. 
The New York State Fish, Game and Forest 
League, which counts among its members most 
of the local clubs of the State, and which has 
been very influential in securing the enactment 
of good legislation, joined the new association 
by the unanimous vote of the annual convention 
held recently in Schenectady. 
Canada, and almost every State in the Union, 
have furnished members, paying from one to 
one hundred dollars a year. Memberships are 
secured on the following basis: Associate, one 
dollar or more annually; club, five dollars or 
more annually; life, one hundred dollars at one 
time; patron, one thousand dollars; and bene¬ 
factor, twenty-five thousand dollars. 
The funds derived in this way, together with 
an income of $25,000 subscribed by manufac¬ 
turers, is administered by experts trained in 
the profession of game and fish protection and 
propagation. They stand ready to give their 
support to any good cause for the furtherance 
of these ends. 
Among the things already accomplished by 
the association is a complete re-organization of 
the protective forces of one State where a 
special agent spent ten days, during which time 
more convictions were secured against viola¬ 
tors than in the preceding ten months. The 
agents work with the local authorities, in most 
cases turning all evidence over to them so 
that they may obtain the convictions. 
The president of the association, John B. 
Burnham, who has for years been identified 
with protective work, and who is an authority 
on game laws, has been asked by the State of 
New York to assist in codifying its laws. He 
is one of a committee of three engaged in this 
work. 
Reports of local conditions, which members 
have sent in, are strikingly similar. Inadequate 
or conflicting laws, poorly enforced, are the rule 
almost everywhere. Laxity in the enforcement 
of game laws is often due to considerations of 
local politics from which the association’s 
special agents are immune, and are therefore 
able to obtain evidence against, and prosecute 
violators, where the county or State officers 
would not do so. In other cases the local 
authorities are simply handicapped by lack of 
funds and are only too glad of the assistance of 
the associatiqns’s trained men. 
Another of the commonest obstacles in the 
way of bringing to justice those who are ruth¬ 
lessly despoiling the country of the game which 
rightfully belongs to all the people, is inertia 
on the part of a public as yet unawakened to 
the disastrous results which are sure to follow 
this despoliation. If the community under his 
surveillance is not behind him, a warden can ac¬ 
complish little. The association’s agents are 
active in spreading the gospel of game protec¬ 
tion among those who do not realize its 
necessity. 
The interest that has been manifested from 
the start, and the loj'al support which sports¬ 
men and others have accorded to the associa¬ 
tion, show that people are ready to take the 
same position in the matter of saving our wild 
life that they have taken toward the conserva¬ 
tion of some of our other natural resources. 
Nothing but united effort can save the fish and 
game. The business of the National Associa¬ 
tion is to organize as well as to exert this 
effort. 
The Massachusetts Bay Goose Shooters. 
South Hanover, Mass., Jan. 3 . —Editor Forest 
and Stream: In your issue of Dec. 9, there ap¬ 
peared a letter entitled the “Shameful Slaughter 
of Wildfowl.” 
While it is not my desire to enter into any 
debate or controversy on the subject, yet being 
a goose-shooter myself, I would consider it a 
favor if you allowed me the space in which to 
correct a few of the mistakes in that letter. 
Taking the first clipping, for instance, if seven 
to ten men kill sixty geese in two days in the 
heaviest flight of geese known in ten years, how 
many will they average? About four or five 
geese a day per man, and so on down through 
it. When there is a big flight on, every stand 
will hold from five to a dozen or fifteen men. 
Even in the clipping, which tells of such awful 
“murder,” it says the flight was the heaviest 
known for years. Seven or eight men 
slaughtered four or five geese apiece in two 
days’ running. Does it seem so bad when you 
look at the facts? 
The second clipping speaks of “forty-five 
geese at a single volley.” Now being morally 
certain that such was not the case, and in fact 
we all laughed at that yarn when it appeared, 
I took the pains to telephone to a prominent 
member of that gun club (the Snipitnit Gun 
Club) to find out if the yarn held any truth. 
He emphatically informed me that there was no 
truth in the story at all, and that it was imagi¬ 
nation pure and simple on some one’s part. 
He said there were ten or a dozen men there 
on that date, but no such shooting occurred as 
the paper stated. 
The next paragraph but one speaks of the 
large bore guns. Granted there are a few; there 
are ten 12-bores and lo-bores for everyone of 
a larger size, so you can see that we do not 
all use cannons, as the paragraph would have 
you believe. And a dead goose is a dead goose, 
whether killed in the air or in the water. 
We emphatically do not consider it a calamity 
to have a bird escape, as he would know if the 
writer had stopped and thought. Any man 
would be a fool who did not understand that 
if they were all killed, in a few years there 
would be no geese; and considering the fact 
that this has been the best year we have had 
since live decoys were used, goes to prove that 
some at least are left. 
More than fifty per cent, of the goose shoot¬ 
ers are poor men who have a small “layout” 
and several of these club together and have 
a “stand.” They may average thirty or forty 
geese a year or four or five to a man, and it 
costs them perhaps $50 at the lowest to get 
those few geese. Certainly not business; what 
is it? A wealthy man’s stand may cost a club 
from $1,000 to $2,500 a year to run, but of 
course they may get on an average 150 geese 
all told in three months’ shooting. A goose is 
worth $1.25;'it sure is business to spend a 
thousand or two dollars to kill two hundred 
dollars’ worth of geese. What else is it? Or 
for a poor man to spend fifty dollars to kill 
his share of thirty or forty geese. 
The above facts can be proved, if need be, 
and I hope you will do us the honor to publish 
this, as there should be two sides to every 
argument, and to deprive us of the right to 
shoot over live decoys will stop ninety per 
cent, of us from ever killing a duck or goose 
again, as we have neither the time nor the 
money to go where we can get goose or duck 
shooting without their use. 
Frederic P. Cross. 
For November Hunting. 
Philadelphia, N. Y., Dec. 29 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Cannot Forest and Stream help 
us to get the season for deer in this State ex¬ 
tended to Nov. 20 for the reason that two-thirds 
of the deer killed in October are does? At this 
time of the year they are strolling around the 
woods and the bucks are hid or watching on 
high points and hard to get, while after the rut¬ 
ting season starts, from the ist to the 5th of 
November, a change of conditions take place. 
Then the does hide away in the thickets and 
swamps, where they are seldom found, and the 
bucks roam the woods. Therefore, November 
hunting means that about two-thirds of the deer 
killed are bucks. So long as we have does there 
will be plenty of deer. There will always be 
bucks enough to go around. 
You know the later the season closes the later 
the hunters go to the bush. Lengthening the 
season does not force so large a crowd into the 
woods at the same time, as some will go in 
October. A. F. Nims. 
Colorado Game. 
Las Animas, Colo., Dec. 31. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: In October there came reports of the 
slaughtering of the elk and deer that make their 
home in the mountains surrounding North and 
Middle parks in the summer. On their winter 
feeding grounds along White and Bear rivers, 
the country is a desert with but little cover, and 
here the whites and Utes kill them by the 
hundreds. 
We have no open season for quail in Colo¬ 
rado, but the quail are decimated in the winter 
just the same. About 100 of the western va¬ 
riety have made my ranch a haven this winter, 
but a winged one here, or a swinging leg there 
prove that when they are away from home the 
laws fail them. 
To-day is Sunday and guns are popping in 
every direction. Ostensibly the hunter is after 
ducks and rabbits, but woe to the covey of 
quail that the most of these hunters see! 
F. T. W. 
