52 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 13, 1912. 
iAC OF OUTDOOR fclF) 
tfeAVEL NATUKt Sl UDY SHOOTING. FlSHWa YAC3tTlSG. 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
Edward C. Locke, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary, 
S. J. Gibson, Treasurer. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of 
entertainment, instruction and information between Amer¬ 
ican sportsmen. The editors invite communications on 
the subjects to which its pages are devoted. Anonymous 
communications will not be regarded. The editors are 
not responsible for the views of correspondents. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS. 
Terms: $3.00 a year; $1.50 for six months. Single copies, 
10 cents. Canadian subscriptions, $4.00 a year; $2.00 for 
six months. Foreign subscriptions, $4.50 a year; $2.25 for 
six months. Subscriptions may begin at any time. 
Remit by express money-order, registered letter, money- 
order or drah, payable to the Forest and Stream Pub¬ 
lishing Company. 
The paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Foreign 
Subscription and Sales Agents—London: Davies & Co., 
1 Finch Lane; Sampson, Low & Co. Paris: Brentano’s. 
ADVERTISEMENTS. 
Inside pages, 20 cents per agate line ($2.80 per inch). 
There are 14 agate lines to an inch. Preferred positions, 
25 per cent, extra. Special rates for back cover in two 
or more colors. Reading notices, 75 cents per count line. 
A discount of 5 per cent, is allowed on an advertise¬ 
ment inserted 13 times in one year; 10 per cent, on 26, 
and 20 per cent, on 52 insertions respectively. 
Advertisements should be received by Saturday pre¬ 
vious to the issue in which they are to be inserted. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
A “SPORTING CHANCE.” 
In another column one of our friends takes 
us to task because of the printing of a com¬ 
munication from another friend, who protested 
against the killing of geese on the water near 
Plymouth, in Massachusetts Bay. The number 
reported killed in one vol.ey, forty-five, is of no 
particular importance in its bearing on the ques¬ 
tion. It is the method employed that we protest 
against. 
The decoying of wildfowl is a very ancient 
practice, and it is considered sportsftianlike to 
this day, provided the birds are shot on the 
wing and not as they sit, absolutely helpless, on 
the water. It is conceded that crippled birds 
should be dispatched at once, and that means, 
as a general thing, killing them on the water. 
Otherwise, the ancient phrase, to give the game 
“a sporting chance” to outwit the skill of the 
gunner and get off scot free, guides the sports¬ 
man of to-day as it did the good men and true 
who long ago decided that shooting in which the 
balance was ever on the side of the pursuer was 
not sport. 
In the life of every sportsman there comes a 
day now and then when the conditions are so 
favorable to him that the temptation is almost 
irresistible to make a great killing, a record, a 
balancing of the long account of slim bags and 
blank days. There is even a modicum of justi¬ 
fication for hfs act if he yields to temptation; 
for his mental argument that he can dispose of 
his kill among friends to whom game is always 
a treat; that the law permits him to fill out his 
limit; that his shooting is an expensive pastime, 
and that any other shooter would, in his place, 
take heavy toll from the passing flocks, and be 
thankful for the opportunity. 
In the last analysis this is a selfish view to¬ 
day, however fair and just it may have seemed 
in the past century. In those days the great 
flocks of wildfowl came from no one knew 
where, and went to parts in which no one held 
any interest. Their numbers were believed to 
be as inexhaustible as the sands of the sea. 
Times have changed, and every man who shoots 
knows that only through moderation to-day will 
there be wildfowl shooting for generations yet 
unborn. 
To set on one hand the cost of maintaining a 
wildfowl shooting outfit and on the other the 
market value of the bag is to reduce shooting 
to a commercial basis. It is to be regretted that 
the view of one of our correspondents, who men¬ 
tions these items, is consciously or unconsciously 
shared by too many good men. It is natural that 
this should be so, and yet it is, as we said, re¬ 
grettable. The very fact that license fees and 
bag limits are exacted by law impels many men 
to endeavor to “get their money’s worth.” 
On the other hand there is a growing senti¬ 
ment in favor of observing smaller limits than 
those prescribed by law, and the influence of 
men so minded is becoming a power for good. 
It is another way of applying the doctrine of 
the “'sporting chance,” and it is worthy of the 
emulation of every person who goes abroad for 
the benefit he or she derives from recreation and 
rest in the open places, with catching fish or 
bagging game of secondary importance. 
THE RETURN OF THE BEAVER. 
Beaver and buffalo are the two North Ameri¬ 
can mammals that perhaps appeal most strongly 
to the public imagination. The buffalo was won¬ 
derful for his huge bulk and his vast numbers; 
the beaver for the houses and the dams that he 
built, since popular belief credited him with mar¬ 
velous engineering skill. These two are also the 
mammals through whose influence the western 
half of our land came to be developed. The 
beaver furnished the motive for the trapper, who 
was the first explorer, and the buffalo yielded 
the trapper his subsistence. They are alike also 
in the fact that both species approached peril¬ 
ously near extinction in the United States be¬ 
fore any adequate steps were taken to protect 
and perpetuate them. 
For the buffalo as a wild creature there is no 
longer any place. He takes up too much room. 
He crowds out domestic animals more useful 
and more profitable to civilized man. He must 
be kept behind fences—in parks and preserves. 
With the beaver the case is somewhat different. 
While naturally a dweller in places untrodden 
by the foot of man, occupying water courses and 
their immediate neighborhood, and feeding on 
the twigs and branches of the trees and shrubs 
which fringe these waters, the beaver may long 
subsist if protected. Yet his fur offers a strong 
temptation to the trapper. 
Some years ago, after much talk, beavers were 
introduced in the .A^diTondacks, where they have 
flourished and mightily increased. Long before 
that the late Rutherford Stuyvesant set some 
free at his place in New Jersey, and from there 
these animals, having escaped, spread over much 
of Northern New Jersey and crossed into Penn¬ 
sylvania and established colonies there. 
In the Yellowstone National Park beavers have 
long been abundant, and their dams and houses 
and occasionally the animals themselves prove a 
great attraction to visitors. 
Beavers should be introduced in every State 
and National park in the country, and it is 
gratifying to learn that the Department of the 
Interior purposes to place them in various other 
parks. The ^ecies was formerly found over 
the whole country almost from the coast of the 
Gulf of Mexico as far north as the limit of 
trees. 
In the very early days of the West, a century 
ago, it was the beaver’s fur that lured the hardy 
trappers into the unknown mountains in whose 
narrow valleys they set their traps and too often 
shed their blood in encounters with hostile In-^ 
dians. After the trapper came the trader, the 
missionary and the explorer. More and more 
the West became known, yet only a generation 
ago there were great areas that had never been 
mapped. A few years more went by, and sud¬ 
denly the West was full of people. 
Harry Chase, for a number of years game 
warden of Bennington county, Vermont, has re¬ 
signed to engage in the practice of law. For a 
long time Mr. Chase has been one of the fore¬ 
most men in the rank and file of game protec¬ 
tors. His record and his writings have done 
much to place the game protectors of America 
on a higher plane than was occupied by them in 
former years. His wide field experience, backed 
by a thorough knowledge of the written law, en¬ 
abled him to give to the world that excellent 
handbook, “Powers, Duties and Work of Game 
Wardens,” which has assisted materially in the 
work of game protection. 
And now it is Hubert Latham who is going to 
Africa to hunt big game; not with an army of 
blacks and a number of white companions, but 
with his monoplane. If he startles the natives as 
he stirred up the Californians a year ago, he 
will have accomplished something. But some at 
least of the Africans have seen so many queer 
outfits that the “bird man” with his gun may not 
create a sensation after all. 
Cablegrams from London say that George M. 
Bowers, United States Commissioner of Fish¬ 
eries, disposed of 12,002 of this Government’s 
Alaskan sealskins recently at Lampson’s auction 
rooms, for $428,385, At this sale about *30,000 
sealskins were disposed of, the majority being 
taken by American buyers. 
at 
Dr. Otto Moebus, of Decatur, Ala., died on 
Dec. 18, aged sixty-six years. He was a native 
of Germany, but had lived in Alabama nearly 
all his life. He was a well-known sportsman, 
and was very fond of pointers and setters and 
their work in the field. He is survived by six 
sons and four daughters. 
Dr. Silas D. Black, the well-known nature 
poet of the Middle West, died on Jan. 2 at Los 
Angeles, Cal., where he had made his home re¬ 
cently. His age was sixty years. 
