176 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Feb. io, 1912 
There was more than $100,000 in the fund de¬ 
rived from the sale of game licenses a year ago, 
and yet during the winter of 1911-12 I did not 
learn of any money expended to protect or feed 
game birds in this section of the State. 
Maybe I am pessimistic, but seeing game 
cover and wildfowl resort become cultivated 
ground, and the game grow scarce with no ade¬ 
quate effort to protect or propagate, is not cal¬ 
culated to render one optimistic. Wherefore, 
CONVIS. 
Tie Up the Dogs. 
New York City, Feb. 4.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Your issue of Feb. 3 prints on page 
142 a bill said to have been drafted by a com¬ 
mittee appointed by the Massachusetts Fish and 
Game Association, relative to the better protec¬ 
tion of partridges, quail, woodcock and other 
ground-nesting birds by forbidding the roaming 
at large of self-hunting dogs during two months 
in the year. 
With all deference for the possible broader 
viewpoint of the committee, which drafted this 
bill, I beg leave to urge that this is a half 
measure which can accomplish little or nothing 
in the way of protection of birds interesting to 
gunners and of the far greater number of birds 
that are of peculiar interest and value to farmers. 
The objections to the bill seem to be many. 
The period, sixty days between May i and June 
30, is far too short. Woodcock and ruffed 
grouse have made their nests and begun to lay 
by May i, and dogs in the woods and swamps 
can do a great deal of damage before that date. 
The young of many species of ground-nesting 
birds and the eggs of second broods are still 
in the nest June 30. 
The bill provides that to be considered a self¬ 
hunting dog, a dog must have been found run¬ 
ning at large and hunting in the woods or fields 
—by whom ? After this the Fish and Game 
Commission must be notified and the commis¬ 
sion must notify the owner. All this takes time. 
Then the dog has another chance; must be re¬ 
ported on again and if so reported and the 
owner is convicted, he may be fined the large 
sum of $5. 
For a number of generations now dogs have 
been allowed to run at large in the woods and 
I believe that this is one of the chief causes of 
the constant and increasing diminution of game 
birds and ground-nesting birds, many of which 
are such valuable aids to agriculture. It is per¬ 
haps encouraging that sportsmen and bird pro¬ 
tectors have been so far aroused from their 
lethargy in regard to this matter that they ac¬ 
knowledge the need of a law which shall re¬ 
strain the dogs, but until they awaken sufficient'y 
to demand a law which, if enforced, shall be 
effective, nothing will be accomplished. 
The last two paragraphs of George B. Clark’s 
letter tell the story, and it is perhaps not neces¬ 
sary to comment on it. I believe that in any 
given region which is thickly settled, self-hunt¬ 
ing dogs destroy more game and more ground¬ 
nesting birds than all the foxes, weasels, minks, 
skunks and raccoons in the same region. 
Mr. Clark and his committee must come to 
realize that half measures will accomplish noth¬ 
ing; they must either protect the birds of Mass¬ 
achusetts or let them go. In many regions I 
fear protection will come too late. G. B. G. 
Pheasants vs. Partridges. 
Boston, Mass., Jan. 29.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The letter of your correspondent, E. 
O. M., dated Jan. 18, commenting upon the strik¬ 
ing of a quail by a ring-necked pheasant, and 
his suggestion that the pheasants ought to be 
shot, meets with my own hearty approval. 
As a boy I lived in Oregon at a time when 
there were none of these foreign birds there, 
and w'hen the covers along the Willamette Val¬ 
ley were plentifully supplied with native ruffed 
grouse. I remained there long enough to see 
Oregon overrun with Mongolian pheasants and 
to see the ruffed grouse become scarcer than 
hens’ teeth. Native sportsmen and naturalists 
were almost universally of the opinion that the 
pheasants brought a throat disease which they 
were able to get by with all right, but which 
the grouse could not stand. Also that they at¬ 
tacked the young grouse and killed them, and 
occasionally destroyed their nests. Cocks of the 
Mongolian pheasants have been known in Ore¬ 
gon to come into a barnyard and whip the 
rooster on his own dung heap. 
The pheasant is not a good game bird; he will 
not lie to a dog, but runs like a turkey all day 
long, and after you do kill him he is not for a 
moment in the same class so far as eating is con¬ 
cerned with our own royal native ruffed grouse, 
the grandest game bird that flies. 
In spite of the limited shooting season now 
afforded in Massachusetts, our ruffed grouse 
are becoming scarcer and scarcer. This year I 
found them particularly scarce in a country 
which was inhabited by the ring-necked pheas¬ 
ants, whereas I am told by many friends in 
Maine that it has been an exceptionally good 
season for grouse there where there are no ring¬ 
necked pheasants. 
The ring-necked pheasant has no excuse for 
living in Massachusetts. He is not a good game 
bird, he is not very good to eat, and about all 
he is really good for is to grace some fair lady’s 
hat or to stand upon the mantel, stuffed and dis¬ 
play his gaudy tail. Instead of putting a close 
season upon him, I should vote in favor of 
putting a bounty upon him and having him e.x- 
terminated, and I should personally be glad to 
contribute to a fund, one-half of which should 
be devoted to his extermination, and the other 
half to a scientific attempt to restore the ruffed 
grouse in Massachusetts covers. R. L. W. 
Woodcock in the Provinces. 
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Jan. 29. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: I noticed a letter in the issue of 
the 20th from Ernest L. Ewbank, of North Caro¬ 
lina, stating that there were numbers of robins 
yet in that vicinity when he wrote on the 13th 
of this month. I did not suppose that was a 
very unusual occurrence for that latitude, but I 
am sure it is very unusual to see robins in this 
country in January. There has been a little 
family of four in our garden and vicinity as 
late as the 20th of this month, and this means 
that they have experienced several nights of zero 
weather besides several considerable snow 
storms, and on the 15th one of the coldest rains 
imaginable accompanied by a fifty-mile-an-hour 
hurricane. 
I would like to inquire of the fraternity if 
they have found the numbers of Wilson’s snipe 
particu’arly large this past season. The “wizard 
of the bogland” is a great friend of mine, and 
I follow him up rather more than any^ other 
game bird every autumn, but never within the 
last ten years at least has the snipe been so com¬ 
mon as during the past October in pretty well 
all the Eastern Provinces of Canada. They were 
in places unusual in my experience. Often 
enough when you expected a grouse to rise before 
the pointing dog in alder covers up would dart 
a woodcock, or coming out of the cover and 
crossing a grass stubble field of high land, the 
dog would make one of those spectacular stands 
by an old furrow or little spot of softer ground 
where, with no long grass or cover to hide him, 
you might gaze in admiration of that act which 
never grows stale in the eyes of the dog lover. 
Should this meet the eye of Mr. Ewbank, I 
would ask him also how he accounts for the fact 
that there are no ruffed grouse in Chatham 
county in his State. I have been there quail 
shooting two winters and was constantly think¬ 
ing what an ideal condition existed there for 
this royal game bird, but there never have been 
any in that part of the State, at least as far as 
I could learn. W. H. Starratt. 
Club Meetings. 
Danbury, Conn., Feb. 3.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The twelfth annual banquet of the 
Pahquioque Rod and Gun Club, held at the Hotel 
Green, Danbury, Conn., on Feb. i, eclipsed all 
the preceding ones. This affair is getting so 
popular and there is such a demand for tickets 
that we could have sold one hundred more. 
John B. Burnham, president of the American 
Game Propagation and Protection Association, 
was with us, and to say he will make a success 
of the organization of which he is the head 
there is no doubt. Every club in the country 
should give the association its support and 
join it, as we did. It will accomplish more for 
the sportsman than any other organization. Mr. 
Burnham also brought with him J. Alden Bor¬ 
ing, the naturalist, who gave an illustrated lecture 
on game birds and their habits, which was very 
instructive. Our club voted Mr. Burnham and 
Mr. Boring honorary members. We also invited 
Colonel Roosevelt, but being unable to accept, 
he sent a nice letter of regret. 
We also had our State game commissioners. 
State game warden, also Geo. Sutton, game 
warden from New York State, with several from 
the Mt. Kisco Gun Club. Thad Adams headed 
the Seaside Club boys of Bridgeport, with sev¬ 
eral from Hill Side, of Bong Hill, and Bethel. 
There were several professional shooters present 
—“Jack” Fanning, “Hank” Stevens, Gil Wheeler, 
A. Sibley, C. Chapin and Neaf Apgar. 
On entering the banquet hall one stood in 
amazement, looking at the scene before him, as 
the decorating committee, of which C. Keet 
Plancon was chairman, had decorated the walls 
with attractive pictures. The tables were neatly 
arranged with a clay pigeon at each plate for 
an ash receiver, with an elaborate menu, the cover 
being orange with a black ribbon with a setter 
dog in light green. 
W. E. Day, president of the club, talked of 
the success of the club for the past year, it 
being in the best condition, both financially and 
in numbers; and of the success of the Western 
Connecticut Trapshooters’ Beague of which we 
were the leaders. Toastmaster Herbert R. Me- 
