162 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Old Hunters Oppose the Buck Law 
Observations of Three Seasoned Sportsmen on the Letter of Mr. Henry Chase in 
January Forest and Stream 
PRACTICAL VS. THEORETICAL GAME CON¬ 
SERVATION. 
Eagle Lake, Ticonderoga, 
Essex County, N. Y. 
February 3, 1915 - 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I read with much interest the letter of Mr. 
Henry Chase, published in the splendid first 
number of your new journal. 
The only way to improve hunting and fishing 
conditions, and increase the size and quality of 
game animals, birds and fishes in the Adirondacks 
is to study local conditions very closely and 
learn, if possible, just what benefits have been 
derived or losses occasioned by legislation re¬ 
stricting a man’s natural rights to take native 
fauna whenever he sees fit to do so. 
With this end solely in view, and not for the 
exploitation of any theory or crochet of my own, 
I have spent the last eight months at my lodge 
in one of the best sections of this state, for a 
study of the habits of deer, grouse, hare, and 
trout, and am gathering facts and circumstances 
at first hand, which at the proper time will be 
placed at the disposal of your many readers, and 
for the benefit of those catholic minds which 
have neither local or personal hobbies to 
promulgate, nor too fixed opinions on a subject 
generally so little understood, and so likely to 
be retarded by jumping at conclusions, as prac¬ 
tical game conservation. 
Mr. Chase takes me to task for giving the 
honest opinion of an every day practical man, 
who had just finished his fall hunt and taken the 
two deer allowed by his New York State license. 
He had hunted several days before good fortune 
smiled, and he knew that what he said about the 
scarcity of bucks in this section is backed up by 
the general observations o'f all local guides and 
the sportsmen from neighboring towns and cities 
who hunted here last fall. 
Mr. Chase brushes aside with apparent con¬ 
tempt the sincere remarks of those who have 
been observing the effects of the Buck Law in 
our rough and mountainous section since its 
enactment. He does not claim to have made 
any close study of our peculiar situation, but at 
once falls into the common error of applying to 
our hunting, rules applicable probably to Ver¬ 
mont, Massachusetts and other thickly settled 
New England States, where much of the wood¬ 
land is surrounded by large tracts of cultivated 
or cleared pasture lands, and where the deer are 
almost as tame as the domestic cattle upon the 
farms. In such places, a bunch of deer can be 
located with comparative ease, and during the 
few days when hunting them is allowed, it is 
comparatively a simple matter for a sportsman 
to select the very animal he wants, shooting it 
frequently at long range. 
In our country, however, all is different. Few 
deer are observed in the open. The hunter must 
walk early in the morning through the ‘burnt 
timber” in a “slash” of dead “popple” and other 
tree tops, or through the dense underbrush of a 
new forest. Suddenly, up jumps a big deer, or 
perhaps two or three deer. He usually has only 
about five seconds in which to cock his rifle, aim 
How Can You Tell? 
and fire, and how can he, in that space of time, 
tell whether a buck has horns 3 indies long or 
4 inches long? It is clearly impossible under the 
circumstances. The man has probably hunted 
several days in search of his winter venison, and 
how can he be reasonably blamed for firing in 
such a situation as I have just described? He 
simply does the best he can, and if the horns 
happen to be a little short, or if a mature doe 
should fall, how can the hunter be seriously 
blamed? Under the present Buck Law, a deer 
cannot be lawfully taken out of the woods, un¬ 
less he has horns at least four inches long. Why 
not three inches long as well? An inch would 
make no difference. Had the law prescribed 
antlered bucks, that would have given the hunter 
a better chance to decide in the moment given 
for his snap shot. 
There a temptation to “take a chance” that 
the quarry will come within the law, and the 
hunter can hardly resist it when jumping a deer 
in thick brush, and when the leaves are thick. 
He is not breaking the law by firing at the rim¬ 
ing deer, but only when it proves to be a doe 
or short horned buck. The consequences of his 
act cannot be known until he follows up the 
game and finds it dead or gives it le coup de 
grace. Then and only then, can he learn that 
he is a lawbreaker and in danger of arrest by a 
game protector, for he has until then had no 
opportunity to estimate the length of horns or 
even to see any horns at all. 
The trouble with much of our game legislation 
has been, that our lawmakers have often listened 
to the advice of men from Maine to Texas, full 
of ideas gathered from their own local game 
conditions, and not to the practical suggestions of 
the all the year residents of our section, who, I 
claim, know much better than any outsiders, no 
matter how well informed generally, what laws 
are best for the protection and increase of deer 
and other game in their own neighborhood. It 
should not be a difficult matter to decide whether 
the present Buck Law, if continued, is, on the 
whole, likely to increase the number of deer in 
this section of the Adirondacks. 
Up here, we are all of the opinion that its en¬ 
forcement is too costly to the deer supply, and 
that, in the struggle to get a deer that will pass 
the law, many short horned bucks and some does 
are needlessly sacrificed and left to spoil in the 
woods. 
There was never yet a law passed for game 
preservation that could not be improved, and, as 
all laws rest upon the consent of the govern¬ 
ed, it is no more than fair that our people 
should have a voice in the making of their own 
laws, and they propose to do so in future. In 
proof of this I need only say that a large delega¬ 
tion of sportsmen representing many of the hunt¬ 
ing and fishing clubs of the Adirondacks, met in 
Plattsburgh, about Jan. 1, 1915, and formed a 
permanent organization called the Adirondack 
League of Fishing and Game Clubs, for the 
protection of the forests and the passage of 
better laws governing hunting and fishing 
throughout the State and particularly, in this 
section. Among the objects, we find the very 
one employed in my contribution to the Forest 
and Stream of Dec. 19, 1914, for which Mr. 
Chase calls me to task. “Third: The securing 
of intelligent legislation which shall be practical 
rather than theoretical, for the benefit of forests, 
fish and game, and rational enforcement of the 
same.” 
The "Ticonderoga Sentinal” of Jan. 5, 1915, 
reporting the formation of the League states:— 
“At the present time practically all the legisla¬ 
tion affecting hunting and fishing is directed by 
clubs in the western part of New York State, 
