294 
FOREST 
AND 
STREAM 
factor, just to get out into the middle west or 
north or most anywhere in the United States ex¬ 
cepting a very few states, shoot a bunch of any 
kind of game birds and try to sell it. After 
they do this they won’t wear out any more blue 
pencils preparing articles on “Pot Hunting and 
Market Hunting.” 
I have been asked by several farmers in this 
community about the new migratory game law. 
Very few farmers as yet know about this law, 
but I am of the opinion that when the majority 
of the farmers learn that they are prohibited from 
going duck shooting on their own farm, they will 
not endorse this law. V/e have closed sea¬ 
sons on our native birds and the average farmer 
takes pride in protecting our native birds. Each 
state should protect its migratory birds in nest¬ 
ing time, and I believe there are very few farm¬ 
ers who would knowingly shoot a duck that was 
nesting—in fact the average farmer generally 
kills a few ducks in late February and March in 
this community, but as soon as the ground is 
ready to work he generally gets busy farming, 
and if the ducks light right in the same field he 
very seldom stops to go and get a gun to kill 
them. Mrs. Dobbins and I would much prefer 
to shoot at clay targets than to shoot game, but 
we certainly like two or three nice duck roasts 
during the spring. However, this spring, Uncle Sam 
says we can’t eat wild duck; therefore we will 
have to wait until next fall for that duck roast, 
and shoot a few targets in the meantime. 
J. W. DOBBINS. 
WILD DUCKS DYING IN KANSAS. 
Ellinwood, Kansas, March 31, 1915. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have read your March copy with pleasure 
and enjoyed the “Confessions of a Market 
Hunter,” and I sincerely believe this country 
again could be made a land of plenty of ducks 
and geese with long open seasons and plenty of 
birds for the market. But under our present 
system of game laws our game is protected off 
the face of the earth. As to my theory, most 
of our legislators are incompetent as to the real 
care our waterfowl should have. I will venture 
to say if Kansas had game laws which it should 
have, it could produce thousands upon thousands 
of birds every year within its boundaries. Thou¬ 
sands of dollars are spent to make laws but not 
one dollar is spent to produce birds. 
The wild ducks here, the last few weeks, are 
mostly pintails, and they are dying .by the hun¬ 
dreds and hundreds. They seem to get weak and 
hungry. I found some twenty live birds on a 
patch of four acres that could barely fly, and 
the dead lay in numbers on the field. Now what 
is done to care for such birds? From all indi¬ 
cations the money from the game department 
is spent to make laws, to convict good citizens, 
but none is spent for the welfare of the birds. 
These birds that are dying by the thousands 
could have been saved with little money. 
GEO. J. KLEIN. 
Norfolk, Va., April 12, 1915 - 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I am very much pleased with the Forest and 
Stream; enjoy reading it very much. 
H. C. SMITH. 
Rights of Farmers 
By Sandy 
I noticed in a recent number of the Forest and 
Stream where some correspondent desired to 
know about the rights of farmers to control all 
the game that harbored on their lands, and as 
this question has been frequently put to me, I 
will say that the principle that property rights 
in the ferae naturae repose in the state and not 
in the individual until reduced to actual posses¬ 
sion, has long been established. It probably had 
its origin in the arbitrary exercises of power by 
the early Norman kings of England, who as¬ 
serted ownership over all the wild creatures in 
the kingdom. We hear nothing about “the 
king’s deer” before that time. But color is 
given to the rule that ferae naturae are not the 
property of individuals until reduced to posses¬ 
sion by the fact that the wild creatures do not 
inhere in the land of any individual, having no 
permanent abiding place, and not being subject to 
human control; but are on this man’s land today 
and that man’s land tomorrow; so that no in¬ 
dividual landowner can claim any other than a 
transitory interest in these wandering denizens 
of nature’s wide domain. And it is no great 
strain on the fundamental principle of property 
rights for the state to assume a restrictive con¬ 
trol over these creatures that cannot in the na¬ 
ture of things be considered one man’s property 
more than another’s when in a wild condition, 
the state’s intervening being for the purpose of 
best securing the rights of all in the game and 
fish that are common to all who can properly 
gain access to it. 
But if the state should appoint agents to go 
on the man’s land to reduce to possession the 
game that it has theoretic title to, the landowner 
could challenge the right of the state to invade 
his premises for such a purpose and would be 
sustained by the courts. 
A Sioux City reader takes me' to task about my 
assertion in a recent issue of the Forest and 
Stream that the sportsmen are the class that are 
chiefly interested in the propagation and preserv¬ 
ation of our game birds and animals. He says: 
“If, as you have so many times asserted, it is 
the sportsmen who shoot game who are the most 
interested and the most earnest in their efforts 
to protect and provide for it, will you inform me 
whether their good work is instigated by the 
desire to do something useful, or only that they 
may later kill them. According to my way of 
thinking, it is the naturalist who is the most 
deeply interested and the one who does the real 
work of protection and preservation.” 
In reply, I would say that for one, I claim 
that it is for the useful purpose the sportsmen 
seek to preserve our game, and it is also for a 
useful purpose they hunt and kill. They are just 
as much interested in the protection of game in 
parts of the country where they never expect to 
kill any, as they are in localities where they ex¬ 
pect to derive direct benefit from its protection, 
and if their hunting days were over, would still 
be interested in its protection from a sportsman’s 
standpoint. 
There are certainly naturalists who are sports- 
to Control Game 
Griswold 
men and sportsmen who are naturalists. I think 
a good percentage of the sportsmen are natu¬ 
ralists to some extent or other. Has not the 
sportsman the opportunity to study and the soul 
to admire game in its wild state? A true sports¬ 
man has no desire to kill all of the game he sees. 
Science is indebted in many ways to sportsmen 
and hunters for much of the knowledge acquired 
about game. 
The young sportsman of the present day ac¬ 
cepts the established order of things as a matter 
of course. But what has been accepted as right 
for a few years may easily imply existence from 
time immemorial. It is not many years since 
improvement began. The perfection of the prac¬ 
tical sportsmanship of today had its origin in 
very crude beginnings about twenty-five years 
ago. In this country—and it is of this country 
of which I write—so great is the difference be¬ 
tween ideas, implements, and methods of today 
and those of twenty-five years ago, that they 
mark widely different eras of development. 
Twenty years ago every sportsman used Nos. 
1, 2 and 3 for ducks, o’s or 00 s and No. 1, for 
geese. Ten years ago they used Nos. 3, 4, and 5 
for ducks and Nos. 1 to 3 for geese. Five 
years ago 4s to 6 s for ducks, and 2s and 3 ® for 
geese. What do you find today? Nos. 6s to 7 s 
for ducks and almost exclusively 4s for geese. 
It hasn’t been a sudden change or it might be 
less trustworthy. But a general deduction in the 
size of the shot has been going on. For the past 
ten years I have used 6s exclusively for ducks, 
and in fact, almost everywhere else. W ? hen I 
came here, twenty-five years ago. a man wouldn t 
think of doing duck hunting with anything but 
a No. 10 gun. Now thousands use 16s, and 
many of them 20 "bores. 
SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT. 
He is a poor woodsman who in a forest of 
any kind cannot very quickly provide himself with 
shelter from rain or snow. It may be of pal¬ 
metto leaves, of branches of trees or of bark 
from the trunk of a tree. The favoring trunk 
of a tree may keep off the storm, or in a rocky 
country a shelter can often be found under a 
projecting ledge or in a shallow cave. A good 
thing always to carry along is a rubber poncho 
for each person. It is good to roll around the 
bedding when en route to protect it from wet 
and dirt; or to put over one’s shoulders when 
traveling in rain or wet snow. "When night 
comes, if the ground is wet and the heavens dry, 
spread it under your bed. If the reverse, re¬ 
verse it. "With two small stakes at opposite 
sides of a bed for two, to support two corners 
of a poncho, the other two corners being 
stretched backward and held to the ground by 
a couple of stones or chunks of wood, a very 
good shelter is provided for your heads and 
shoulders. Then another poncho spread over 
the blankets to your feet, and you two can sleep 
blissfully through any ordinary rainy night.— 
W. N. B. 
