FOREST AND STREAM 
608 
A Hydra-Headed Monster — 
and Hercules 
ITH the close of the Constitutional Con¬ 
vention in New York State, the friends 
of conservation are congratulating them¬ 
selves that the raiders of the State forests have 
retreated. This is technically correct. But they 
have retreated strategically and in good order, 
upon a second line of defense that was prepared 
and strengthened by them from the beginning of 
the convention. Just how strong they consider 
this line to be may be gathered from the fact 
that it was chosen and sponsored for them by the 
lumber interests. 
The Meigs proposal for a multiple-headed Con¬ 
servation Commission, of nine members, only one 
of them shall go out of office each year, it to 
become a part of the basic law of the state, if 
the people approve it in November. These nine 
men, one from each judicial district, are to serve 
without pay, and the actual conduct of the work 
of the Conservation Department, under the pol¬ 
icies determined by the Commission, is to be in 
the hands of a paid executive to be chosen by 
the Commission. 
The method of appointment places the Commis¬ 
sioners squarely within the field of politics. They 
are to be appointed by the governor, “by him with 
the advice and consent of the Senate.” Of the 
seventeen departments, the heads of all others 
except the Public Service, Labor and Industry, 
and Civil Service are to be appointed without sen¬ 
atorial confirmation, thus leaving the executive 
free in nearly every case to make his selection 
for merit alone. But not so with the Conserva¬ 
tion Commissioners. In addition to making place 
of residence a prime recommendation, and sub¬ 
ordinating fitness and training, to financial ability 
to serve without pay, the appointees must finally 
pass the searching examination of the senate ma¬ 
chine. 
The fact that the Commissioners are to serve 
without pay is sufficient guarantee that the per¬ 
sonnel of this dydra-headed commission may be 
made up of estimable gentlemen who know noth¬ 
ing at all about the forests except what they are 
told, or of others whose knowledge extends to 
every crook and turn of commercial exploitation 
of the woods. It will be a game of “heads I win, 
tails you lose.” 
Defeated in the attempt to throw the gate wide 
open in the Convention, the lumbermen have 
hedged with every resource that they possess. And 
the surest hedge was to get in on the councils of 
the Conservation Commission. With this new 
hydra-headed Commission they will have several 
points of entrance, to shape policies from the in¬ 
side with all the leverage that official position 
gives. 
That sportsmen may be led to abate their vigi¬ 
lance against this packing of the Commission, the 
authors of the amendment have inserted a pro¬ 
vision that the Commission is to have authority 
to enact regulations for the “taking, possession, 
sale and transportation of game, until and unless 
the legislature shall modify such regulations.” 
Such a dual system of game legislation, by the 
Commission and by the legislature, can have no 
other effect than to make the confusion of the 
game laws worse confounded. New York already 
has in its codified game laws a better elastic pro¬ 
vision. Sportsmen’s associations all over the state 
have risen in protest, and the State Fish, Game 
and Forest League, under the energetic leadership 
of its president, George A. Lawyer, is conducting 
an active campaign against the amendment. It 
is evident that this palpable sop thrown to sports¬ 
men, with the intention that they shall wink at the 
attempt to get at the state forests, will not be ac¬ 
cepted. 
The present Commission, of one member, Hon. 
George D. Pratt, President of the Camp Fire Club 
of America, who has stood in the forefront of the 
conservation firing line for many years, has gone 
on record as absolutely opposed to any commer¬ 
cial utilization of the forests. He is giving a 
clean cut, square administration to sportsmen and 
lovers of the woods alike. To break down this 
deadlock is the object of the hydra-headed com¬ 
mission. 
It is part of the fable of the hydra-headed 
monster, whose slaying constituted one of the 
labors of Hercules, that the heads never all slept 
at one time. On this fable the lumber interests 
have planned their second attack. They have yet 
to reckon with Hercules. 
The Hunters Moon 
HIS is the season of the Hunters Moon. 
In days when mythology held sway it was 
believed that longer hours of moonlight 
were granted at the garnering season, both of 
grain and animal surplus, in order that provision 
ior the winter might be made doubly sure. But 
astronomers tell us that .the phenomenon of the 
harvest or hunters moon is due to the fact that 
the full moon occuring on or near the time of 
the autumnal equinox rises at practically the 
same minute for a number of nights, owing to 
the small angle of the orbit of the moon and the 
ecliptic. 
The Hunters Moon means more than that to 
the man who loves the chase. We do not be¬ 
lieve that much game is taken after sunset or 
before sunrise. The law in fact prohibits such 
sport as applied to wild fowl. 1 he moose-'hunter, 
it is true, crawls out of his warm bed at some 
unholy hour before sunrise and shivers in the 
cold while his guide awakens the echoes of for¬ 
est-clad slopes as dawn approaches. But even 
the moose-hunter, if truth be told, would much 
prefer the warm blankets in his tent to the pierc¬ 
ing cold of an early north woods’ morning. 
The Hunters Moon is something over which 
to rhapsodize, though it represents little in prac¬ 
tical hunting life. The beauty of it, the sense 
of it, is worth while. Shining in full effulgence 
on sleeping lake and forest and untrodden plain 
it gives the weird impression of something un¬ 
real, but still part and fiber of the hunting sea¬ 
son itself. 
For how many centuries have the eyes of the 
huntsman been turned toward it in the solitudes 
of the earth? Long, long ago when the moon 
represented Diana, the goddess of animal life 
and the chase, the half-wild hunter was accus¬ 
tomed to lay before rustic altars his tribute to 
her in the form of antlers, skins and choice por¬ 
tions of his kill, vouchafed to him by the golden 
bow of Artemis herself. Then the Hunters Moon 
meant something. Pagan though the custom may 
be called, it showed an appreciation and grate¬ 
fulness now too often lacking. Let it be re¬ 
membered also that Diana was the goddess of 
temperance and other like virtues, the adherence 
to which should be part of the present day 
hunter’s creed and practice. 
The Good Angler and His Tackle 
HE season for the angler in the north is 
about over. The salt water fisherman will 
continue to go down to the sea in ships 
and will even swim if necessary to insure a con¬ 
tinuance of his favorite sport, but the fresh 
water angler is ready to lay aside his tackle and 
do his fishing for the rest of year through the 
columns of his favorite outdoor magazine, which 
in this case we hope is Forest and Stream. An¬ 
glers are all good fellows, be they men or wo¬ 
men, but just a word to such of them as have 
not learned to appreciate the tools of their trade. 
The pliant rod, the vibrant reel, the marvelously 
resistant line, which- have brought joy to the 
owner and have sent thrills of keen excitement 
down the spine and through the nerves, deserve 
better and more careful treatment than they 
usually receive. Do not jam your rod into a 
case or unjoint it, to throw into some closet to 
remain all winter; do not toss your reel negli¬ 
gently to one side with the line wound on it. 
Give the rod a thorough drying and revarnish¬ 
ing is necessary,; see that all silk wrappings are 
carefully repaired and that everything is in apple- 
pie order. A rod is much better for being hung 
up on a hook than leaning in a corner against 
the wall. The reel should be carefully gone over, 
treated to an extra drop of oil or two and wrap¬ 
ped up so the dust cannot get at it. The line 
should be dried and given the same attention. 
Go over the old tackle-box, and even though you 
may be reluctant to throw away relics of past 
contests with more or less mighty monsters of 
the deep, that more or less got away from you, 
place such extra reminders where you can get 
at them if you want to look at them this winter— 
but keep the tackle-box in apple-pie order. While 
we hate to say it, the man who mistreats his 
fishing tackle outfit or neglects it, is not the good 
citizen that he ought to be. Perhaps he would 
not go to the length of abusing his family or 
horse; why then should he fail to treat with the 
loving care that it has earned, his angling para¬ 
phernalia? 
Game Laws of 1915 
SUMMING up of legislative action for the 
year of 1915 to date shows that two hun¬ 
dred and forty new laws dealing with 
game were enacted. These laws are distributed 
unequally over forty-three states. As a rule the 
new laws are more restrictive in character, both 
in the matter of increasing protection on species 
not heretofore protected, and also in shortening 
seasons. In a very few instances laws were 
relaxed, as for instance in Wyoming, which for 
the first time in twelve years permits moose¬ 
hunting; and in Indiana, where protection on 
prairie chickens, enforced since 1907, has been 
removed. Michigan has prohibited the use of 
automobiles in hunting partridges and Indiana 
has abolished the use of searchlights or other 
artificial lights attached to autos for hunting 
game on or near highways. 
