F 0 R E ST AND S T R E A M 
(if Hi 
Are Most Theories of Game Preservation Wrong? 
By Sydney G. Fisher. 
INK day in Morida a winter or two 
I ago I stepped up to a covey of 
| quail, my dog was pointing in 
j the pine woods, and as they rose 
I made a double, one with each 
barrel. The two birds fell rath- 
| er near together on a bare 
spot of ground. I reloaded my 
gun and ordered Saxon to retrieve. Just as he 
started from my side a hawk shot down from a 
tree and picked up one of the dead birds; but the 
dog got so near him that the hawk had to drop it. 
I know many people who would have effected 
great rage at the hawk; would have shot him and 
ever afterwards boasted of killing him for at¬ 
tempting to “steal” their quail. Having shot him 
I suppose they would have thrown his agile body 
and beautiful plumage to rot on the ground. 
But to me the episode was the most pleasant 
one of the day. I felt no rage. On the contrary, 
I was delighted with the characteritsic boldness 
of my friend. He must have been close by in the 
tree when I fired both barrels. He was evidently 
not gun-shy. Undeterred by the noise he had 
waited in his tree, and as I seemed to be indiffer¬ 
ent to the dead quail and was merely fooling 
away time pushing things into a piece of iron, he 
had sailed in to help himself. I rather regretted 
that he had not been able to carry off the quail 
and enjoy it at his leisure. 
He seated himself solemnly and sternly on a 
limb had allowed me to come within not much 
oyer twenty yards to study the beautiful glint of 
his barred and mottled plumage, and the scornful 
glance of his fiery little eye. It was an unin¬ 
habited region where the wild life was but little 
disturbed, or I could not have gone so close to 
him. His coloring, size and extreme boldness led 
me to put him down as a Pigeon Hawk. At least 
that was my judgment when I got back to the 
houseboat that night and looked him up in Chap¬ 
man’s excellent Handbook of the Birds. I should 
have had my camera with me to take his portrait 
and also my field glasses so as to have seen him 
better. But goodness, if I have to carry all those 
things, and the gun, ammunition and lunch, often 
wear rubber boots, and “cuss” Saxon when he 
does not behave properly, I shall be worn out, 
and we shall have to eat ham and canned stuff 
on the houseboat instead of game. 
Where the so-called predacious animals and 
birds are not hunted down too presistently, you 
can get near them and study their great beauty 
and interesting traits. You can do this in manv 
countries of Europe of far older civilization than 
ours. They are not such dreadful exterminators 
as we are. They have more predacious birds 
and vermin, all the old wild life, and infinitely 
more game than we have, in only a few parts 
of our country is it any longer possible to add 
this study of all sorts of wild creatures to your 
pursuit of game. When you can do so your day 
is much more of a recreation. 
I had an interesting experience some years ago 
of the possible tameness of wild life. I was 
strolling near the shores of Lake Tohopkaleiga 
(which, by the way, is the Seminole Indian imita¬ 
tion of the caroling note of the blackbird), when 
I saw a curious little dark-colored hawk sitting 
on the lower limb of a tree; I went up and stood 
under him, not over fifteen feet away, and he 
was perfectly fearless, that supremely indifferent 
staring fearlessness of a hawk. I picked up a 
little stick and tossed it up towards him. He 
followed it with his eye and head in rather an 
interested good natured way until it dropped to 
the ground, and after a while, having shaken and 
fluffed up his feathers and smoothed them out 
again, he sailed off into the forest. 
He was the handsomest and most alert little 
sport I ever saw, and I have never been able to 
make up my mind to what species he belonged. 
He may have been one of those that come up 
somtimes from South America. His extreme 
fearlessness may have indicated this. He may 
have only just finished a trip of a thousand miles 
or so from some far southern, tropical wilder¬ 
ness ; and T may have been lucky enough to 
have chanced on him before he became careful 
of himself. 
Before the time of the Civil War, experiences 
of this kind with all sorts of wild life could be 
enjoyed almost everywhere in America. I am glad 
to say I can still enjoy them in some parts 
of Florida; and on every visit there I learn some¬ 
thing more than the hawks. But in how few 
other places could I learn of them? The poor 
creatures are well-nigh exterminated. Their 
glorious abundance which the older naturalists, 
like Wilson and Audubon, describe, and the in¬ 
terest and zest they added to every scene of field 
or forest, has almost wholly passed away. How 
numerous and comparatively tame they must 
have been for a person to kill six or seven of 
them in a day, as Audubon describes. He him¬ 
self was sometimes a shameless slaughterer of 
them for the sake of specimens to study. But he 
had the grace at times to regret the slaughter 
and give excuses for it. 
The more hawks and the more everything, in¬ 
cluding vermin so-called, the skunks, weasels, 
coons, foxes, all the original life, the better I am 
pleased, and the more pleasure and profit there 
is for human beings. The old wild life of the 
woods and fields, fighting and feeding on one 
another, like the humans, but most of the time. 
very friendly, is what we should aim to restore 
as far as possible. 1 am entirely opposed to 
bounties, or poisonings or any methods of exter¬ 
minating one part of our old life for the sake 
of a supposed benefit to the other part. It does 
not produce the benefit. It obscures and leads us 
away from the real cause of our difficulties, 
which is man’s destruction not only of the crea¬ 
tures themselves, the game and song birds, 
but of their food and hiding places. 
After many years of shooting expeditions in 
all sorts of out-of-the-way places in the southern 
states and to some extent in the west and in the 
north woods, I have become greatly humanized 
or animalized. The two words mean the same 
thing. Many of our most human qualities, our 
sympathy and tenderness, have .been largely de¬ 
veloped, the biologist tells us, in the long past of 
our race, by association with animals. And then 
we ourselves are animals. 
The sweet, slow length of golden autumn days 
in my long tramps afield slowly transformed the 
too eager sportsman. He had been so intent on 
the bag that he was blind to the wonders about 
him. But now a large part of each hunting day 
is passed in worshipping those wonders; watch- 
ing the crows, hawks, shrikes, owls, coons, 
skunks; in fact, the whole array of vermin that 
our people in a mistaken policy are trying to 
wipe off the face of the earth. They think that 
they know more than CTod about what the world 
should contain. 
I must confess even to have spent a large part 
of an hour last winter in studying a nest full of 
young prairie rats to which my dog had kept 
calling my attention, just as I had sat down tired 
at noon. As he insisted that there was some¬ 
thing there I dug into the tussock and soon for¬ 
got myself in wonder of the little blind things, 
and their strange instincts, their strong life that 
was surviving so vigorously in the blistering sun 
of the lonely prairie, the beauty, softness and 
perfection of the nest so cunningly contrived for 
them. No, I did not stamp them to death. I 
covered them up again and gave Saxon a gesture 
and an order to let them alone. He understands 
that now; for he has become a sort of a natural¬ 
ist himself. He had been watching them with 
greatest interest, and no inclination to harm 
them. When an intelligent pointer becomes ac¬ 
customed to your ways it is astonishing how he 
can bring to your attention all the hidden things 
of the woods. 
He brings out a coon for me every now and 
then and my first intimation of it is usually a 
savage fight. A coon can usually get the better of 
a dog; and in a few minutes Saxon is apt to be 
willing to “come off” and play naturalist for 
awhile. But it is hard then to persuade Mr. 
Coon to remain near you. Often, however, in 
wild places, if I can see the coon first and re¬ 
strain Saxon, I can go up close; stand within a 
few feet of his coonship and study pure wild 
life for quite a time. It is surprising how tame 
they are in very wild places and how closely you 
