Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 
Six Months 
;£5,*°° P "f NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1908. | No . 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1908, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary. 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
NEW YORK HUNTERS’ LICENSE LAW. 
During the recent political campaign in New 
York it was urged that Governor Hughes had 
disregarded the rights of hunters by signing the 
new game law, providing for a hunters’ license. 
Even the New York Sun, which is noted for 
the clarity of its vision, spoke of the hunters’ 
license provision as a needless interference with 
personal liberty! The argument probably brought 
the candidate two votes for every one that it 
turned from him. 
I The game of the State belongs to the people 
of the State. The representatives of the people 
enacted this hunters’ license law and the right 
of the State to deal as it will with its own prop¬ 
erty—the game—is beyond question. This police 
power of the State has been established time and 
again by decisions of the United States Supreme 
Court, whose latest pronouncement on the sub¬ 
ject—in the Silz case—we published and com¬ 
mented on no longer ago than last week. 
8 Until within a few years we in America have 
been accustomed to shoot when and where we 
pleased, and this continued until it began to be 
realized that all game was rapidly disappearing. 
It became evident that to check this extermina¬ 
tion not only must we have game and fish laws, 
but these laws must be enforced. Then gradually 
came stricter laws, better enforcement, shorter 
seasons, prohibition of the sale of game, limit of 
bag. The enactment of each restriction was 
followed by the cry that here was an interfer¬ 
ence with personal liberty. Those who expressed 
this view were usually the short-sighted and the 
selfish. 
The hunters’ license law, as understood in the 
t United States, tends to put on each man who 
carries a gun a certain measure of responsibility; 
it takes the privilege of carrying the gun from 
a multitude of irresponsible aliens, who know 
nothing of our laws or our customs; it brings 
i into the State a considerable sum of money 
which should be expended in caring for and in¬ 
creasing our forests, fish and game. 
Hunting and shooting long ago ceased to be 
vocations to be followed for profit. They are 
) now recreations, and as such it is eminently 
proper that those who indulge in them, and by 
this indulgence reduce the amount of game in 
this State, should be taxed in order that this game 
may be replaced for the benefit of others, who 
in turn will pay their tax for the benefit of 
others again to follow them. Thus in theory, 
and under a wise execution of the law, the game 
destroyed would continually be replaced, and a 
ij point should at last be reached where the supply 
; would be sufficient for all. The hunters’ license 
law is new here, but in several States has been 
in operation for some years and has worked 
well. It is the belief of many well informed 
game protectors that it will stand the test of 
time. 
THE AMERICAN BOY. 
To every healthy lad there comes at a certain 
age the desire to learn all that he can about 
what is going on in the world outside the limited 
range of hi's experiences, and thousands of 
writers and hundreds of printing presses are 
ever striving to supply the boys’ demand for 
literature. The boy reads for entertainment, 
not, consciously, for instruction; yet he is in¬ 
formed and instructed by his reading. He wants 
stories that tell him what people do in distant 
lands, or at least under conditions that differ 
widely from those with which he is familiar; yet 
these stories must be exciting, must appeal to 
his imagination. What he> reads should be so 
chosen also as to give him an interest in some 
healthy subject. 
There is no more wholesome reading for a 
boy or young man than the columns of Forest 
and Stream. Whether you look at it from the 
physical or the moral side, there are no more 
wholesome topics in which to interest those 
approaching young manhood than those to 
which Forest and Stream is devoted. Out¬ 
door life, shooting, fishing, yachting, nature 
study—if a boy takes an interest in these or in 
any one of them—are anchors which will tend 
to hold him steady when he is brought face to 
face with the thousand temptations which must 
come to every young man during the formative 
period of his life; temptations which no amount 
of care or coddling can keep from him. 
Parents who are wise enough to recognize the 
best way to keep their son strong, wholesome 
and clean in thought and life, will make every 
effort to encourage in him an interest in some 
wholesome pursuit; something that he may think 
and dream about, and which, by filling his mind 
with interesting and improving thoughts, will leave 
in it less room for other thoughts, not whole¬ 
some nor helpful, that may tend to harm him. 
Above all things then, strive to give your boy 
an active interest in something wholesome. If 
he enjoys shooting, induce him to share your 
interest in the pursuit of game. The lad is 
imitative, he will want to do what his father 
does, whether it be shooting, fishing, camping, 
or sailing. Take him out with you when you 
go. When he is old enough, give him a. gun— 
or a fishing rod, or a boat, or a tent, or a 
microscope, as the case may be—and teach him 
how to use it. We believe that the things men¬ 
tioned will help the boy more than most other 
things, because the boy is naturally an outdoor 
creature; but if he has a mechanical turn of 
mind, then get him a box of good tools or a 
simple engine. 
Above all, give the boy something to do, in¬ 
terest him in something, and you will perform 
for yourself, for your son and your country 
services whose worth cannot be measured. 
The deplorable tragedy in Montana, of which 
Dr. Merriam tells, is a melancholy example of 
the continual discouragements met by the In¬ 
dians on their difficult road toward civilization 
and self-support. The accuracy of the account 
is beyond question, for the matter was inquired 
into by a trained scientific investigator, who gives 
us the bare facts without comment. 
At different times in the past there have been 
collisions between Indians and State authorities 
over the killing of game, often resulting in the 
death of Indians. Such collisions have come 
about through misunderstandings of the law on 
the part of the Indians, but in the present case 
there was nothing of this sort. The Indians in 
question were lawfully absent from their reser¬ 
vation and had complied with the provisions of 
the game law. That the camp keeper, an old 
and partially blind Indian, did not have a license 
to hunt appears to have been the sole pretext 
for the attack by the warden who committed 
the butchery, and who, except for the action of 
the little Indian boy, would presumably have 
killed all the women as well as all the men of 
the Indian party. 
Our cover picture this week is from a photo¬ 
graph made in the Ozark Mountains in autumn. 
There are more agreeable places than southern 
Missouri in midsummer, when mosquitoes, sand 
fleas, wood ticks and snakes make the outer’s 
life miserable, but with the coming of the frosts 
all is changed. Then the air is thick with haze, 
the nights are cool and the days pleasant, one 
calm day succeeding another for weeks on end. 
The hills resound with the musical baying of 
“houn’ dogs,” the woods are filled with the music 
of birds and the chatter of gray squirrels. Per¬ 
simmons and pawpaws and wild grapes may be 
gathered in every creek bottom, and the small 
game hunter who carries a rifle may shoot all 
day without materially disturbing the game, for 
the hazy, heavy air does not transmit sound 
to great distances. 
* 
The snow which fell on the 14th and 15th of 
the month postponed for a time the opening of 
the shooting season in south Jersey, and inter¬ 
rupted the shooting elsewhere in the State. It 
is unlawful to hunt, kill or destroy any partridge, 
grouse, pheasant, woodcock or hare, while there 
is snow on the ground in such condition that 
birds or animals may be tracked therein, or to 
kill them by tracking in the snow. To New 
Jersey gunners, therefore, a snow storm during 
the open season is a real misfortune. 
A decision has just been reached in the New 
Jersey courts on a test case which establishes the 
validity of the legislation of 1906 extending the 
close season for deer until 1909. 
