Forest and Stream 
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j. NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1908. 1 No. 127 Franklin St., New York 
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. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
MOTOR CAR QUAIL HUNTERS. 
Properly handled, the motor car is the peer 
of all road vehicles. In its present form it is 
a splendid tribute to human skill. It has been 
the means of spreading the population of great 
cities into all the surrounding country, and will 
be largely instrumental in building up and beau¬ 
tifying our suburbs. It has carried people into 
far countries. Improvements in highways have 
! followed its increased use. It has taken men 
and women into the country for recreation and 
they have returned greatly benefited by the exer¬ 
cise and pure air. 
Employed as a safe conveyance, the motor 
car deserves all praise, but its great power, and 
the desire of many drivers to utilize that power 
without regard to consecpiences, have caused the 
motor car to be blamed as well as praised. It 
is what its driver makes it. Complaints are 
mostly concerned with high speed at the risk 
of safety to human life. 
To-day the country roads are not what they 
[ were before the coming of the speed devil. No 
longer can the farmer’s wife, accompanied by 
her children, drive plodding old Dobbin in safety 
to and from the village. Stronger arms than 
hers are needed to control the old plow horse 
when that snorting, wheezing terror goes roar¬ 
ing by in its swirl of dust. If the situation 
proves nothing else, it speaks eloquently for the 
patience and forbearance of great numbers of 
our people to whom the speed fiend is a terror— 
a menace whose trail is sometimes marked with 
blood. 
The motor car is well adapted to the require¬ 
ments of sportsmen, and with it their range is 
( every year growing wider. In its tonneau there 
is space for the owner, his friends, their dogs, 
guns and lunch basket, and at ordinary speed 
they can comfortably travel for many miles over 
the best hunting country, stopping here and 
there to hunt, and returning home at night. 
This method may or may not tend toward 
game conservation. It would seem to cut down 
the gross amount of hunting done in nearby 
covers and it certainly widens the area hunted 
over. In the West, however, no doubt exists 
regarding practices made possible through the 
automobile. During the last three years our 
correspondents in California have frequently re¬ 
ferred to the shaking up of the quail all over 
the territory contiguous to cities by automo¬ 
bile parties. These gunners content themselves 
with a volley for every covey started along the 
roadway, each one offering opportunity for a 
broadside. In a day’s drive a party of this sort 
may take toll from a hundred coveys, which 
are thereby rendered wild and hard to find, 
sometimes impossible to flush within range. 
But some hunters are not content with this 
practice; it requires exertion, climbing in and 
out of the car, so they have tried another plan. 
This implies actual hunting with and shooting 
from the car. The quail are potted on the 
ground as they run across the road. If this 
method gains followers, vigorous means should 
be adopted to put an end to it, and every sports¬ 
man is urged to suppress a practice that can 
only result in greatly lessening the supply of 
quail and ruining the sport for a majority of 
sportsmen. 
BAG LIMIT ON UPLAND GAME. 
A few of the States of the Union have en¬ 
acted laws limiting the number of birds that may 
he taken in one day of certain upland game. 
This action has been taken chiefly for ruffed 
grouse, though Ohio has a limit on quail and 
New York a limit on ruffed grouse, quail and 
woodcock, specifying the number of each that 
may be taken in a day or in a season. 
The unusual flight of woodcock, which has 
taken place this autumn in certain nearby States, 
notably in Connecticut and New Jersey, indi¬ 
cates that this delightful bird is slowly recover¬ 
ing from the decimation that it suffered years 
ago, partly by over-shooting, but chiefly through 
the occurrence of winters of unusual severity 
in its Southern home. There is no more beauti¬ 
ful bird than the woodcock, none more delicious, 
and in many localities none more easily killed. 
It is high time that in the States where this 
bird is found, a bag limit should be established 
for it. The same action should be taken with 
regard to the quail; above all in sections where 
its numbers are few, as in New England, and 
in fact all along the Northern range of the 
species where the danger of winter killing is 
ever present. 
By its recently enacted game law the State 
of New York forbids the killing of more than 
six quail, six woodcock and four ruffed grouse 
in any one day. At first thought this number 
seems small, yet if a gunner could kill up to 
this limit he certainly would think he had had 
a wonderful day’s shooting, for sixteen birds 
in a day is far more than most men get when 
shooting in New York State. 
The Legislatures of the various States where 
population is abundant and where game is scarce 
should not hesitate to enact such restrictive laws. 
We should be glad to see such a law in New 
Jersey and in Connecticut, where now there is 
a limit on ruffed grouse, and where—as told in 
another column—woodcock have this year been 
killed in great numbers. Game protectors gen¬ 
erally should take up this matter, and should 
urge the members of the Legislatures of their 
States to consider its importance. Our game 
supply is already so small that it is only by 
limiting ourselves by law and in other ways 
that we can keep it up. 
THE NEW YORK LEAGUE. 
The differences of opinion which a year and 
a half ago existed within the Fish, Game and 
Forest League of the State of New \ork have 
all been adjusted, and now nothing but the best 
of feeling prevails within that body. All its 
members are enthusiastic,. and all are anxious 
to work tor the common end—the conserva¬ 
tion and improvement of the valuable fish and 
game and forest interests of the State. 
There is reason to think that the work of 
the coming year will be very successful. 1 he 
cluh membership, we are told, is larger than ever 
before, while the executive officers, Dr. Hon- 
singer and Dr. Hornaday, are animated by a 
strong purpose to* push forward the good work 
of protection and preservation with all the vigor 
possible. Both are men of abundant energy and 
there is every hope that the League will have 
a very successful year, which means that it will 
perform important services for the people. 
The population of New York is greater than 
that of any other State in the Union, and it is 
probable that it holds more sportsmen than any 
other State. If this is true it ought to have 
the strongest of all organizations in behalf of 
all things that are good in sport. 
The competition for the prizes to be awarded 
for the best narratives of out-door life—true 
stories—will close Dec. 15. Forest and Stream 
readers naturally feel a keen interest in the 
results of this competition, for they, in fact, 
will be the final judges—the persons to decide 
whether the awards of the prizes have been 
judiciously made. Already a considerable num¬ 
ber of manuscripts have been received, though 
the reading of these will not be begun until the 
competition has closed. W hen the broad field 
covered by this competition is considered, the 
prizes offered should call forth many manu¬ 
scripts of great interest. The continents of the 
world, explored and unexplored, should furnish 
for this competition, as they have so often in 
the past furnished for Forest and Stream 
columns, a wealth of interesting material. 
