April 2, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
537 
Christie’s head and his jaw and set his broken 
arm, and then, for two months, he and Christ- 
field nursed the injured man. 
The wonderful vitality of the man, heritage 
of the open and the simple life, began to evince 
itself now, and although his nerves were fairly 
shot to bits, Christie began to recover. His torn 
scalp grew together of its own accord without 
plaster cast or stitches; his jaw hitched itself 
into a semblance of its proper shape, although 
it had to be tinkered with later, and the arm 
knitted together. 
On New Year’s day Christie, now almost as 
good as new, to use his own expression, was 
ready to start for-Dawson. The journey by sled 
this time was pleasant compared to the trip from 
the Rogue River to Lansing. Christfield, over¬ 
joyed at his partner's rapid recovery, accom¬ 
panied the party as far as Mayo and then turned 
back to hold down the camp on the distant 
Rogue alone until Christie was ready for work 
again. Christie reached Dawson City on Jan. 
17. The physician he saw there had nothing 
more "to do than tap an abscess that had formed 
in Christie’s cheek. He advised him, however, 
to go out to Victoria as soon as possible and 
place himself under the care of Dr. O. M. Jones. 
Consequently Christie came south for the re¬ 
mainder of the winter. His arm had to be re¬ 
set and his jaw needed attention before it could 
be made to close properly, but Christie will be 
ready for business again before the summer of 
1910 is far advanced. 
“Nervous about bears,” he said, with a smile 
in reply to a question. “No. not particularly. I 
reckon I’ll take it out on the next old silver tip 
I hit when I get back there on the Rogue.” 
Christie is still wondering what made Old 
Nosey charge on him and then fail to use his 
enormous arms. “I’ve shot bears and bears,” 
Christie said to the writer, “but I never heard 
tell of a grizzly acting like this one did, and if 
somebody else told me the story I’ve just told 
you I wouldn’t believe him on oath. Usually 
I don’t monkey with bears and they leave me 
alone, but this fellow was the exception that 
proves a good rule.” C. L. Armstrong. 
The Game Situation in New England 
The qtiestion often is asked, “Why is it more 
destructive to shoot a game bird in the spring 
than in the fall?” Surely the bird killed in the 
fall will never produce any young. But, if birds 
are to be shot at all, the fall is the only legiti¬ 
mate shooting season. Nature supplies a sur¬ 
plus of birds in the fall. If no birds were shot 
this surplus would be reduced during the fall 
and winter by storm, starvation, cold, natural 
enemies and the accidents incidental to migra¬ 
tion. Restricted shooting in fall takes only a 
part of the surplus, but shooting in spring de¬ 
stroys the naturally selected breeding stock— 
the fittest survivors which are bn their way 
North to perpetuate the race. At this season 
the eggs in the ovaries of the females of most 
species are in process of development. Eggs of 
the black duck have been found in Massachu¬ 
setts in March and the woodduck nests there in 
April. A good day’s shooting in March, April 
or May greatly reduces the number of birds that 
might otherwise be produced the ensuing fall. 
Spring shooting kill’s and drives out the breed¬ 
ing birds. Wild ducks and geese once bred in 
numbers in New England and in about half the 
United States. In the early days of spring 
shooting in the Mississippi valley considerable 
numbers of fresh goose eggs were found on 
sand bars where the flocks had rested for the 
night. Spring and summer shooting either ex¬ 
terminated the birds that bred here or drove 
them from this country to the uninhabited re¬ 
gions of Canada. 
The argument advanced by the advocates of 
the wasteful and pernicious practice of spring 
shooting is that it is useless to protect the birds 
here while winter and spring shooting is still 
allowed in the South. If the people of the South 
wMe accustomed to rob and murder our citizens 
who go South in winter, should we offer that 
as a reason why we should rob and kill those 
who succeeded in escaping and returning safely 
to their homes? If our Canadian neighbors had 
acted on this principle we should have had prac¬ 
tically no wildfowl in the East to-day, except 
brant and sea fowl. But the Canadians saw that 
we were driving the wildfowl out of the United 
States and that extermination threatened the birds 
unless spring shooting was stopped in Canada. 
Therefore, nearly all the provinces forbade it 
and their people respect the law. 
Winter shooting in the South does not reduce 
the birds that come here as does spring shoot¬ 
ing in the North. Many of the birds killed in the 
South breed in the Northwest and never come 
here, and we find by experiment that even the 
most local spring protection in the North al¬ 
most immediately increases the number of birds. 
A Rhode Island man owning a small pond al¬ 
lows no shooting there and black ducks breed 
about his pond every year. A Massachusetts 
man owns the land on one side of a large pond, 
and although he shoots there in fall, he allows 
no spring shooting. Last July seventy-five black 
ducks that were bred there were counted on his 
side of the pond and none on the other, and by 
Sept. 1 about 250 were seen. On Fisher’s Island 
the wildfowl were protected in spring for a few 
years and became numerous there, while at the 
same time on the near shore of Connecticut, 
where spring shooting was then allowed, the 
ducks were few and far between. Since spring 
shooting was abolished in Connecticut three 
years ago, wildfowl have become more plentiful 
than for many years. In Jefferson county, New 
York, spring shooting was forbidden by law be¬ 
fore it was prohibited in the rest of the State, 
and soon it seemed as if the ducks from all over 
the State were congregating there. Every State 
that has prohibited spring shooting has had a 
great increase in both breeding and migrating 
birds. No State that has tried the absolute abo¬ 
lition of spring shooting for a number of years 
has repealed the law protecting the birds. 
Edward Howe Forbush. 
Wildfowl Abundant. 
St. John’s, N. F., March 22 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Sea birds have been numerous 
around our coasts the last few weeks. Gunners 
up North made great bags. I saw one man re¬ 
ported for eighty birds last week, another for 
seventy-five a couple of days ago, while another 
report is that sea birds are very plentiful at 
Witless Bay and Bay Bulls, and instances G. 
Davis, of Witless Bay, who shot seventy-two 
very fine ducks at that place in one day. 
W. J. Carroll. 
Massachusetts Legislature. 
Boston, Mass., March 26. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: In legislative matters the pot has been 
kept boiling on Beacon Hill. Including those 
embodying the recommendations of the fish and 
gciroe commission, there have been seventy dif- 
ferent bills referred to the committee on fisheries 
and game. Executive sessions on several will be 
held soon. 
The eleventh recommendation of the commis¬ 
sion embodied in House Bill 1178, which pro¬ 
hibits the running at large of dogs from March 
1 until the beginning of the open season on 
grouse, quail and woodcock, met with opposition 
fiom fox hunters’ clubs. Their views were 
voiced chiefly by John R. Thayer, of the Wor¬ 
cester Fur Club. In reply to Chairman Fields’ 
explanation that the board desired power to deal 
with flagrant cases in which men allowed their 
dogs unrestrained liberty night and day to the 
gieat detriment of birds in the nesting season, 
Air. Thayer claimed that the law would result 
in the most cruel treatment of the dogs and de¬ 
clared the bill the most ridiculous one he ever 
knew a sane man to present for the considera¬ 
tion of any committee. He never knew a dog to 
catch a bird. It looked to him, he said, as if 
the chairman felt that he must get up some¬ 
thing “to let people know there is a commis¬ 
sion. Mr. Gifford, of the committee, said that 
if the bill were to become a law he would pre¬ 
fer to be a dead lion rather than a live dog. 
Representative Frank Curtis, of Sheffield, de¬ 
clared the bill was designed to take away the 
farmers rights for the benefit of sportsmen. 
Other champions of the dog were: A. L. Tucker, 
President of the New England Fox Hunters’ 
Club; Mr. Dennison, of Waltham, and Mr. 
Prouty, of Scituate. So far as appeared at the 
hearing, the dogs had more friends than the 
birds. 
A bill for the payment of damages done by 
foxes was urged by C. M. Bryant, President of 
the American Poultry Association, who spoke of 
the growing importance of the poultry industry 
and declared that at a hearing last year on a 
bill for a bounty on foxes it was clearly shown 
that foxes had caused as much injury to raisers 
of poultry as the deer had to farmers, if not 
more. Senate Chairman Keith asked Mr. Bryant 
if he could furnish the committee with statistics 
on the amount of damages caused by foxes and 
Mr. Bryant replied that he would do so at a 
later date. 
One of the liveliest hearings was that of 
March 15 on Representative Gifford’s bill to pro¬ 
hibit the using of live decoys in wildfowl shoot¬ 
ing. Mr. Gifford claimed that the stand shoot¬ 
ing as conducted nowadays led to ruthless 
slaughter of ducks and geese, and that it is not 
a sportsmanlike method. He said the killing of 
a pair or two now and then is not very harmful, 
but the simultaneous firing by a dozen or more 
hunters into a flock of birds lured by decoys, re¬ 
sulting sometimes in the killing of every bird, is 
terribly destructive of bird life. George M. 
Poland declared the work of bird protection 
should begin with the gunning stands; that the 
men who only kill a few birds on salt water feel 
that in cutting off all wildfowl shooting during 
January and February by the law of 1909, they 
have been unfairly discriminated against, and that 
the term spring shooting as applied to the kill¬ 
ing of birds in those months is, in Massachu- 
