June 18, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
977 
Sale of Game. 
A chief cause of the destruction of game is 
the market demand. The man who lives by- 
shooting for the market makes every effort to 
kill all the game possible each day. Bevies of 
quail are enticed to some spot by scattered grain 
and there massacred by a pot shot, or they are 
followed until the last one is bagged. The mar¬ 
ket hunter who sees a flock of teal or wood- 
ducks is satisfied only when he gets them all. 
A good shore bird caller who is also a good 
shot will sometimes kill an entire flock of bay 
snipe. 
Not many years ago market hunters on the 
coast of Texas were not satisfied with less than 
200 ducks a day each. Batteries, swivel guns, 
traps, snares and every known trick, by which 
advantage may be taken of the birds, have been 
used by the professional market hunter. When 
expert shooters, trappers, netters and snarers are 
kept in constant practice by the daily exercise 
of their craft, the game will always decrease. 
Such men were the chief cause of the extir¬ 
pation of the passenger pigeon, the wild turkey 
and the prairie hen from regions where they 
were formerly abundant. 
1 he prohibition of the sale of all game is the 
logical sequence of our present system of game 
laws. If the sale of all game werfe prohibited 
by law and the law enforced, most of the market 
hunters would go out of business. The sale of 
wildfowl is still allowed in the New England 
States. Market hunters assure me that they 
should not hunt at all if the sale were pro¬ 
hibited. Possibly a few would evade the law, 
but its result on the whole would be to pro¬ 
tect the birds. The birds would have some re¬ 
spite for a time, but it would not be permanent, 
for as population increases the number of those 
who shoot for recreation will increase also until, 
because of their numbers, they will become as 
destructive to birds as the market hunters now 
are. In the most densely populated regions of 
the country where the market hunter no longer 
finds hunting profitable, sportsmen or amateur 
hunters are one of the chief, causes of the scar¬ 
city of game. 
The time is at hand when under our present 
system there will not be game enough for the 
sportsmen alone, and when the stoppage of the 
sale of game will not suffice for its protection. 
The chief objection to prohibiting the sale of 
game is that under such laws no one can have 
game to eat, except the sportsman who has the 
time, money and skill required to kill it. 
Another objection that is urged against the 
prohibition of the sale of game is that a very 
large business interest is injured thereby. But 
were game eHminated from the market, the 
farmers and poultrymen would be called upon 
to supply more poultry to take its place, and the 
people who now eat game would merely get a 
larger variety' and a better supply, of poultry. 
The volume of business of the marketmen would 
be the same and that business would soon adjust 
itself to the change. Neverthe’ess, it must be 
admitted that it is something of a hardship to 
deprive the people of the privilege of buying 
game if it is possible in any way to supply the 
markets and at the same time to increase rather 
than diminish the game supply. Undoubtedly 
this can be done, as it is now done in European 
countries by the protection and propagation of 
game on game preserves. 
This is no experiment. Game under proper 
management may be bred for the market almost 
as readily as poultry. The solution of the prob¬ 
lem of game supply in our markets must come, 
if it comes at all, through some system of propa¬ 
gation on game farms. 
Edward Howe Forbush. 
Deer in Connecticut. 
Milford, Conn., June 5 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: About 1 o’clock yesterday, while pass¬ 
ing through a piece of woods near my house, I 
walked up within about thirty steps of two deer. 
They were in the open woods and oddly enough 
I saw them before either saw me. They were 
yearlings. 1 he little doe stood nearer to me 
than the other, and broadside on, looking east. 
Beyond her was the buck, his head directed to¬ 
ward me and visible above her back. His little 
snags of horns in the velvet looked to be two 
inches long. I called the attention of my com¬ 
panion to the deer, and in stepping about to get 
a better look, she attracted their attention. My 
dog also was walking about and the deer looked 
at it. After standing for a short time, they 
turned away and moved off, the buck trotting, 
while the little doe followed with slow graceful 
leaps. It is quite a long time since I have been 
so close to an unconfined deer. G. B. G. 
• The Angler in Ireland. 
The usual arming with us here of artificial 
baits of the little fish, or fishlet, type such as 
the phantom or devon has for long been a flight 
of three triangles, and in the case of spinners 
such as the Archer or the like on which the 
natural fishlet itself is mounted, a similar ar¬ 
rangement of hooks is what is fitted by most 
manufacturers also. This tackle is undoubtedly 
very effective in hooking fish one day with an¬ 
other, though where weeds happen to be about 
and a hooked fish is not to be kept from getting 
among them, the consequences may be imagined, 
while the landing of a fish so hooked with net 
instead of a gaff very often involves breakages 
also. But of late a new feature has begun to 
appear. This dread array of nine live hook 
points is fast becoming an offense, it appears, to 
the sensitive angler. There is a look of ferocity 
about the thing. It resembles an instrument of 
torture rather than an honest fighting weapon 
and so o-ur moral sense is taking alarm at its 
use, and before long we may expect to see the 
triangle following the gorge hook to the limbo 
of forgotten cruelties. At the same time the 
triangle is not as bad as it looks. Though the 
angler has nine hooks on his spinner he only 
expecte to fasten with one of them or two at 
the most, and one hook is indeed much more 
likely to get home than a greater number en¬ 
gaging at the same instant with the mouth of 
the quarry; in fact, if as many as three hooks 
were to strike together, a pull sufficient to get 
them past the barbs would probably result in a 
breaking of tackle. The angler in this may not 
unfairly compare himself perhaps with the 
shooter who discharges a few hundred pellets 
of shot at a grouse. In both cases all that is 
desired or expected is the minimum of injury 
to the game sufficient to bring it to hand, and 
what offends the moral sense in either case is, 
rightly considered, a mechanical defect for which 
neither sportsman can fairly be held responsible. 
Two or three grains on a single hook will 
fully serve the sportsman were he but furnished 
with a tool which w r ill make these separately 
effective, but till then he must do the best he 
can with more or less imperfect instruments. It 
certainly seems extraordinary at first sight how 
a bait so formidably armed as a phantom can 
fail to hook a fish, but when we find, as we often 
do, fish after fish striking and yet failing to 
fasten, it ceases to be extraordinary. It is clear¬ 
ly all quite simple did we but understand it, and 
there must be a perfectly obvious explanation 
somewhere. If a big fish close its jaws on a 
spinning bait like the snap of a wolf trap, it is 
plain not a hook can even scratch it, and so 
long as it holds on with this grim grip, it con¬ 
tinues perfectly invulnerable also. If now it 
feels the pull of the line and so grows alarmed, 
or if simply acting, which is the more probable, 
in obedience to the passing whim of the day, and 
opens its mouth as sharply as it closed it, and 
with a violent ejectment of the bait into the 
bargain as well, it must escape without a touch. 
This gripping of baits is far more frequent with 
salmon and trout, especially the latter, than most 
anglers-suspect, and hundreds of fish are ‘‘hook¬ 
ed” and lost in this way every season to the 
mortification of anglers which, as a matter of 
fact, were never hooked at all. But the fish that 
“mouths” the bait is done for, and this is espe¬ 
cially so with a bait fitted with triangles. Tri¬ 
angles are generally placed one at the shoulder, 
a second near the vent and the third just flying 
free of the tail, but this third bait is probably 
of little use. A fish hooked on would mean 
either a miss at the bait or a transfer, and if 
the first, the fish, had it meant business, would 
