Forest and Stream 
■ ' — ---- 
' TmS L'^°uT C ° P, -l NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1909. 
VOL. LXXIII,—No. 21. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, 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. 
BETTER, NOT MORE LAWS. 
Special county laws are the abomination of 
the sportsman, who can never feel at ease when 
shooting under them, as complications that could 
not be anticipated are likely to arise and bring 
about unpleasant misunderstandings. It is seldom 
. that the careful shooter is punished for an error 
committed innocently, but on the other hand he 
is frequently overhauled and sometimes arrested 
by a warden who has not read the laws aright 
or who is confronted by a technicality he has 
never before been called on to solve. A jour¬ 
ney to the office of the nearest justice of the 
peace is not a pleasant experience for one who 
is seeking a quiet and peaceful vacation, and to 
whom even a dispute as to a technicality in the 
game laws is a thing to be carefully avoided, if 
'possible. 
To the resident of a State the county laws are 
not easy to observe strictly, for even he cannot 
always be certain of the location of boundaries 
near which it may happen that he is hunting. 
How, then, can a stranger be sure of these 
imaginary lines unless he is provided with maps 
and a local guide? 
For a few years game and fish laws were new 
and untried, so that frequent changes were to 
be expected, but now the efforts of our legis¬ 
lators may well be directed toward simplifying 
existing laws rather than to adding new and 
confusing sections to those we have. 
From time to time attempts have been made 
to secure uniform legislation, but the result in 
the main has not been encouraging. Legislators 
are chiefly concerned in pleasing local interests 
and ignore the fact that only by co-operation 
can the laws of different States be so harmon- 
zed that two important objects may be attained. 
These are, the conservation of breeding birds 
md fish; and the relief from legal complica- 
ions of the law-abiding sportsman of one State 
vho shoots in another, paying liberally for the 
irivilege. 
, We are almost daily asked for opinions on 
implications that arise through different inter¬ 
pretations of vaguely worded sections in the 
;ame laws of various States. It is not remark- 
ble that one not versed in legal terms may 
ften place an erroneous construction on a 
clause. Game wardens and sportsmen alike 
err in this respect, and there is ample proof 
that these men err not through intention but 
because they are unfamiliar with untangling 
legal knots. In the final analysis there is appar¬ 
ent, therefore, a need of laws couched in plain 
terms and shorn of all confusing verbiage, so 
that sportsman, boy or man; warden, judge and 
lawyer, may understand them. 
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WOODCOCK. 
To the sportsman who was young a generation 
or two ago, bags of woodcock numbering fifteen, 
twenty or twenty-five in a day were nothing un¬ 
common. Now the woodcock has come to be 
regarded as almost extinct and when taken is 
considered a prize. It is not so very long ago 
that one of our eminent ornithologists wrote a 
paper on two vanishing birds, the woodcock and 
the woodduck. 
The reasons for the bird’s decrease in num¬ 
bers are not far to seek. Ever since the art of 
wing shooting began to be practiced on this con¬ 
tinent, the woodcock in most sections has been 
shot in summer, at a time when the fledglings 
still had the down upon them, and, if able to 
fly at all, fluttered off so slowly and uncertainly 
as to present a mark that a child could hardly 
miss. Besides, the woodcock has suffered from 
climatic influences and in its winter home in the 
South has occasionally been destroyed in great 
numbers by the terrible freezes that at intervals 
bring ruin to that section. Such a destruction 
took place in February, 1899, when, according 
to the statement of one observer, tens of thou¬ 
sands of woodcock were killed in a limited 
locality by so-called sportsmen, while thousands 
froze to death. Add to this the fact that in its 
Southern home the woodcock is regarded as 
game; that it is constantly shot in certain locali¬ 
ties by visiting and local sportsmen and by negro 
market shooters wherever and whenever found, 
and we find plenty of good reasons for the bird’s 
present scarcity. 
Nowadays, happily, summer shooting has al¬ 
most everywhere been abolished. The birds are 
permitted to rear their young unmolested, and 
the young to gain a little strength of wing be¬ 
fore being shot at. Moreover, it has been some 
years since there has been a very heavy freeze 
in the South. For the last year or two there 
seems to have been some slight increase in the 
number of woodcock seen during migrations, and 
it would be very interesting to get together the 
observations of sportsmen on this point. In an¬ 
other column are printed some questions on this 
subject, and we believe that a large number of 
our upland shooters will be glad to answer these 
questions wholly or in part, and equally glad to 
read the replies given to them by other sports¬ 
men. If our friends are willing to contribute 
their observations, a very interesting series of 
observations may be brought together. 
KILL CLEAN OR MISS CLEAN. 
In the discussions of the shooting that is pos¬ 
sible with shotguns smaller than twelve-bore, 
one thing is noticeable: Very little is said about 
making the conditions less favorable to the 
shooter. 
The twelve-bore gun is the result of vast ex¬ 
perience in the world’s shooting grounds, but 
it has well known limitations. Chief among 
these are the weight and bulk of gun and ammu¬ 
nition. The smaller bores are made somewhat 
lighter and less bulky and a material reduction 
in both bulk and weight of ammunition has been 
attained, all within the bounds of safety. 
So far owners of these guns are content, but 
with this reduction too many of them also wish 
to retain the effectiveness of the twelve-bore. 
They insist that the small gun must kill all they 
shoot at, and are not satisfied to kill clean or 
miss clean, which should be the motto of every 
modern sportsman and is the motto of all those 
who shoot for recreation and sport and not for 
numbers. 
In other branches of sport the trend of senti¬ 
ment is in the direction of the most accurate and 
durable implements obtainable. The angler’s 
tackle is fined down and half his pleasure is 
found in learning its possibilities and in exercis¬ 
ing the best skill he can muster to offset its lack 
of mere strength. The big game hunter no 
longer burdens himself with a great weight of 
rifle and ammunition, and is chiefly concerned 
with a desire to either kill his game cleanly or 
let it escape with a whole skin. If the trophy 
of which he is proud be a bear skin, the fewer 
the bullet holes, the higher he values it. 
In the bird hunters who are content with light 
bags this sentiment is equally strong, and they 
shoot small-bore guns with great satisfaction be¬ 
cause of the merits enumerated above and are 
also interested in exercising the greater skill re¬ 
quired to attain these modest bags. With them 
it is more pleasure to recall one shot that re¬ 
quired their best efforts than to think of great 
numbers of birds secured with heavy guns and 
stiff loads. 
We like to believe that an ever-increasing 
number of thoughtful upland bird shooters are 
inspired with this praiseworthy desire to take for 
their share the finest specimens, not the greatest 
numbers, and to confine their shooting to rea¬ 
sonable ranges, refraining from long shots that 
tend to cripple rather than to kill. In this 
the small-bores are a success, and are to be 
heartily approved. 
Too many persons, however, who are other¬ 
wise pleased with the sixteen and twenty-bores, 
try to attain with them results equal to those 
inherent in the twelves. In other words, to 
simplify their equipment, they would burden one 
horse and a small wagon with a load for two 
horses on a heavy vehicle, and expect to cover 
as many miles in a given time. 
