Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. / 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27 , 1909 . 
I VOL. LXXIII — No. 22. 
I 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, 1S73. 
AN INTERESTING QUESTION. 
A statement that comes from Iowa is worth 
recording, as it brings up a question that has 
long been under discussion and is ever interest¬ 
ing. In Ida county 162 persons applied for shoot¬ 
ing licenses, and as the law requires a physical 
description, it appears that the majority had blue 
eyes and only three out of the total number of 
applicants had black eyes. From this it is argued 
that blue-eyed men are more fond of hunting 
and are better shots than others whose eyes may 
be brown or black. 
Aside from the probability that that county 
was settled by people from countries where light 
eyes predominate, it is not surprising that a 
large proportion of the hunters have blue eyes. 
Blue-eyed men are fond of firearms and contests 
of skill with them; perhaps it may even be said 
that shooting appeals more strongly to them 
' than to many whose eyes may be brown or 
black; it is an inherited trait. 
This in turn gives rise to the belief commonly 
held by many that blue-eyed men are better 
shots. It is a fact that a great many of the 
famous shots with gun, rifle and revolver have 
blue eyes; but again it must be admitted that 
the men descended from light-eyed nations in¬ 
herit a liking for contests of skill with firearms, 
are more patient in defeat, and practice fre¬ 
quently with a determination to succeed. Finally, 
if they are victorious and become famous, the 
color of their eyes, among other physical char¬ 
acteristics, is noticed, and pointed out as proof 
of the theory. 
America has been called the melting pot into 
which men and women of all nations are thrown. 
The result is a mixture of the dark and the fair 
skinned races. In another century, it may be, 
>ne section will be peopled with blue-eyed men 
md women and another with brown or black- 
:yed citizens—who shall say? The belief now 
s that the North will hold the fair-skinned ones 
md the brunettes will gradually drift south¬ 
ward, each unconsciously seeking that climate 
vhich is more suited to their well being. When 
hat time comes it may be possible to affirm or 
leny statements such as the one we have re¬ 
erred to, but at present the descendants of the 
lark and the fair-skinned races are so thor- 
ughly distributed that it is impossible to strike 
n average for the entire country when the 
eople of one locality are under consideration. 
THE WILD TURKEY IN PRESERVES. 
The wild turkey is a bird of the wilderness, 
and can exist only in unsettled, or thinly settled, 
regions. Its size and color render it conspicu¬ 
ous, its beauty and its value as food make it 
desirable; and wherever predatory man armed 
with gun or rifle is abundant the turkey must 
be exterminated. 
No one knows for how many generations the 
primitive Indian and the turkey inhabited our 
forests together, and the numbers of the turkey 
never grew less. The Indian would never have 
exterminated him. Instead he domesticated the 
bird. But when the white man came, armed 
with noisy weapons, the turkey started to travel 
along the road followed to its sad end by so 
many of our native animals. To-day the tur¬ 
key is extinct in the United States and Canada, 
in all the thickly settled country where once it 
ranged, and is found now only in the thinly 
settled South and West. Once it was abundant 
in Southern Colorado, but even there it has be¬ 
come very scarce—perhaps no longer exists. In 
the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona it is 
still abundant—because few white men are there. 
The protection of the buffalo was put off 
until almost all the wild ones had been de¬ 
stroyed, and now the difficult and costly work 
of re-establishing the buffalo in confinement is 
engaging the energy and attention of many 
people, and there is every promise that their 
good work will be successfully carried out. 
The old time wild turkey of pure blood ought 
also to be preserved. There should be intro¬ 
duced into every preserve lying within the birds’ 
former range a flock of genuine wild turkeys 
which should be rigidly protected there, and en¬ 
couraged to propagate their race. They should 
be introduced on the Wichita Game Reserve in 
Oklahoma, and on the reservations proposed to 
be established in Louisiana. Pennsylvania has 
wooded reservations within her boundaries where 
the wild turkey should be introduced and pro¬ 
tected. 
These should be the native chestnut-tailed tur¬ 
key of the East, famed as a game bird since 
the East was settled. The Mexican wild turkey 
will never become extinct. Its domestication in¬ 
sures the preservation of so valuable a species, 
but, unless proper measures are taken for its 
protection, the old fashioned wild turkey of the 
North, east of the Rocky Mountains, the bird 
which our fathers and grandfathers used to hunt 
and kill, is very likely doomed to extinction. 
Deer in the city” is a caption frequently seen 
in the daily papers of the Atlantic coast States 
at this season. Why deer enter towns is well 
known, and what becomes of them is no mystery. 
In another column we print a story of the illegal 
hounding of a Long Island buck whose end 
came in a very thickly settled suburb of New 
York city. In the Eastern States the deer prob¬ 
lem is puzzling everyone. Half of the people 
want the deer, to look at in summer and to 
“hunt” 1 later on; the other half regard the ani¬ 
mals as a nuisance. Long Island furnishes one 
of the best illustrations of the fact that deer 
and truck gardeners are not destined to exist 
for long in harmony in the same cramped locali¬ 
ties. There are places for deer and others for 
truck raising, but if States are to continue to 
protect deer and individuals to raise vegetables, 
it will first be necessary to rearrange the con¬ 
ditions affecting both. Whether or not deer 
damage crops is immaterial; it is believed by 
many that they do, and negative evidence is ever 
regarded as but partially convincing. 
at 
Although this is the season when “hard luck 
stories” are heard frequently, it is not often 
that one which is now going the rounds is 
equalled. It originated at Ishpeming, Mich., and 
is worth printing in full. Here it is: 
Alfred Larson, of Spalding, is a most unlucky hunter. 
He bought a new rifle at a department store sale for 
$2.97, to prepare for the deer season. He took the rifle 
into the woods last Saturday to shoot at a target and met 
a big buck. Larson shot the buck and then went up to 
cut the animal’s throat. As the knife touched the deer’s 
throat the animal attacked Larson. Larson clubbed his 
gun and killed the deer, but the gun was discharged 
and the bullet penetrated Larson’s hip. Larson was 
taken to a hospital. The game warden then arrested 
him for hunting out of season. 
The outcome of the case is not known. Al¬ 
though it was the duty of the judge before 
whom the unfortunate hunter was taken to im¬ 
pose a fine, it is probable justice was tempered 
with mercy and the man 1 released under a sus¬ 
pended sentence, as sufficiently punished. 
« 
A Minnesota authority, after giving a long 
list of names of sportsmen who went into the 
deer country when the season opened last week, 
together with the kind of rifles they preferred, 
sums up with a statement that is interesting if 
correct. This is that the calibers below .300, 
which were very popular a few years ago, are 
being replaced by rifles of larger bore, though 
the majority range from .303 upward, with few 
above .400. 
K 
There is little to suggest the old-time Thanks¬ 
giving as we go to press with this issue. Even 
if wild turkeys were in every woodlot there is 
no snow on the ground nor frost in the air. The 
old habit of providing the piece de resistance 
for the Thanksgiving dinner yourself, must give 
way to another method than going forth a day 
ahead with rifle or gun. 
K 
At Christiania twenty polar bears, trained by 
Carl Hagenbeck, have been put aboard Captain 
Roald Amundsen’s ship. It is the explorer’s 
intention to use them to draw sledges on his 
Arctic journey. 
