11 
January, 1923 
THIS MONTH IN THE OUTDOORS 
WINTER IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE POPULAR WITH SPORTSMEN 
AND JANUARY HAS MUCH TO OFFER IN THE WAY OF RECREATION 
HESE are the clays of winter 
sports : hunting, for certain game ; 
fishing, for various species; trap¬ 
ping, skiing, toboganning, snow- 
shoeing, skating, hockey, tramping, cast¬ 
ing and camping. 
[ The rabbit season is open in a num¬ 
ber of states, also the duck and goose 
season south of the Mason and Dixon 
line and north of it on Long Island, 
New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut 
and Delaware. Fishing is permitted in 
Southern states for various fresh water 
species and for the angler there is_ no 
closed season on the salt water game 
species to be found at this season of the 
year. In the Northern fresh waters, in 
nearly all the states, fishing is permitted 
through the ice for pickerel and crap- 
pies. 
The out-of-doors is claiming more 
recruits year by year as its advantages 
become known. Nowadays in the news¬ 
papers, at this time of year, one reads 
side by side the advertisements calling 
one to the Florida, California and 
Southern resorts alongside of which one 
reads of the lures and attractions of 
Montreal, Quebec and the Northern 
country with its charms where snow is 
now on the ground, ice is a foot thick 
and the zero weather invigorating. 
The college outing clubs—and what 
club in the North has not its outing 
club?—have carried the gospel of the 
winter outdoors into many a state and 
the winter season is now looked upon 
not with fear and trepidation but with 
pleasure. In the ten years of its ex¬ 
istence, the outing club of Dartmouth 
has in its membership more than a third 
of its entire student body. 
Midwinter Camping 
; I RECALL that several years ago, 
l.when Dr. Joseph W. Droogan, who 
writes so authoritatively and entertain¬ 
ingly on the outdoors under the nom de 
plume of “Tamarack,” asked me to go 
with him on a snowshoe hike following 
a trap line in the lower Adirondacks, a 
journey following paths that he knew so 
well as a- youth, I wondered how I 
would stand sleeping in an open tent, 
with the temperature below zero, or 
hovering around that figure, and I hesi¬ 
tated. But Dr. Droogan called it non¬ 
sense ; it was the sort of experience that 
I needed in order properly to edit a Rod 
and Gun column. I went. I had a lot 
of fun. I changed my ideas about mid¬ 
winter camping, found many new joys, 
wrote half a dozen articles of a thousand 
r words or more on the subject and 
spread the gospel of the out-of-doors in 
midwinter. 
I got the hang of snowshoeing five 
minutes after I laced them on; Dr. 
Droogan’s injunction of “walking natu- 
iiiiaiiiisiiiiiiiiiiiiM 
Forest and Stream begins with this 
issue a new department telling 
sportsmen where to go and what to 
do throughout each month of the 
year. It is not to be a mere direc¬ 
tory but is intended to be a newsy 
department of interest to men who 
fish and hunt. 
It is compiled by Alexander Stod- 
dart, who was Rod and Gun editor 
of the New York Press, the Sun, and 
the New York Herald for the twenty 
years from 1900 to 1920. 
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rally” being followed after several spills 
and I carried the pack on my back after 
the wagon trail west of Speculator 
ended and kept up with Dr. Droogan 
and the guide, for which he had so much 
affection, James Sturges. 
From day to day we snowshoed, never 
meeting a person after we left the first 
camp, except the game warden of the 
district. Going in and coming out, we 
slept in one of Jim’s shacks, at other 
times that week we camped at night in 
the woods, cutting the ice out of the 
ground before making the night’s bed. 
Strangely to me, I found under the ice, 
the grass as green as if it was mid¬ 
summer. 
We carried no gun, and what is more 
interesting in these days when the 
Eighteenth Amendment is uppermost in 
most people’s minds and talk, no liquor. 
Dr. Droogan and Jim Sturges enjoyed 
immensely the signs they read in the 
snow of deer, rabbit, partridge (ruffed 
grouse), and other birds and animals 
that had left their tell-tale marks. Often¬ 
times they would follow silently, when 
they were not sure, but ultimately both 
men would agree, and it would give 
them pleasure to find that the other fel¬ 
low had checked him up aright. 
A day spent following a game warden 
on his day’s work, another day spent 
fishing through the ice for pickerel, an¬ 
other day tramping through the winter 
woods changed my whole idea of the 
outdoors in cold weather and robbed the 
midwinter woods of its terrors. To¬ 
day, I look back upon it as an adventure 
hoped some day to be duplicated. 
Tarpon Bite in Florida 
ARPON, the acrobatic king of silver, 
which lures men and women to its 
Southern haunts, is responsible, in a 
large measure, for the advertising that 
Florida receives as a winter resort. 
Since A. W. Dimock published his inter¬ 
esting and fascinating book, with its 
remarkable pictures of tarpon leaping, it 
is the secret ambition of every angler, 
man and woman, who goes South, to 
hook a tarpon. 
Every year you find more men and 
women at South Boca Grande, St. 
Petersburg, Miami, Charlotte Harbor, 
Fort Myers, Long Key, St. James City, 
Tarpon Springs, Homosassa, Sanibel 
Island, Bradentown, Marco, Cayo Costa 
and other places along the eastern and 
western Florida coasts, all seeking 
tarpon. 
Among the men who seek tarpon only 
on their Florida vacation, each one has 
a desire to surpass the record that has 
stood for years, that of B. W. Crownin- 
shield, of Boston, who from sunrise to 
sunset, took twenty-five tarpon. The 
record was made at South Boca Grande 
in 1916, Mr. Crowninshield had thirty- 
one strikes, and lost but six fish. That 
in itself is a wonderful record. Of the 
first twenty strikes, he landed eighteen 
tarpon. Has that record ever been sur¬ 
passed? It should be remarked in pass¬ 
ing that the fish invariably were re¬ 
leased to go back and record their 
strange adventure among others, to tell 
them of the thrill of fighting a hook, 
with an animal of similar size on the 
other end, heavier in weight and living 
above the surface. 
Incidentally the movement is spreading 
in Florida waters of fishing with a 
barbless hook, which requires more skill 
to bring the fish to the boat and does 
not injure the fish for future usefulness 
and sport of the angler. 
Fred A. Bishop of New York has 
done much by way of addresses and 
writings to tell of catching tarpon with 
a plug. He regards plug casting for 
tarpon as an art. The pioneer of this 
type of angling is T. N. Burket, of Lin¬ 
coln, Nebraska. In Florida waters, Mr. 
Burket has taken a tarpon of 112)4 
pounds casting with a 1,702 Heddon 
minnow and a fifteen thread line. The 
rod used was a five-foot, one-piece, 
bamboo rod, which weighed a fraction 
over ten ounces. 
Joseph W. Stray of Brooklyn, who is 
an advocate of the barbless hook, has 
taken on the flats of Charlotte Harbor, 
Florida, a 55-pound tarpon on shoe¬ 
maker’s flax sewing thread, which, 
when tested on a testing machine at 
Useppa Island, broke repeatedly under 
a strain of from ten to sixteen pounds. 
Deer Hunting in the South 
XCEPT in certain Southern states, 
such as Virginia, Florida, Arkansas, 
Louisiana and Mississippi, the deer sea¬ 
son is over. (Deer may be killed on 
January 3rd and 10th in New Jersey.) 
Of recent years the tendency in the 
Southern states has been to curtail the 
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