FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
Dr. WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
Member of Audit Bureau of Circulation 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor 
recreation, and a refined taste for natural objects. 
August 14, 1873. 
SPRING FOREST FIRES 
F OR the sportsman and the outdoor man the wild 
life of America plays a large part in making this 
a great country to live in. Whether you hunt with 
a gun, rod or camera the little wild children of nature 
have a place in the scheme of things that is of no 
little importance. We want to keep them. 
Food and shelter are as important to the existence 
of most animals and birds as to humans. If either of 
these are lacking, or are decreased, the chances of 
survival are correspondingly diminished. 
The effect of deforestation is well shown on the 
fauna in the eastern United States where once forests 
nearly uniformly covered vast areas, affording food and 
shelter to many varieties of game in vast numbers. 
With the clearing of the forests and the advance of 
civilization the game rapidly disappeared. 
A most important part of forest administration con¬ 
sists in the prevention of forest fires. With the advent 
of fire, not only the forest is destroyed, but with it 
the food and shelter so necessary for its occupants, 
the wild birds and animals. The prevalent belief that 
burning not only does no damage but, in certain locali¬ 
ties, is beneficial in stimulating a new growth of grass 
has been proven erroneous. As a rule, the new growth 
of grass obtained in this way is of comparatively poor 
quality for forage purposes and does in no way com¬ 
pensate, under the most favorable conditions, for the 
destruction of valuable growth and of food and shelter 
required by wild animal life. Such game birds as 
quail, ruffed grouse, and wild turkeys and many val¬ 
uable insect destroyers such as wood-peckers, nut¬ 
hatches and chicadees entirely disappear with the de¬ 
struction of the forests. This is equally true of such 
game as deer, foxes, raccoon, and opossum, and of 
squirrels and chipmunks which, although they feed upon 
nuts and pine seeds in considerable quantities, often 
plant many nuts in isolated places where a new growth 
of trees is the result. 
Owing to an evident lack of appreciation of the value 
of timber lands, the indiscriminating setting of spring- 
forest fires, especially in the south, is doing inestima- 
table damage to a resource that has long been the pride 
of this region, the game. Not only is it having its 
effect on forest game and birds but, during dry weather, 
these fires frequently sweep over open fields destroy¬ 
ing all field ground-nesting birds and frequently leaving 
the nesting ground of ducks and other water-fowl en¬ 
tirely bare. 
The devastation of the forest covering on the water 
sheds of the south has been a large factor in increasing 
the intensity and destructiveness of floods and their 
accompanying evil, drouth. The unrestricted drainage 
of rainfall constitutes a serious menace to the game 
fish in two ways: The floods have been known to 
wash the streams completely clear of fish in some cases, 
and on almost every occasion seriously deplete the 
stock; the erosion resulting from the rapid draining of 
rain almost invariably covers the spawning beds with 
fine silt, smothering the eggs,, and to a large degree 
preventing the natural restocking. 
Game and other wild animal life, driven from a burned 
area, naturally flee to an unburned region where forest 
covering is available and furnishes the food and shelter 
so necessary to their existance. The congestion of 
animal life in these areas after a particularly devastat¬ 
ing fire causes the competition for food and shelter to 
become unusually keen and, in the struggle for exis¬ 
tance which follows, there is an additional depletion 
of the wild game stock. 
From the standpoint of game, fish and birds alone, 
the prevention of forest fires and the protection of the 
forest growth from devastating methods of lumbering 
and turpentining is essential. 
In many of the states of the Southern Yellow Pine 
region there is little, if any, supervision of forests and 
forest resources; also there is very little appreciation of 
what is necessary to realize the greatest revenue from 
privately-owned and operated woodlands. The insti¬ 
tution of State Forest Protection Service., operating 
upon a thoroughly sound economic basis, is probably 
the only solution to the problem. 
GUN STOCKS 
ROB ABLY very few men who use rifles or shot¬ 
guns realize with what extreme care the wood for 
butt-stocks and other wood parts of these guns 
is selected, or know of the various operations in their 
manufacture. 
Only the very finest of walnut, gun-wood and birch 
are selected for this purpose, and these are bought 
either in blanks of given shape, or in plank form. The 
wood is first placed in huge kilns and thoroughly dried 
prior to machining. Walnut, which has been previously 
air-dried, remains in the kilns for about 60 days. Gun- 
wood and birch are first fumed by subjection to am¬ 
monia gas for nearly two weeks and then kiln-dried for 
some three weeks more. During this drying process 
samples of the wood are frequently tested by weighing 
to determine the moisture contents and at the conclu- 
tion of the drying period, the wood is subjected to a 
steam treatment which is similar, in effect, to an anneal¬ 
ing operation in the treatment of metals. 
Great care is required in the machining of the wood 
for gun stocks. It is first sawed and planed to the re¬ 
quired size and is then put through various cutting and 
boring machines which cut for the fitting of metal 
parts and bore necessary holes. Next, and of great 
importance, is the turning operation in which the blank 
is turned to the proper shape and size. The stocks arc 
then hand-turned to an exact fit for the parts to which 
they will eventually be joined. 
OLDEST INHABITANT TALES 
T IS amusing to recall, now that spring days are upon 
us, the fellows who talked about an open winter, 
meaning thereby a mild winter when as a matter of 
fact we have gone through what has been termed an 
old-fashioned winter. The winter just past has given 
the Oldest Inhabitant the opportunity to relate his pet 
favorite winter snowstorm and bit of cold that he knew 
of when he was a boy or young man 
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