be stated that the Federal government is under 
no circumstances to charge any fees for the per¬ 
mission of hunting on such lands outside of the 
regular license fee for hunting on any public shoot¬ 
ing ground. 
Men of wealth already have their preserves, and 
it is high time that all citizens, regardless of 
wealth, be given an opportunity to enjoy a heri¬ 
tage to which they are in every respect as justly 
entitled as their more fortunate brother of greater 
lesources, to say nothing of the immeasurable 
health and enjoyment to be derived from the sport 
which such sanctuaries provide. 
Write today to your representative in Congress. 
Let him know exactly how you and your friends 
stand on this propostion. There are six million 
sportsmen in the United States—most of them 
voters. If they demand their rights, they will get 
them. 
Those readers of Forest and Stream wishing 
to know how the senators of the various states 
voted at the last session when the Public Shooting 
Ground-Game Refuge Bill was defeated, may write 
to us. We will be pleased to give them this infor¬ 
mation. 
B EYOND the reek of factory smoke and the 
slush of city streets, beyond the last house 
and the last lamp-post, you come upon famil¬ 
iar haunts which, under the charitable blanket of 
snow, have reverted back to the glow and glamor 
of the wilderness. Snow covers a multitude of 
sms: the hideous signs strung along the summer 
1 oad, ill-kept habitations, poor land, and fences 
that are the bane of the cross-country tramper. 
With the disappearance of the rustic and sylvan, 
the wild comes out and the primitive is dominant. 
A new world holds forth in chaste white, while the 
sombre grays and browns and the deep greens of 
the evergreen trees give a touch of beauty to vari¬ 
ant landscapes. As to other times of the year, 
trees are necessary and form an admirable addi¬ 
tion to the wintry miles, while again they are a 
haven and refuge from attacks of old Boreas if 
you are caught abroad in the fury of a virile bliz¬ 
zard. 
We are a nation of fire-worshippers and hot¬ 
house animals—we remain indoors and look out of 
a glass window—we catch a cold at the opening 
of a door and ache in every bone, and diurnally 
curse the inconstancies of the weather. 
It is not a radical step from the easy chair 
before the open fire to the snowy trails of the 
open, thinly wooded country. The clean, clear, 
frosty air tingles the breathing of your soft body, 
and your eyes fill with water from the snow’s 
shimmer and sheen in the sunlight, but deep down 
there grows a desire to know how things look 
beyond the bend in the road or around the shoulder 
of the white hill. 
Beauty of landscape, beauty of trees and fan¬ 
tastic snowy forms begin to grip you with a pecu¬ 
liar feeling and before you have gone far the blood 
now warmed and racing with a mystic fervor sings 
a song which men have listened for centuries, a 
song never old, the lure of the snowy North. Un- 
Page 691 
consciously you answer with a renewed joy and 
the lure of water afield has bitten deep. ’ You 
have become one of many who are finding winter 
a lovely mood of the year. 
A NOTE OF OPTIMISM 
M OST writers on the future of the game sup¬ 
ply are altogether pessimistic. For at least 
twenty years one of these writers predicted 
the extermination of American game within 
twenty years. The dead line of the prophets of 
gloom has been passed and we still have game. 
Three-quarters of a century ago Frank Forres¬ 
ter, the best informed sportsman of his day, said 
that the bird and animal life of the country would 
be gone at the opening of the twentieth century. 
He based his prediction partly on his judgment of 
American character and partly on account of what 
he had seen in his day. Americans were spend¬ 
thrifts, he argued, and could never be taught to 
conserve their natural resources, and he said that 
they had no respect for law and that game codes 
could never be enforced. 
Forrester shot through eastern Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, eastern New York and western Con¬ 
necticut and Massachusetts. He had seen during 
his shooting experience the extermination from 
this area of wild turkeys and the eastern form of 
prairie chickens. The country was destitute of 
deer. 
Forrester said that the territory was admirably 
adapted for deer, but that one would more likely 
meet with some Asiatic or African animal than 
with a wild deer in the woodlands of any part of 
this section because an elephant might, for ex¬ 
ample, escape from a circus, but deer were* not 
carried with circuses and there was no way by 
which a specimen could be introduced. 
It will be a real antidote to run over the coming 
season s reports of the state game commissions 
in whose territories Forrester’s hunting grounds 
were found and note the tremendous amount of 
game that will be secured by sportsmen this year. 
Several thousands of deer are now killed annually 
in this area. There is not a single variety of game 
in the section that has been exterminated since 
Forrester’s day, and of recent years the supply of 
all kinds of game has been steadily increasing. 
If this is true, there is certainly hope for the 
future. 
The game would, however, have been extermi¬ 
nated long ago had it not been for the intelligent 
action taken by men who were interested in pre¬ 
serving sport. Anyone who studies the history of 
the movement will see that the result was accom¬ 
plished through organizations of sportsmen. It is 
organized effort that counts. We look forward to 
the day when it will be a disgrace for any man 
who shoots and fishes not to belong to both local 
and national sportsmen’s associations. 
Within thirty miles of New York City it is 
possible to see ring-necked pheasants, woodcock, 
ruffed grouse, rabbits and several other kinds of 
small game, besides real live deer which are free 
and unenclosed by fences. It is possible to have a 
good day’s sport with field dog and gun within 
forty or fifty miles of the metropolis. Conditions 
are yearly becoming more cheering. 
WHEN SNOW COMES 
