Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 2 , 1910 . 
[ VOL. LXXV.-No. 1. 
1 No. 127 Franklin 3t., ''I; v C > 
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 in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
NEW YORK GAME LAW CHANGES. 
Last week Governor Hughes signed the bill 
amending the forest, fish and game law, and on 
the whole sportsmen may congratulate them¬ 
selves on the character of the legislation recently 
passed. Obviously it will not please everyone, 
but it shows gains, some of which are important. 
The provision for game bird refuges seems to 
be modeled on the Connecticut law. The ma¬ 
jority of the town board of any town may, with 
the consent of the owners, set aside certain 
designated lands for a period of ten years, and 
the taking of game birds on such lands may be 
wholly prohibited. The deer season is reduced 
to the old time—from Sept. 16 to Oct. 31. This 
cuts off almost all hope of still-hunting with a 
tracking snow. The change seems to have been 
made largely because the law, which provided 
that only bucks should be killed in November, 
was not observed, and the destruction of does 
in their close time was very great. 
Spring duck shooting has received a fatal blow 
for this State by the closing of the open season 
for all wildfowl on Jan. 10. The old Long Island 
law, which permitted the shooting of brant in 
the spring, afforded an opportunity to slaughter 
ducks in violation of law, and this opportunity 
was taken advantage of by not a few people. If 
the spring gunners had been willing to confine 
themselves to shooting brant only, and if the 
local baymen had been sufficiently farsighted to 
insist that their patrons should respect the law, 
it is quite possible that the law permitting brant 
to be killed in the spring might have remained 
on the statute books for years. But the gunners 
were too greedy, and the baymen—or some of 
them—lacked force to insist on the observance 
of the law; thus they killed the brant that laid 
the golden egg. 
Other important provisions make more strin¬ 
gent the laws for the punishment of aliens and 
non-residents for hunting without a license, for¬ 
bid the sale of black bass taken in the waters 
of the State, and make more severe the penalties 
of polluting waters or draining lakes and streams. 
There are other provisions, but these are the 
ones which possess the widest interest for gun¬ 
ner and angler. 
New York game laws should be easier of en¬ 
forcement under these statutes than under the 
old law. 
BOUNTY FRAUDS. 
Whatever there is to be said in favor of the 
payment of bounties for the scalps of predatory 
animals, its great cost and its liability to fraud 
have brought the practice into disrepute in many 
localities. The laws of various States and coun¬ 
ties in relation to bounty payments are often so 
elastic or so loosely drawn as to permit shrewd 
persons to practice frauds without much fear of 
detection, and sometimes even to offer a real 
temptation to their evasion by men who take a 
secret pride in their ability to cheat in a small way. 
Although this defrauding the people of their 
money is a serious matter, the situation is not 
devoid of humor. The men who have success¬ 
fully, practiced’selling fraudulent scalps to amia¬ 
ble county officials could, if they were so in¬ 
clined, relate anecdotes which would make gold 
brick salesmen regard their own calling as ex¬ 
tremely hazardous and devoid of profit. The 
bounty hunters would never attempt to practice 
on experienced fur buyers the tricks they play 
on county officials. They know the latter take 
much for granted and are not personally in¬ 
terested, as professional fur buyers would be. 
Often officials are wholly ignorant of birds and 
mammals and in good faith pay timber wolf 
bounties on coyote scalps, and so on through 
the list. 
Where one county pays bounties and another 
does not, the returns show what seems to be a 
remarkable increase of predatory animals in the 
former. Even if the animals are not actually 
driven over the line and killed, as is at times 
charged, the scalps frequently find their way to 
that place where they will be paid for in cash, 
and then possibly the fur men pay a further, and 
it is to be hoped a final, sum for them and take 
them out of circulation. 
In a recent case it was shown that a firm 
supplied coyote skins to persons who took them 
elsewhere and obtained wolf bounties on them, 
the assumption being that profits were divided 
in proportion to the risks. Evidently the officials 
who paid timber wolf bounties on them were 
ignorant or careless* 
In other cases a little detective work has re¬ 
sulted in an explanation for the unusual num¬ 
ber of bounties obtained by individuals. Often 
those who actually try to exterminate vermin 
reap harvests less profitable than others who 
shoot and trap but little. 
These petty frauds are responsible for the new 
law in Ontario. This requires the presentation 
of the head and pelt of every timber wolf on 
which a bounty is claimed. If these be branded 
in such fashion that they cannot be presented a 
second time in the same or in another Province 
or State, well and good. 
Forest and Stream is frequently asked a ques¬ 
tion regarding which little accurate information 
is available in concrete form. This is, the sea¬ 
son during which black flies may be expected at 
certain places. Some anglers and tourists would 
not make a detour to pass around a fly-infested 
region if there was good fishing there. Others 
would not hesitate an instant between a choice 
of good fishing amid black flies and no fishing 
and no flies. To them the flies are not merely 
a discomfort; they are a positive torment, a 
source of great physical agony, just as to others 
common sunburn is a dangerous malady. There 
are many persons to whom either sunburn or the 
black fly is as a plague, but who are by no means 
tyros, to be teased and laughed at. It is their 
physical misfortune, that is all, and they cannot, 
through long exposure, come to regard either 
one complacently. For their benefit we would be 
glad to print notes regarding the average times 
for the appearance and disappearance of black 
flies in well-known fishing regions of Northern 
America. 
8 s . 
The army of people who will go fishing to¬ 
day, together with those who will go to various 
resorts in the country for rest and recreation, 
bids fair to be greater than ever before on the 
eve of the nation’s birthday.. The efforts made 
to bring about a celebration of the Fourth in 
“the old-fashioned way” will influence large 
numbers of people to seek the country for rec¬ 
reation, and the railways will be hard pressed 
in handling the crowds. On salt water small 
motor boats with their parties of anglers are 
taking the place of the overcrowded steamboats 
and are increasing enormously in number as in 
popularity. 
The efforts that haye been made from time 
to time to rid the waters in the vicinity of New 
York city of driftwood bid fair to bear fruit. 
The attention of the War Department and of 
Mayor Gaynor has been called to the nuisance, 
and relief is expected. Not only canoes, but all 
small boats are in constant danger while in these 
waters, where immense timbers and logs are 
carried up and down the rivers by the tides. 
Some of the largest timbers are partially water¬ 
logged and in that condition are particularly 
troublesome to all small boat owners and to 
anglers. 
*» 
An unusually large number of sportsmen tour¬ 
ists sought the salmon waters of the Northeast 
during June. The unfavorable conditions found 
on local trout streams influenced some of them, 
and the opening to the public of a few more 
salmon rivers attracted others. They found the 
salmon fishing excellent; indeed, if reports are 
not exaggerated, the entire season should prove 
an exceptional one, while these grand fish have 
appeared in waters which, heretofore, have not 
been regarded as reliable. 
