
Nov. 30, 1907.] 


To Choose Wood for the Camp-Fire. 
OBVIOUSLY one can only choose between the 
woods that are at hand, and Arctic explorers 
and persons who climb the tallest mountains 
have no wood at all. They have to carry with 
them stoves and alcohol or other fluid fuel. If 
you are traveling in the Eastern forests you 
will have your choice of the best woods for 
your camp-fire. Such woods are oak, hickory, 
maple, birch, ash, poplar and pine. Almost all 
these woods, except pine, make splendid coals 
to cook over and remain hot for a long time. 
Dry pine shavings or finely split kindlings are 
by all odds the best thing to start a fire with, 
unless you happen to be where the soft curls 
of gray birch hang down from its trunk and 
shudder in every passing breeze. They flash up 
like powder and are very handy kindlings. 
White birch bark is good, too. 
In the Rocky Mountains you will do well if 
you can manage always to have your camp-fire 
of aspen. Dry aspen wood is almost always to 
be found and makes an excellent fire. Where- 
ever you are, avoid the use of spruce and fir, 
if you can. They do not burn easily, and be- 
sides they snap continually and the noise and the 
hot sparks that they are constantly throwing out 
become very troublesome. Sometimes a man 
who is obliged to burn spruce will find half a 
dozen holes in his blanket in the morning, where 
sparks have been thrown over him. 
On the Western prairies sage brush makes a 
capital fire, either to cook by or to look at. We 
are all of us rather given to speaking with con- 
tempt of that humble plant, but it has saved 
many a man from freezing to death. Cotton- 
wood makes a capital fire; box-elder not so 
good. Greasewood burns readily and hot, but 
it is soon out. Down in the Southwest mesquite 
makes an excellent and warm fire. It burns 
slowly and holds the heat a long time. Cactus 
stalks flash up quickly, but leave good strong 
coals, which keep hot for quite a long time. 
As a rule, however, no wood is good when 
it is wet. You will find that even the shagg 
bark of the gray birch will fail you if rain has 
been falling for half a day. If everything is 
wet try to get hold of a pine stump or a pine 
knot and break into that with your ax. If you can 
get such a bit of pitchy wood, your troubles are 
over and your fire will be easily started, and if fed 
| with dry or only damp twigs and branches which 
| have been protected under fallen logs or rocks, 
Ss 
4 

—_ ee 


it will soon be blazing strongly enough to dry 
off and take hold of the larger branches and 
sticks which you will pile on it. 
It is in such rainy weather that your dry 
matches will be especially needed. If you carry 
ratches loose in your pocket and have to trave! 
all day through the rain and get thoroughly 
soaked, you will have a hard time lighting the 
fire. If with your matches loose in your pocket 
your canoe is upset and you get a thorough 
ducking the fire will trouble you. If in crossing 
} the stream your horse stumbles and goes down, 
and you and he roll over in three or four feet 
of water, there is more trouble ahead in case 
your matches are not protected from the damp. 
It is no joke to have to travel for half a day 
in wet clothing and not to be able even to light 
your pipe. It is still less of a joke to get into 
camp and not to be able to kindle a fire. The 
old-fashioned sulphur matches are rather less 
subject to the effects of wet than are the modern 
so-called parlor matches, or snap matches. Un- 
less the sulphur matches have had a thorough 
soaking, they can often be dried, so that the 
sulphur will ignite by friction by rubbing them 
in the hair of the head, assuming that to be 
dry. It is much safer, however, for you to carry 
some matches in a tightly corked wide-mouthed 
bottle or in any waterproof match box, of which 
there are many. 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
THE Forest AND STREAM may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly, 

THANKSGIVING I 
Southern California Shooting. 
Los ANGELES, Cal., Nov. 10—Editor Forest 
and Stream: The annual convention of the Cal- 
ifornia State Game and Fish Protective Asso- 
ciation, an association of local and district 
sportsmen’s clubs in the line of a State federa- 
tion, met in this city last week to discuss 
changes in the present game legislation and 
the propagation of outside species. Since the 
passage of the hunters’ license bill in this 
State, over $100,000 has been added by the sale 
of license tags to the State game preserva- 
tion fund, and the convention naturally was 
principally occupied as to the best way in 
which to spend this money for the advance- 
ment of the sportsmen’s interests, they hav- 
ing contributed it for that cause. 
After mature consideration of the project 
of experimenting with wild turkeys, Hungar- 
ian partridges and Mexican varieties of quail, 
the general idea crystallized into better pro- 
tection and efficient propagation of the game 
indigenous to California and which still is in 
very good supply in most sections. It was 
thought this end could best be attained by 
having the State select by their fitness, depu- 
ties for each county, to be paid by the State 
and kept out of politics by appointment pend- 
ing good behavior, given to understand they 
were to enforce the laws as written without 
fear or favor. 
The laws are believed to be so good now 
that it is doubtful if anything but a gradual 
tightening of the limit and other strings will 
be asked. Enforcement of existing laws is 
more important than a lot of senseless bick- 
ering over new laws. 
The usual committees were appointed, and 
President Harry Payne, Secretary-Treasurer 
Edwin A. Mocker, and a number of good, rep- 
resentative vice-presidents were appointed 
from various sections of the State. Payne 
and Mocker never will be able to get out of 
office; they understand the situation, and are 
very efficient men, having in the past done 
real service for the game and fish cause. 
Many delegates from all over the State were 
present, and a number of new members were 
added. Local duck club members took the 
visiting delegates to their duck clubs for 
shoots, and off in motoring quail hunting 
jaunts. There was an excursion to Mount 
Lowe, a big dinner on the mountain, and other 
entertainment galore. Good feeling was ex- 
pressed, and some really telling work was 
done. 
JAY IN 
THE 
WOODS. 
The existence of such a body, crystallizing 
the sentiment of the sportsmen from the vari- 
ous parts of the State, with their varying needs 
and requirements, is a boon to the legislators 
who have thrashed out for them and ready 
made, the laws that the State in general finds 
best suited to the sportsmen’s interests. The 
recommendations of the California Game and 
Fish Protective Association generally are 
adopted in toto, hence its great care to serve 
all sections by drafting as near as possible 
suitable laws. It comes very near being the 
sportsmen’s legislature of this State. 
Usually there is a severe general storm 
which comes sweeping down the coast about 
mid-November, and with it come the northern 
birds. It is for these reinforcements that the 
duck clubs are waiting anxiously now. The 
local ducks are wild, and it is hard work get- 
ting together more than twenty of them in a 
morning. In another month, with the right 
kind of weather, all will be different. 
Teal are scarce and so are spoonbills. A few 
canvasbacks, redheads and _ bluebills have 
come, but these deep-water birds are strangers 
to the southern California overflows as a rule. 
Some jacksnipe have come south, and a few 
of the gun club members are taking good 
sport with them. Geese are scarce here, but 
unusually plenty up north, according to all 
reports from over the mountains. Reports 
from El Centro and Imperial in the lower 
Colorado River country, are more encourag- 
ing, and big bags are told of by returning 
hunters, 
Quail are plenty around Imperial, and in 
Old Mexico also, huge killings being made. 
A party of local shooters returned last week 
from San Diego county in a big automobile, 
which burned 250 gallons of gasoline in its 
absence of about three weeks. The party 
killed over six hundred quail, about half as 
many ducks, mostly of the big varieties un- 
common along the sea marshes. 
The quail season, which opened Oct. 15, is 
a distinct disappointment in the face of plenty 
of birds. The automobile seems to have “done 
it” this year to the shooting. The average auto- 
mobile hunter scurries through some cafion road 
at fair pace, and whenever a covey of quail is 
jumped alongside the road, the machine halts, 
and all hands are into the thick of them in a 
minute. They are given a brief rally, the 
hunters aiming not to get far from the car. 
When the quail begin to become rather hard 
to raise—just the time most hunters would be- 
gin to think conditions right—on goes the 

