

SS 
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GrorGe Brrp GrinneLt, President, 
346 Broadway, New York. 
Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright, 1907, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Louis Dean Sperr, Treasurer. 
346 Broadway, New York. 
Cuartes B, Reynoups, Secretary. 
346 Broadway, New York. 


Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a peer t 

Six Months, $1.50. 

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1907. 

THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest AND Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 

THE CHRISTMAS SEASON. 
THE season of joy and good feeling for all 
the Christian world has come once more, and to 
all its. readers North, South, East and West 
ForEST AND STREAM offers cordial good wishes, 
and a hearty Christmas greeting. The season is 
one of innocent joy and merriment, yet it has 
a far deeper meaning than this alone, since its 
very essence lies in serving others, in giving and 
receiving tokens of affection, friendliness and 
good will. As each heart is in some degree 
touched and softened by such evidences of love 
or friendship received, so also by its own acts 
of self-forgetfulness each heart is itself made 
better. 
The wild merriment and thoughtless joy of 
the Christmas time are for the young and the 
heedless, for those who have not as yet assumed 
the responsibilities of life, who accept the good 
.things that come to them, recking little of how 
they come, or at what cost of thought or effort 
or sacrifice. But to the older generation the day 
brings that deeper and holier joy borne of self- 
denial, the happiness that arises from giving 
pleasure to others. To all who share its joys, 
the season brings kindly feeling and its measure 
of happiness and contentment. All are the better 
for its coming. 
Welcome then the Christmas season, with its 
decorations of green. At a time when all the 
earth seems cold and dead these decorations pre- 
fioure that resurrection of beautiful things which 
we shall see a little later, when winter has yielded 
to the power of the returning sun, and has re- 
tired to his home in the North. 
To many of us in this broad land, the clos- 
ing weeks of the year have brought a time of 
stress and strain, yet now with the coming of 
the Christmas season the clouds seem to be break- 
ing away, hope brightens, and we look forward 
to happier prospects and to a new year of pros- 
perity and business success. 

MAINE'S RECORD. 
Ir the report of the game commissioners of 
Maine is complete, that State has a hunting 
record of which she may well be proud. The 
commissioners state that in the hunting season 
ending with Dec. 14, not one person was shot by 
mistake for game, and only three deaths resulted 
from the accidental discharge of firearms. 
In common with other publications of its class, 
Forest AND STREAM has in past years published 
sO many warnings to hunters to exercise care in 
their wanderings that it has often seemed the 
patience of our readers would be exhausted, and 
that they would protest. Sometimes it has 
seemed a waste of time and space to publish 
these warnings, for each year’s list of casualties 
has been large in the hunting regions of the 
East and West. 
Now, howéver, one of the largest regions in 
the Union for deer hunting has gone on record 
with a list of 2,151 nonresidents and perhaps 
several times as many residents who hunted 
deer or moose during the season, not one of 
whom shot another in mistake for game. We 
cannot help believing some small measure of 
credit is due Forest AND StrEAM for this pleas- 
ing record, and that its efforts have not been 
wasted. 
It is puzzling, however, why one hunting 
region should be free from casualties while in 
others the annual list of dead and maimed re- 
mains much the same. In the Adirondacks, 
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota the total 
of casualties for the big game season was un- 
reasonably large this year, and in ihe absence 
of detailed reasons it seems largely due to over- 
crowding favored sections. Certain it is that one 
locality reports several casualties while another 
one has a clean slate. 
Finally, the hope is cherished that two elements 
of danger may be eliminated: One is the shoot- 
ing at partly visible moving objects; the other 
that sensible ammunition will be used. By this 
we mean ammunition intended to kill game 
quickly at short distances rather than to give 
great penetration and range. 

THE OLD CAMP GROUND. 
Every sportsman of middle age looks back- 
ward through the years to some spot where, in 
days gone by, he has passed at least one vaca- 
tion in perfect contentment. For him there is 
at least one old camp ground that he hopes some 
day to revisit. In his moments of relaxation, he 
can see it and picture its every detail. Incidents 
connected with it pass in review before him and 
are portrayed in memory as plainly as if they 
had happened but yesterday. These are the 
pleasant incidents; those that were not agree- 
able are happily forgotten or are so hazy in 
memory that they are reviewed calmly and as if 
of no importance, although at the time they may 
have seemed very disturbing elements in an 
otherwise perfect season of rest and communion 
with nature. 
Happy the man who can find contentment in 
reviewing the pleasures enjoyed at the old camp 
ground. He who realizes that the place will 
know him no more may be fortunate after all. 
For the passage of time plays sad havoc with 
camp grounds and with their one time occupants, 
and it is better to think of a place as it was, 
than to see it as it may be after the changes 
wrought by nature and by man. Nature is kinder 
than man. Let her work her will and our old camp 
VOL, LXIX.—No. 25. 
1 No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
erounds suffer but little and grow more attrac- 
tive, if possible, as the years go by; but man is 
no respecter of the that attaches to 
favorite camp sites, and if you go back to 
of these with the memories of your last visit, 
sentiment 
one 
perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, still fresh, there 
may be unhappiness in store for you. 
Perhaps the actual site of your camp remains 
much as it was when you left it the last time. 
The old path to the little boat landing you made 
of driftwood and logs is washed away, and of 
course the tiny landing itself is The trees 
that shaded your tent so many warm afternoons 
in autumn may have grown in girth and height, 
and the sprouts you lopped off to furnish pegs 
on which to hang your pots and pans have de- 
cayed and disappeared. The stones of the old 
fireplace lie scattered here and there, and you 
turn them over with your foot, recalling mean- 
while that just here stood your puncheon dining 
table, supported on crotched sticks and cross- 
pieces. Even the ashes of the fire—but no, you 
do not let yourself believe this possible, think- 
ing rather that some other woods lover left them 
to mark a camp in this place a year or two ago. 
The old spring—surely it is still as it was in 
former days; but no, it is only a trickle now 
and no tin cup hangs nearby. 
Perhaps the saddest surprise awaits you when 
you walk down to the beach and look out over 
the river, now shrunken to half its former size, 
but still your favorite river. Where are the 
woods that stretched away for miles from 
very banks? In their stead you gaze on fields 
there stumps of the one 
gone. 
its 
of corn, with here and 
hickories in which 
remember them, 
the marshy 
time magnificent oaks and 
squirrels used to play 
while wild turkeys roosted 
places where monster bullfrogs held forth and 
serenaded you by night. Patches of woods re- 
main, but they are pitiful remnants, and you 
know that the deer that were wont to come down 
to the water’s edge to slake their thirst have 
gone with the trees you loved so well. 
Turning away you seek the hills, and follow- 
ing an oak ridge that took you in other days 
to a wooded valley where game was abundant, 
you come, not to woods, but to abandoned fields 
thickly studded with stumps. 
on whose banks you ate your luncheon many a 
day is now dried up and on all sides there is 
as you 
over 
The lively brook 
desolation. 
Better far to think of the old camp ground and 
your favorite haunts as they were when you 
saw them last than to return to them and find 
that time and the despoiler, man, have ruined 
them. 

> 
THE practice of economy on all sides since the 
recent financial flurry has had a marked effect 
on big game hunting resorts of the East and 
West, and it is keeping large numbers of people 
away from the Southern fishing and upland game 
regions, at least for the present. 






































































