| Show Out of Doors in the West r Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study in SHALL WE SAVE THE WILD WILL YOU HAVE A In a striking article in the Jast issue of the In dependent T. director of the New York Zoological asks this question of the indifferent American Shall We Have a or It is a ugly and miserable disagreeable f but you and I have got to answer for and posterity in Re- garding our duty to wild we have lived in a fool's paradise until our lease has and the day of 1 reckoning has Shall we arouse and do what is vitally necessary to protect our miserable remnant of wild or shall we sleep and let it go to the Hornaday shows that the causes and extermination of our wild game prevail all over the United and the worst of it is that the causes can not be wholly eradicated without a great general movement on the part of the mass of the L The next in line for extermination The Gray Ruffled Grouse because the American people will neither make nor enforce laws o protect these fine game State by As every one the great mass of even the decent is so hard to reach that nothing short of a great or a or a is sufficient to sting it into action As a we are the most easy-going people on Many a- man who is robbed is too lazy to port the crime to the One Bit of Past We have seen six species of birds exterminated in our own Fourteen other species are now on the high road to extermination in the near Here are the two The Western chief gnat and mosquito very rare because the people shoot though worthless as The Fate of Twenty Species of Our American Already Great Passenger Labrador Eskimo Carolina Flamingo the U. Next Candidates for Early Extinction in The Trumpeter Whooping Roseate Red-Breasted Golden American Snowy Wood Sage Prairie Sharp-Tailed The fight for the remnant of wild life is Where do you Toward the harried and hunted wild things we owe a duty as good citizens that we can not evade without impairing our good Far too long has this work been left to a corporal's guard of sportsmen and bird lovers and poorly supplied with campaign What Can be The salvation of our wild life now depends upon the average and what he conceives to be his duty toward The need of the sportsman for game to shoot is not the consideration of first The wild life is worth as a public to the millions of men and boys and who love the outdoor the woods and the but who do not shoot at all The wild birds and beasts should be for How can it be By creating a demand for The great majority of law-makers are quick to respond to the voice of the The last Utah legislature did almost nothing in behalf of wild simply because the people did absolutely Ask for a bill against the sale of game u bill to shorten all bag-limits and open a bill for a long close season for any species that is threatened with extermination in any a bill to prohibit the use of The Woodhouse Jay very because the foolish gunners shoot these birds for automatic and pump guns in a bill to prohibit spring and a bill to prohibit the use of the plumage of wild birds for millinery excepting game The greatest scourge to the wild game is the sale of From Maine to that should be stopped immediately and for all wild At the same laws should be enacted to permit the sale and consumption of domestic bred and reared in fenced of the following pheasants ruffed black white-tailed bu- red fallow deer and This is the legislation that we desire to have But Little Game Hornaday shows that fatal weaknesses in our national attitude toward wild life are easily catalogued and and their widespread prevalence is horribly Here is the The killable game has been reduced to so low a point speaking we have today in the United States not more than one bird and one quadruped for every ninety-nine that we had forty years If any one doubts this I will ask him to wait for the report on the former abundance of our game that presently will be published by E. H. the efficient State Ornithologist of We Have Millions of As the game has grown more and more the number of guns and gunners has rapidly increased the number of hunters in the United States is In New York State there according to a careful estimate made by Andrew D. president of the New York State about active who hunt at least once every two Does not that mean about thirty hunters for every ruffed and fifty for every woodcock and Imagine what it means for an army of even armed men to take the field every year in this State against our miserable remnant of game In Pennsylvania the men who constitute the majority of her grand army of shooters least are too mean to vote a hunter's license of per gun to be expended in protecting the interests of the game But it must be remembered that Pennsylvania once was the home of Fool Hawk that cost her farmers over a million dollars in two But It's Our killable game is being exterminated ac- to In other the laws are so liberal to the and so hard on the game the game is swiftly Laws that are adequate to preserve the and permit it to increase ever so are called and the men they most affect stand for that if we consult their wishes about The commercial interests of and feather-working are terribly destructive It has been demonstrated over and over all over the that no wild species can exploitation for commercial purposes In every case it spells speedy Even the survive the modern steam whales of the sea can not whaler and the awful harpoon Look backward at the American bison the fur seal millions the passenger pigeon the grouse and quail the South African the Guadalupe elephant the great the egrets of Florida and the mule deer of the alligator of the and the beaver of the are they by greedy and rapacious men who wished to con- vert their remains into Soon the musk-ox will follow How much longer is Christian going to stand for such The majority of the American people are merciful toward all and It is on this fact that the future of this nation rests Once arouse that majority and it will right any in state or It is to that great easy-going but God-fearing and forceful majority that the remnant of wild life must appeal for its it is to be saved at Whether it is possible to make that appeal so loud and so long that it will reach and arouse the majority is yet a grave a question literally of y Flocks of Young Pelicans on Bird Island in the Great Salt These birds will shortly disappear because the people of Utah refuse or neglect to protect them in their breeding life or Opposed to the decent majority is a minority that I will touch upon a little Plea of the Killers and In the making of adequate laws to stop and really promote the increase of wild the de who are hit always raise a great and protest that the restrictions should be put upon some other For the makers and users of of the murderous automatic and deadly machines for bird no no always the game Limit the Shorten the open season Do anything you like to restrict but DON'T touch the automatic and pump Don't interfere with an hamper Inventive Genius These are the very words that I have heard in my office and a score of times at representatives of the companies who make the t The game-dealers the killing ganie by and then game will be very ingenious The only trouble about its application lies in the fact that it aims to antagonize the very men whose efforts have done most to preserve to us the ragged remnant of game that exists in this land The Lawless Game We come now to a destructive cause that no patriotic American can mention without a distinct feel-ing of regret and I refer to the conscienceless and vicious minority that defies all all codes of ethics and all rules of decency in securing the utmost toll of wild In this land of too much and at times or disgusting license the lawless 10 per is everywhere Prom to and from Point Barrow to there exists everywhere a tain number of men who will break any game law that can be broken with a fair chance of and in the taking of wild life will employ every unfair advantage that the devilish ingenuity of the meanest man can There are plenty of men who will dynamite snare ruffed grouse for steal breeding trout freshly placed in depleted kill quail on their kill snow buntings and bluebirds for and shoot regardless of the scarcity of or of bag When G. Shields coined the word he introduced into the nomenclature of shooting and fishing one of the most useful and necessary words that ever entered No wonder that a judge on the bench has officially recognized its existence and its Automatic and Pump The favorite weapons of the market gunner and the game-hog are the automatic of five shots with five pulls of the and the gun of six shots in about three And Because they are the deadliest guns to be had for and can he trusted to get far more game than the finest They give the game-literally In the hands of an expert market it is often possible to kill five ducks out of a single and I have one record of eight from one flock-all that were in the flock The supreme deadlines of those guns is fairly beyond Their sponsors the and enforce the and it won make any difference to the game what kind of a gun kills That old ery of the on the bag limit is like wiring to a starving It can not he No sensible person needs to be told The use of the unfair guns in hunting wild game Marbled Godwit at and Western Willet in both about exterminated here because the people C will not protect should be everywhere prohibited by stringent until each gun is reduced to a two-shot Among real sportsmen there is no room for argument on this With game as horribly scarce as it is no gentleman sportsman can use an automatic or gun in Pennsylvania prevents the automatic gun by a law that has been declared in one of the strongest decisions ever rendered in a wild-life In nearly all the Provinces of Canada the same kind of a law is in What Game Sales The sale of and the premium that it pays u the regular business of market is the chief use of the awful decrease of our feathered Today twenty-four States prohibit it by and those k States contain a total of But of the bordering the only South Carolina maintains a serious embargo on the sale of As a the game-dealers of the big cities are reaching out their rapacious hands into every nook and corner of the East and South that still contains snipe and shore At this mo- ment there now lie in cold storage in New York City the following dead Wild Ducks Plover Quail Grouse SniPe Woodcock Rail it is a fact that none our neighboring States permit the killing and exportation for sale of any of their game New York laws forbid the sale of any of her ruffed grouse and at all And what is the inevitable corollary of these Beyond ta least 75 per of all that dead game was taken is now illegally and eventually will be illegally The trouble we cannot prove in court Will the People Wake Wake you people of Utah and the Do what you can that you know your country is menaced by this grave The saving of the wild birds and beasts and fishes is a campaign of publicity on Page J i OUTDOORS IN THE from Page and The legislation and repression will as day follows Congressmen and legislators can be depended upon to do the right thing provided they are asked sufficiently by the people they deprive the young boys of flippers and watch and report upon the violators of the game in save the wild birds and the as Cheyenne Jim has spite of all the it will never seem the same And the devil take a country that hasn't any Set yourself earnestly to see what you were made to then set yourself earnestly to do Phillips |
