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Show PRESERVING AMERICA'S WILD GAME SUPPLY. Preserving our wild game has become be-come a national problem and onej which must be solved soon if the! L' sited States is not to be deprived of many game animals which were once here in abundance, according to Ernest McGaffey, who writes in an interesting way in the current issue of the National Republic, under the j caption "Preserving Our Wild Game.", In part, Mr. McGaffey says: "Time was, in the early history of the United States, when the rifle and the spinning weel were part of the invariable necessities of pioneer life. Long after the Six Nation tribes of Indians had disappeared from the eastern, and the Shawnees, Sacs and Foy Tribes .from the middle western areas, and before the pilgrimage westward and beyond the Mississippi', river had begun, the settler depended on his rifle for his annual supply of meat. Deer furnished him with a plentiful supply of fresh venison, with an occasional black bear or wild turkey to vary his diet. Rarely, indeed, in-deed, did he waste a rifle bullet at smaller game during this period. "The country east of the Mississippi Mississip-pi teemed with game. In numbers and in variety it was almost incredibly prolific. Ruffed grouse, squirrels, racoons, ra-coons, opossums, wildcats, panthers, wild turkeys and other game and wild anima's roamed the woods, and on the prairies the pinnated grouse and sand-hill cranes were in the thousands. thous-ands. Wildfowl, ducks, geese and swans darkened the air in their flight, and the roar of their pinions' when their myriads took wing from the marshes was like a roll of thunder. Wild pigeons swept past in flocks that numbered millions of birds... "As for the far west and along the Pacific coast, with the buffalo, antelope, ante-lope, elk, moose, mule deer, black, brown and grizzly bear, wild fowl in clouds, grouse of various kinds, and game of all description, it was a hunter's paradise. "What have we now of all the vast numbers of that colossal aggregation of outdoor life? A smattering, that is all! Tt is, of course, not possible nor advisable to return to the days of the log cabin and frontier life. But it is not too late to remind Americans that the rifle was used in those days for necessity's sake, and that no deer or bear was killed to have its head exhibited as an evidence of skill or prowess of a hunter, and no elk slain and left to rot for the sake of one of its teeth as a sign of lodge mem-berip. mem-berip. As to the latter practice a celluloid tooth would suffice. "We have wasted our inheritance of furred and feathered game most shamefully. The buffalo and antelope are almost extinct, the grizzly bear nearly so, and elk and moose are getting get-ting scarcer every year. Deer, except in a limited number of states, are few and far between. The wild pigeon and the heath hen are absolutely exterminated. ex-terminated. Ducks and geese are being be-ing gradually and ruthlessly wiped out by 'baiting,' by automatic and repeating shotguns, and by the ease with which hitherto remote districts are reached by automobile, "No one can 'have his cake and eat it' is an old saying! And a true one. We cannot have our game and shoot and at the same time not protect it, study its needs generally, and provide pro-vide for its natural increase by all means possible. We have traveled a long way forward over the highway of destruction. Suppose we take some steps back towards the goal of destruction. des-truction. We have a vivid and sue- cessful example in the state of Pennsylvania, Penn-sylvania, with a few other states making hureulean efforts to bring about better conditions. But the Key-i Key-i stone state has shown the way above all other states of the union." |