Game preservation

“ These are the men who have done the most to put upon our statute books the laws that thus far have saved some of our American game from total annihilation, and who (so we firmly believe) will be chiefly instrumental in tightening the lines of protection around the remnant. These are the men who are making and stocking game preserves, public and private, great and small. ”

“ It is obvious from the foregoing explanation that no sportsman countenances killing, except for a purpose, and prefers to give the game a chance to exercise its cleverness and adroitness in making good its escape; if it fails, it has been outwitted. The observance of game laws for the preservation of game find no stronger advocates anywhere than among sportsmen, and it is to their interest to prevent the extermination of wild life, because if that should take place their pastime would be gone. ”

“ Roosevelt, an example of the better sportsman, declared: "I love hunting still, but slaughter is abhorrent to me." What really matters is the attitude of the game preserver towards the animal world; he is no true sportsman who regards everything which is not his game as vermin.
Game preservation, the artificial protection afforded to certain selected species, is unbeloved by many naturalists, but they only consider one aspect, the destruction of vermin. ”

“ The sale of game is incompatible with the perpetual preservation of a proper stock of game; therefore it should be prohibited by laws and by public sentiment. In the settled and civilized regions of North America there is no real necessity for the consumption of wild game as human food: nor is there any good excuse for the sale of game for food purposes. ”

“ That is the great curse that to-day rests upon our game. When the nearest game warden is 50 miles away, and big game is only 5 miles away, it is time for that game to take to the tall timber.
But in the West, and East and South, there are many men and women who believe in reasonable conservation, and deplore destruction. We have not by any means reached the point where we can think of stopping in the making of game preserves, or forest preserves. Of the former, we have scarcely begun to make. The majority of the states of our Union know of state game preserves only by hearsay. ”

“ The neglect of game preservation in India has not only been a cause of great loss to the country owing to the reckless waste of the sources of valuable supplies of food, but has severely injured the farmers in jungly tracts in a way that seems hitherto to have escaped notice. ”

“ For considerably more than a century, the States of the American Union have enacted game-protective laws based on the principle that the wild game belongs to the People, and the people's senators, representatives and legislators generally may therefore enact laws for its protection, prescribing the manner in which it may and may not be taken and possessed. ”

“ As a consequence of this right came measures for game preservation both against the interference of the stranger sportsman, and as regards the wild creatures themselves. Increasing knowledge taught the hunter that he could not kill more than a certain number of wild animals without extirpating them entirely in his district.25 Hence grew up our complex game-laws of to-day, and the general feeling 183 that our hunting grounds should be used in as intelligent a way as possible. ”

“ In America, the impulse is different. Here, there is raging a genuine fever for private game preserves. Some of those already existing are of fine proportions, and cost fortunes to create. Every true sportsman who is rich enough to own a private game preserve, sooner or later acquires one. You will find them scattered throughout the temperate zone of North America from the Bay of Fundy to San Diego. I have had invitations to visit preserves in an unbroken chain from the farthest corner of Quebec to the Pacific Coast, and from Grand Island, Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ Primarily, in the early days of the Man-on-Horseback, the self-elected and predatory lords of creation evolved the private game preserve as a scheme for preventing other fellows from shooting, and for keeping the game sacred to slaughter by themselves. ”

“ Until recently the people of Kentucky have been very indifferent to the value of her wild-life; but with the new law enacted this year providing for a game commission and a game protection fund, surely every member of the Army of the Defense will wish God-speed to her efforts in game conservation, and stand ready to lend a helping hand whenever help can be utilized. ”

“ In America, as in England and on the Continent of Europe, private game preserves are so numerous it is impossible to mention more than a very few of them, unless one devotes a volume to the subject. Probably there are more than five hundred, and no list of them is "up to date" for more than one day, because the number is constantly increasing. ”

“ ENTIRELY distinct from the question referred to in the last chapter, the influence of game preservation on our fauna. is the vast and complicated problem of the preservation of a fauna and flora, for the two cannot be separated, in a civilised land, or in a new country that is undergoing the destructive process of fitting it for the habitation and exploitation of the colonist.
Economic questions loom large; there is little need to urge control of certain animals and plants. ”

“ Who will love the forests when they become destitute of wild life, and desolate? —Because stopping the sale of game will help bring back the game birds to us, in a few years. —Because the pace that New York and Massachusetts have set in this matter will render it easier to procure the passage of Bayne laws in other states. —Because those who legitimately desire game for their tables can be supplied from the game farms and preserves that now are coming into existence. ”

“ The principle that the sale of game is wrong, and fatal to the existence of a supply of game, is as fixed and unassailable as the Rocky Mountains. Its universal acceptance is only a question of intelligence and common honesty. The open states owe it to themselves and each other to enact both the spirit and the letter of the Bayne law, and do it quickly, before it is too late to profit by it! ”

“ All laws that permit the killing of game for the market, and the sale of it afterward, are class legislation of the worst sort. They permit a hundred men selfishly to slaughter for their own pockets the game that rightfully belongs to a hundred thousand men and boys who shoot for the legitimate recreation that such field sports afford. Will any of the sportsmen of America "stand for" this until the game is all gone?
The people who pay big prices for game in the hotels and restaurants of our big cities are not men who need that game as food. ”

“ The brave and hardy men who are making for the British people a grand empire in Africa probably are greater men than far-distant people realize. To them, the white man's burden of game preservation is accepted as all in the day's work. A mere handful of British civil officers, strongly aided by the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the British Empire, have carved out and set aside a great chain of game preserves reaching all the way from Swaziland and the Transvaal to Khartoum. ”

“ The history of game destruction in Colorado is a repetition of the old, old story,—plenty of laws, but a hundred times too many hunters, killing the game both according to law and contrary to it, and doing it five times as fast as the game could breed. That combination can safely be warranted to wipe out the wild life of any country in the world, and accomplish it right swiftly. ”

“ All land capable of producing food, and misused for preserving game, should be treated as uncultivated land. The diversion of land in an old country form the purpose it should fulfil—that of providing life for the many—to the mere providing pleasure for the few, is a crime. The extent to which the preservation of game has been carried in some parts of England and Scotland shows a reckless disregard of human happiness on the part of the landed aristocracy, which bids fair to provoke a fearful retribution. ”

“ Judging from the rate at which the wild creatures of North America are now being destroyed, fifty years hence there will be no large game left in the United States nor in Canada, outside of rigidly protected game preserves. It is therefore the duty of every good citizen to promote the protection of forests and wild life and the creation of game preserves, while a supply of game remains. Every man who finds pleasure in hunting or fishing should be willing to spend both time and money in active work for the protection of forests, fish and game. ”

“ In working with large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have steadily—and also painfully—been impressed by their intentness on. killing, and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it! Who ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic interest alive? I never did; and I have sat in many conventions of sportsmen. All the talk is of open seasons, bag limits and killing rights. The man who has the hardihood to stand up and propose a five-year close season has "a hard row to hoe." ”

“ The day of the sportsman in all Africa was in that Golden Age when he, all untrammelled, might stalk the more important fauna, to say nothing of the lesser, as he listed. Now he pays heavy toll, varying with the scarcity of the quarry, and the licences are not the least part of the expenses. Of course the needful preservation of big game should, and inevitably must, lead to good results, since to husband the resources of anything is to accumulate in the long run. But the idea of artificial preservation and legislation seems to knock some of the elemental romance out of hunting. ”

“ Out of the enormous mass of men who annually take up arms against the remnant of wild life, and are called "sportsmen," I believe that only one out of every 500 conscientiously stops shooting when game becomes scarce, and extinction is impending. All of the others feel that it is right and proper to kill all the game that they can kill up to the legal bag limit. ”

“ At an early stage it was discovered that a free right of hunting was incompatible with the preservation of game in sufficient numbers to afford enough sport to the monarch and the nobles, and accordingly a series of laws known as the Forest Laws were enacted, by means of which certain districts were reserved for purposes of sport to the sovereign. The increase of population soon rendered protection necessary for areas outside the Royal Forests if the supply of game was to be kept up, and the result was a series of enactments known as the Game Laws. ”

“ The best and the most of the game-protective laws now in force in the United States and Canada were brought into existence through the initiative and efforts of the real sportsmen of those two nations. But for their activity, exerted on the right side, the settled portion of North America would to-day be an utterly gameless land! ”

“ An oppressive monopoly in the slaughter of migratory game is detrimental to the interests of the public at large, the same as any other monopoly. Every de facto game preserve, maintained for the preservation of wild life rather than for its slaughter, is an institution beneficial to the public at large, and therefore entitled to legal rights and privileges above and beyond all which may rightly be accorded to the so-called "preserves" that are maintained as killing-grounds. ”

“ The preservation of our large game now has interest for a comparatively small class—the naturalist, the sportsman, and the lover of nature; while the preservation of forests, because of its direct bearing on the material prosperity of the country, is demanding more and more attention, and receiving a constantly growing appreciation. Intelligent action has been taken by National and State authorities in forest maintenance; public territories have been set aside as permanent possessions for the people. ”

“ By putting restraint upon ourselves, never being guilty of wanton slaughter, by steadily urging measures for the preservation of the game, and by invariably obeying and compelling others to obey such laws as should be passed, we may be able to leave to our children a heritage of pleasure that bountiful nature has abundantly provided for ourselves. ”

“ As a special and perhaps somewhat novel argument for preservation, I wish to remind you of the great antiquity of our game animals, and the enormous period of time which it has taken nature to produce them. We must have legislation, and we must have it in time. ”

“ It is also true that in all the regions of the earth that are easily penetrable by civilized man, the wild life is being killed faster than it breeds, and of necessity it is disappearing. This is why the British are now so urgently bestirring themselves to create game preserves in all the countries that they own. ”

“ Hunted and coursed till far too late in the season, shot and snared all the year round, without a hole or burrow wherein to hide her inconveniently large body, how long will she survive these methods save in the sacred precincts of the large game preserves whose owners—good luck to them!—drive a motor-car through the Ground Game Act? The Hare Preservation Act, the only legislation in her favour at present existant, is not worth the parchment the precious document is written on ”

“ The preservation of game and of wild life generally—aside from the noxious species—on these reserves is of incalculable benefit to the people as a whole. As the game increases in these national refuges and nurseries it overflows into the surrounding country. ”