Game reserve

“ The system of reserve having proven beneficial, both to clubs and players, the reserve list was increased to eleven, and then to fourteen, or an entire team. Under this rule the game has steadily grown in favor, the salaries of players have been more than trebled, and a higher degree of skill has been obtained. ”

“ The true principle is to establish a small reserve and a sanctuary in each district. Part of the Crown lands in Northern Rustenburg, in Waterberg, in Northern and Eastern Zoutpansberg, and especially in the Springbok Flats district, might well be formed into reserves without any real injury to such agricultural and pastoral development as they are capable of. If the greater land companies could be induced to follow suit—and there is no reason why they should not—an effective and far-reaching system of game preservation could be put in force. ”

“ In Eastern Canada, as in the Eastern United States, there has been far less chance than in the West to create huge governmental game reserves. But there has been a positive increase of the big game during the last two or three decades. This is partly due to the creation and enforcement of wise game laws—although here also it must be admitted that in some of the Provinces, as in some of the States, the alien sportsman is judged with Rhadamanthine severity, while the home offenders, and even the home Indians, are but little interfered with. ”

“ While they may temporarily restrict the hunting privileges of a few citizens, they ultimately become a source of game supply secondary in importance only to State preserves or game refuges. Already a number of private reserves have become overstocked, and game has escaped or been turned over to the State to become the property of the people. The success of private enterprise in propagating large game in inclosures has thus become an object lesson for State game commissioners and others, and suggests the feasibility of the State's undertaking a similar work for the people. ”

“ That the game stock may re-establish itself in certain localities, the Club has advocated the establishment in the various forest reserves of game refuges, where absolutely no hunting shall be permitted.
Through the influence of William Hallett Phillips, a deceased member of the Club, a few lines inserted in an act passed by Congress March 3, 1891, permitted the establishment of forest reserves, and Hon. John W. Noble, then Secretary of the Interior, at once recommended the application of the law to a number of forest tracts, which were forthwith set aside by Presidential proclamation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As in most cases this necessitates buying real estate of much value, the fact that such holdings become permanent for the purposes of outdoor recreation is confirmatory of the stability of the national game after its years of evolution. ”

“ Game Preserve.—If you live far inland, you can buy at cheap rates a wild mountain or a large tract of wilderness. Around this construct a high fence and stock your purchase with game. All this will require capital, but you will find ample returns for your investment in the rates which you will charge city sportsmen for a day’s sport. These hunters care little for the money if they can have a good day’s sport. After your game preserve becomes well known, through liberal advertising, $25 a day on your investment during the season should be a very modest expectation. ”

“ Meantime, hunting in these forest reserves has gone on. In some of them game has been almost exterminated. Two little bunches of buffalo which then had their range within the reserves have been swept out of existence.
It is obvious that effectively to protect the big game at large there must be localities where hunting shall be absolutely forbidden. That any species of big game will rapidly increase if absolutely protected is perfectly well known; and in the Yellowstone Park we have ever before us an object lesson, which shows precisely what effective protection of game can do. ”

“ But over most of the earth such conditions have passed away for ever. Even in Africa game preserving on a gigantic scale has begun. Such game preserving may be of two kinds. In one the individual landed proprietor, or a group of such individuals, erect and maintain a private game preserve, the game being their property just as much as domestic animals. Such preserves often fill a useful purpose, and if managed intelligently and with a sense of public spirit [Pg xxvii] and due regard for the interests and feelings of others, may do much good, even in the most democratic community. ”

“ Now, much land lies waste at present through the operation of the Game Laws, which establish an artificial protection of sport as an alternative industry against agriculture, but then the general institution of private property in land must not be credited with the specific effects of the Game Laws, and need not be suppressed in order to get rid of them. ”

“ It is the great diversity of its physical features, offering within a restricted area all the requirements for animal life, which fits it for the home of big game. Abundant food supply, shelter from wind and weather in winter, cool resorts on the uplands in summer, favorable localities for breeding purposes and the rearing of young, all are found here. The Park supplies what is really needed—a zoölogical reservation where big game may roam unmolested by the intrusion of man, rather than a zoölogical garden inclosed by fences, and the game fed or sustained more or less by artificial methods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unlike shooting, hunting, or yachting, there is no leave to ask, licence to buy, nor costly establishment to support: the game is free and common as the light and air in which it is played,—the poor man's portion: with the poorer classes it originated, played "after hours" on village greens, and thence transplanted to patrician lawns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the encroachments of civilization, the demands of those seeking to use the Park for their own selfish ends must in the nature of things steadily increase. Pressure for timber and water privileges, and rights of way for railroad purposes, will constantly arise. The larger part of the timber reservation should become an integral part of the Park, as much of the game, and its best breeding-grounds, lie within this reservation. ”

“ As, however, the open, undulating, grassy plains of the Masai country, and other places of a like nature, are the headquarters of by far the greatest quantity and variety of game, and are entirely free from the tsétsé fly, and as they are also well adapted to hunting on horseback, the game would very soon be exterminated if pursuit on horseback were permitted, and I trust that when the game laws which will doubtless be drawn up for this, probably the finest game country in the world, are drafted, a clause will be introduced which will make the pursuit of game in this manner altogether illegal. ”

“ The Act of 1845 enacted that a house is proved to be a common gaming-house which is kept for playing any unlawful games and a bank is kept by one or more of the players, exclusively of the others, or where the chances of any game played are not alike favourable to all the players. ”

“ The professional gambler seeks the best mines and the largest crowds. When gold begins to fail he migrates with the miners, following the diggers as the sea gull follows the pelican. Should the occupants of one camp become impecunious or disgusted and decline further play, he quietly packs up his tools, mounts his mule, and is off for another. Thus he may have to go for many days before he gets a game. In mountain towns his quarters may be a log cabin, with open broad fireplace, larger than the other cabins, but always occupying a central position. ”

“ Until 1831, the Game Laws gave sporting rights exclusively to owners of land of a certain value. Below that a man might not shoot a hare or a rabbit on his own land. The bolder spirits of a village took to poaching, and so came to ruin. ”

“ If a coöperative working arrangement could be effected between the States and the Department of Agriculture, whereby the Department would have supervision and control over the game on the national forests, so far as concerns its protection 404 and the designation of hunting areas, varying the quantity of game to be taken from definite areas in accordance with its abundance from season to season, while the States would control open seasons for shooting, the issuance of hunting licenses, and similar local matters, the future welfare of large game in the Western States would be assured. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the government has endorsed Base Ball as a National Game, to be fostered and encouraged as a means for building up a healthful, contented and well-disciplined Army and Navy; as the national administration has found that it pays to provide bats, balls, bases and all the paraphernalia of the game to our soldiers and sailors, is it too much to expect that the time will come when these concomitants of our national pastime may be regarded as just as essential to the equipment of a well-appointed school as globes, maps, chemicals and astronomical apparatus? ”

“ Since the greater part of the French land is subdivided to a remarkable degree, and the average proprietor cannot shoot over his own place without danger of killing the owner or the game on adjoining property, many shooting alliances are made between groups of men owning adjacent lands, and the privilege of hunting over the whole territory is accorded to each of the group, while the game killed is apportioned according to fixed rules. ”

“ The rule of sport decided that the proprietor of each section of netting of twelve yards length would be entitled to all game that should be killed within these limits, but that the owners of the manors which formed the hunt upon that day should receive a hind-leg from every animal captured. ”

“ 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 Club is organized primarily to promote manly sport with the rifle among the large game of the wilderness, to encourage travel and exploration in little-known regions of our country, and to work for game and forest preservation by the State. ”

“ The owner may each year shoot two or three head of his surplus big game, and his tenderfoot guests who don't know what real hunting is may also kill something, each year. But in most of the American preserves with which I am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big game" is almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so attached to his big game, and admires it so sincerely, he has not the heart to kill it himself; and he finds no joy whatever in seeing it shot down by others! ”