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It is the duty of every true sportsman, every farmer who owns a gun, and every lover of wild life, to enter into the campaign for the passage of bills absolutely prohibiting all traffic in wild game no matter what its origin. Of course the market hunters, the game-hogs and the game dealers will bitterly oppose them, and hire a lobby to attempt to defeat them.
Left to themselves, with open markets they would soon exterminate the land fauna of the habitable portions of the globe. No one can "educate" such people. For the gunners, game-hogs and pot-hunters, there is no check, save specific laws that sternly and amply safeguard the rights of the wild creatures that can not make laws for themselves.
Of course such a proceeding, if carried into effect, would provoke loud protests from sportsmen, gunners, game-hogs, pot-hunters and others; but I only wish to high heaven that we had the power to carry such a program as that into effect! Then we would see some game in ten years; and our grand-children would thank us for some real big-game protection at a critical period.
After more than thirty years of observation among all kinds of sportsmen, hunters and gunners, I am convinced that it is utterly futile and deadly dangerous to rely on humane, high-class sentiment to diminish the slaughter of wild things by game-hogs and pot-hunters. In some respects, the term "game-hog" is a rude, rough word; but it is needed in the English language, and it has come to stay.
The threads are slender because there is so little raw material in them. We do not need money with which to "buy votes" or "influence," but money with which to pay workers; to publish things to arouse the American people; to sting sportsmen into action; to hire wardens; to prosecute game-hogs and buy refuges for wild life.
Shields a great many enemies outside the ranks of the game-hogs themselves! From this one might fairly suppose that there is such a thing as a sympathetic game-hog! One thing at least is certain. During a period of about six years, while his war with the game-hogs was on, from Maine to California, Mr.
It should be rendered impossible for another sportsman to kill twenty-three head in one day, as once occurred. Give the sportsman a bag of three bulls, and no more. To this, no true sportsman will object, and the objections of game-hogs only serve to confirm the justice of the thing they oppose.
Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We lose because we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to conserve large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by the stern edict of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the conscienceless doe-and-fawn slayers are everywhere!
We see true sportsmen beside ordinary gunners, game-hogs and meat hunters; handsome setter dogs are mixed up with coyotes, cats, foxes and skunks; and well-gowned women and ladies' maids are jostled by half-naked "poor-white" and black-negro "plume hunters." Verily, the destruction of wild life makes strange companions.
Personally, I do not believe that the gunners and game-hogs of Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California will permit any one of those species to be saved. If the present open seasons prevail in the states that I have mentioned above, no power on earth can save those three species of grouse from the fate of the heath hen.
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