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At present, however, we are but incidentally interested in the short-sightedness of the people of the Pelican State. As a state of oldtime abundance in killable game, the killing records that were kept in the year 1909-10 possess for us very great interest. They throw a startling searchlight on the subject of this chapter, the former abundance of wild life.
The exact history of the blotting out of that species has not yet been written, but it seems that its final extinction occurred about 1901. Its extermination was only a routine incident of the devilish general slaughter of American big game that by 1900 had wiped out nearly everything killable over a large portion of the Rocky Mountain region and the Great Plains.
I know that among expert wing shots it is an unwritten law that quail and grouse must not be shot on the ground, nor ducks on the water. But, among the three million gunners who annually shoot in the United States how many, think you, are there who in actual practice observe any sentimental principles when in the presence of killable game?
In those countries, the grizzly species will hold forth long after all killable grizzlies have vanished from the United States. I think that it is now time for California, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming to give grizzly bears protection of some sort. Possibly the situation in those states calls for a five-year close season.
Beyond question, the highest sentiments of humanity are those that are stirred by the misfortunes of killable game. During the past thirty years, I have noticed some interesting manifestations of the increased sympathy for wild creatures that steadily is growing in a large section of the public mind.
It is seriously to the discredit of Mississippi that her laws actually classify robins, cedar-birds, grosbeaks and doves as "game," and make them killable as such from Sept. 1 to March 1! I should think that if no economic consideration carried weight in Mississippi, state pride alone would be sufficient to promote a correction of the evil.
There are now perhaps half a dozen guides who can find killable sheep in our country, but the game is nearly always young rams, under five years of age. That Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington still continue to permit sheep slaughter is outrageous. Their answer is that "The sportsmen won't stand for stopping it altogether."
Then, think of the silent and untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and tell me whether you think five million deer scattered through all those forests would make any visible impression upon them. That would be only about twenty-five times as many as are there now! I think the forests would not be over populated; and they would produce two million killable deer each year!
To-day, Chicago stands half-way reformed. Her markets are open to only one-half the game killable in Illinois, but they are wide open to all "legally killed game imported from other states, from Oct. 1 to Feb. 1." Through that hole in her game laws any game-dealer can drive a moving-van! Of course, any game offered in Chicago has been "legally killed in some other state!" Who can prove otherwise?
He, therefore, took good care to interrogate his new protegee touching the nature of her oppressor's constitution, whether he was of that killable species of ghost that could be shot with a silver sixpence, or if there was any other weapon that could possibly accomplish his annihilation.
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