Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 13

"All right," said my friend, "I can put you in such a place; and if you can shoot well enough, you can kill a hundred ducks in a day."

The effort was made in all earnestness. There was much shooting, but few were the ducks that fell before it. In concluding this story my friend remarked in a tone of disgust:

"All the game-preserving sportsmen that come to me are just like that!

_They want to kill all they can kill_!"

There is a blood-test by which to separate the conscientious sportsmen from the mere gunners. Here it is:

A _sportsman_ stops shooting when game becomes scarce; and he does not object to long-close-season laws; but

A _gunner_ believes in killing "all that the law allows;" and _he objects to long close seasons_!

I warrant that whenever and wherever this test is applied it will separate the sheep from the goats. It applies in all America, all Asia and Africa, and in Greenland, with equal force.

[Ill.u.s.tration: G.O. s.h.i.+ELDS A Notable Defender of Wild Life]

THE GAME-HOG.--This term was coined by G.O. s.h.i.+elds, in 1897, when he was editor and owner of _Recreation Magazine_, and it has come into general use. It has been recognized by a judge on the bench as being an appropriate term to apply to all men who selfishly slaughter wild game beyond the limits of decency. Although it is a harsh term, and was mercilessly used by Mr. s.h.i.+elds in his fierce war on the men who slaughtered game for "sport," it has jarred at least a hundred thousand men into their first realization of the fact that to-day there is a difference between decency and indecency in the pursuit of game. The use of the term has done _very great good_; but, strange to say, it has made for Mr. s.h.i.+elds 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.

s.h.i.+elds's name became a genuine terror to excessive killers of game; and it is reasonably certain that his war saved a great number of game birds from the slaughter that otherwise would have overtaken them!

The number of armed men and boys who annually take the field in the United States in the pursuit of birds and quadrupeds, is enormous.

People who do not shoot have no conception of it; and neither do they comprehend the mechanical perfection and fearful deadliness of the weapons used. This feature of the situation can hardly be realized until some aspect of it is actually seen.

I have been at some pains to collect the latest figures showing the number of hunting licenses issued in 1911, but the total is incomplete.

In some states the figures are not obtainable, and in some states there are no hunters' license laws. The figures of hunting licenses issued in 1911 that I have obtained from official sources are set forth below.

THE UNITED STATES ARMY OF DESTRUCTION

_Hunting Licenses issued in_ 1911

Alabama 5,090 Montana 59,291 California 138,689 Nebraska 39,402 Colorado 41,058 New Hamps.h.i.+re 33,542 Connecticut 19,635 New Jersey 61,920 Idaho 50,342 New Mexico 7,000 Illinois 192,244 New York 150,222 Indiana 54,813 Rhode Island 6,541 Iowa 91,000 South Dakota 31,054 Kansas 44,069 Utah 27,800 Louisiana 76,000 Vermont 31,762 Maine 2,552 Was.h.i.+ngton, about 40,000 Ma.s.sachusetts 45,039 Wisconsin 138,457 Michigan 22,323 Wyoming 9,721 Missouri 66,662 --------- Total number of regularly licensed gunners 1,486,228

The average for the twenty-seven states that issued licenses as shown above is 55,046 for each state.

Now, the twenty-one states issuing no licenses, or not reporting, produced in 1911 fully as many gunners per capita as did the other twenty-seven states. Computed fairly on existing averages they must have turned out a total of 1,155,966 gunners, making for all the United States =2,642,194= armed men and boys warring upon the remnant of game in 1911. We are not counting the large number of lawless hunters who never take out licenses. Now, is Mr. Beard's picture a truthful presentation, or not?

_New York_ with only deer, ruffed grouse, sh.o.r.e-birds, ducks and a very few woodc.o.c.k to shoot annually puts into the field 150,222 armed men. In 1909 they killed about _9,000 deer!_

_New Jersey_, spending $30,000 in 1912 in efforts to restock her covers with game, and with a population of 2,537,167, sent out in 1911 a total army of 61,920 well-armed gunners. How can any of her game survive?

_New Hamps.h.i.+re_, with only 430,572 population, has 33,542 licensed hunters,--equal to _thirty-three regiments of full strength!_

_Vermont_, with 355,956 people, sends out annually an army of 31,762 men who hunt according to law; and in 1910 they killed 3,649 deer.

_Utah_, with only 373,351 population, had 27,800 men in the field after her very small remnant of game! How can any wild thing of Utah escape?

_Montana_, population 376,053, had in 1911 an army of 59,291 well-armed men, warring chiefly upon the big game, and swiftly exterminating it.

How long can any of the big game stand before the army of _two and one-half million well-armed men_, eager and keen to kill, and out to get an equivalent for their annual expenditure in guns, ammunition and other expenses?

In addition to the hunters themselves, they are a.s.sisted by thousands of expert guides, thousands of horses, thousands of dogs, hundreds of automobiles and hundreds of thousands of tents. Each big-game hunter has an experienced guide who knows the haunts and habits of the game, the best feeding grounds, the best trails, and everything else that will aid the hunter in taking the game at a disadvantage and destroying it. The big-game rifles are of the highest power, the longest range, the greatest accuracy and the best repeating mechanism that modern inventive genius can produce. It is said that in Wyoming the Maxim silencer is now being used. England has produced a weapon of a new type, called "the scatter rifle," which is intended for use on ducks. The best binoculars are used in searching out the game, and horses carry the hunters and guides as near as possible to the game. For bears, baits are freely used, and in the pursuit of pumas, dogs are employed to the limit of the available supply.

The deadliness of the automobile in hunting already is so apparent that North Dakota has wisely and justly forbidden their use by law, (1911).

The swift machine enables city gunmen to penetrate game regions they could not reach with horses, and hunt through from four to six localities per day, instead of one only, as formerly. The use of automobiles in hunting should be everywhere prohibited.

Every appliance and a.s.sistance that money can buy, the modern sportsman secures to help him against the game. The game is beset during its breeding season by various wild enemies,--foxes, cats, wolves, pumas, lynxes, eagles, and many other predatory species. The only help that it receives is in the form of an annual close season--_which thus far has saved in America only a few local moose, white-tailed deer and a few game birds, from steady and sure extermination_.

_The bag limits on which vast reliance is placed to preserve the wild game, are a fraud, a delusion and a snare_! The few local exceptions only prove the generality of the rule. In every state, without one single exception, the bag limits are far too high, and the laws are of deadly liberality. In many states, the bag limit laws on birds are an absolute dead letter. Fancy the 125 wardens of New York enforcing the bag-limit laws on 150,000 gunners! It is this horrible condition that is enabling the licensed army of destruction to get in its deadly work on the game, all over the world. In America, the over-liberality of the laws are to blame for two-thirds of the carnival of slaughter, and the successful evasions of the law are responsible for the other third.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO GUNNERS OF KANSAS CITY Who Believe in Killing all That the Law Allows. They are not so Much to Blame as the System That Permits Such Slaughter. (Note the Pump Guns)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHY THE SANDHILL CRANE IS BECOMING EXTINCT Nineteen of Them Killed as "Game" by Three Gunners. Note the Machine Gun.]

The only remedy for the present extermination of game according to law that so rapidly and so furiously is proceeding all over the United States, Canada, Alaska, and Africa, is ten-year close seasons on all the species threatened with extinction, and immensely reduced open seasons and bag limits on all the others.

Will the people who still have wild game take heed now, and clamp down the brakes, hard and fast before it is too late, or will they have their game exterminated?

Shall we have five-year close seasons, or close seasons of 500 years? We must take our choice.

Shall we hand down to our children a gameless continent, with all the shame that such a calamity will entail?

We have _got_ to answer these questions like men, or they will soon be answered for us by the extermination of the wild life. For twenty-five years we have been smarting under the disgrace of the extermination of our bison millions. Let us not repeat the dose through the destruction of other species.

CHAPTER VII

THE GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION

We have now to deal with THE GUERRILLAS OF DESTRUCTION.

In warfare, a _guerrilla, or bushwhacker_, is an armed man who recognizes none of the rules of civilized warfare, and very often has no commander. In France he is called a "franc-tireur," or free-shooter. The guerrilla goes out to live on the country, to skulk, to war on the weak, and never attack save from ambush, or when the odds clearly are on his side. His military status is barely one remove from that of the spy.

The meat-shooters who harry the game and other wild life in order to use it as a staple food supply; the Italians, negroes and others who shoot song-birds as food; the plume-hunters and the hide-and-tusk hunters all over the world are the guerrillas of the Army of Destruction. Let us consider some of these grand divisions in detail.

Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions:

_No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand exploitation for commercial purposes_.

The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there is in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on which they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands.

Does anyone question this statement? If so let him turn backward and look at the lists of dead and dying species.

THE DIVISION OF MEAT-SHOOTERS contains all men who sordidly shoot for the frying-pan,--to save bacon and beef at the expense of the public, or for the markets. There are a few wilderness regions so remote and so difficult of access that the transportation of meat into them is a matter of much difficulty and expense. There are a very few men in North America who are justified in "living off the country," _for short periods_. The genuine prospectors always have been counted in this cla.s.s; but all miners who are fully located, all lumbermen and railway-builders certainly are not in the prospector's cla.s.s. They are abundantly able to maintain continuous lines of communication for the transit of beef and mutton.

Of all the meat-shooters, the market-gunners who prey on wild fowl and ground game birds for the big-city markets are the most deadly to wild life. Enough geese, ducks, brant, quail, ruffed grouse, prairie chickens, heath hens and wild pigeons have been butchered by gunners and netters for "the market" to have stocked the whole world. No section containing a good supply of game has escaped. In the United States the great slaughtering-grounds have been Cape Cod; Great South Bay, New York; Currituck Sound, North Carolina; Marsh Island, Louisiana; the southwest corner of Louisiana; the Sunk Lands of Arkansas; the lake regions of Minnesota; the prairies of the whole middle West; Great Salt Lake; the Klamath Lake region (Oregon) and southern California.