CHAPTER XXITHE SAVAGE VIEW-POINT OF THE GUNNER
CHAPTER XXI
THE SAVAGE VIEW-POINT OF THE GUNNER
The mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully ninety-five per cent of the sportsmen, gunners and other men and boys who kill game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killedand eaten, and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind. This is precisely the viewpoint of the cave-man and the savage, and it has come down from the Man-with-a-Club to the Man-with-a-Gun absolutely unchanged save for one thing: the latter sometimes is prompted to save to-day in order to slaughter to-morrow.
The above statement of an existing fact may seem harsh; and some persons may be startled by it; but it is based on an acquaintance with thousands of men who shoot all kinds of game, all over the world. My critics surely will admit that my opportunities to meet the sportsmen and gunners of the world are, and for thirty-five years have been, rather favorable. As a matter of fact, I think the efforts of the hunters of my personal acquaintance have covered about seven-tenths of the hunting grounds of the world. If the estimate that I have formed of the average hunter's viewpoint is wrong, or even partially so, I will be glad to have it proven in order that I may reform my judgment and apologize.
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 thatthey 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 interestalive?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." Men rise and say: "It's all nonsense! There's plenty of quail shooting on Long Island yet."
Throughout the length and breadth of America, the ruling passion is to kill as long as anything killable remains. The man who will openly advocate the stopping of quail-shooting because the quails are of such great value to the farmers, or because they are sobeautifuland companionable to man, receives no sympathy from ninety per cent of the bird-killing sportsmen. The remaining ten per cent think seriously about the matter, and favor long close seasons. It is my impression that of the men who shoot, it is only among the big-game hunters that we findmuch genuine admiration for game animals, or any feeling remotely resembling regard for it.
The moment that a majority of American gunners concede the fact that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving of the Remnant. That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life. It will then be easy to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of species. Think what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted for all the grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the United States, or the wild turkey wherever found!
To-day, the great—indeed, theonly—opponents of long close seasons on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters' and Anglers' Protective Associations will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill. And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of the opposition of "a large body of sportsmen,"—men who have votes, and who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive them of their "right" to kill. The greatest speech ever made in the Mexican Congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said: "I rise to sacrifice ambition to honor!"
Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that they have certain inherent, God-given "rights" to kill game! Now, as a matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar bills in his pocket has no more "right" to kill a covey of quail on Long Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the pleasure of his children! The time has come when the people who don't shoot must do one of two things:
Really, it is to me very strange that gunners never care to save game birds on account of their beauty. One living bob white on a fence is better than a score in a bloody game-bag. A live squirrel in a tree is poetry in motion; but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as a rat smells. Beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to complete the beautiful picture; but on the table a sandpiper is beneath contempt. A live deer trotting over a green meadow, waving a triangular white flag, is a sight to thrill any human ganglion; but a deer lying dead, —unless it has an exceptionally fine head,—is only so much butcher's meat.
One of the finest sights I ever saw in Montana was a big flock of sage grouse slowly stalking over a grassy flat thinly sprinkled with sage-brush. It was far more inspiring than any pile of dead birds that I ever saw. I remember scores of beautiful game birds that I have seen and not killed; but of all the game birds that I have eaten or tried to eat in New York, I remember with sincere pleasure onlyone. Some of the ancient cold-storage candidates I remember "for cause," as the lawyers say.
ONE MORNING'S CATCH OF TROUT, NEAR SPOKANE
Another Line of Extermination According to law. Three Times too Many Fish for one rod. In those Cold Mountain Streams, Fish Grow Slowly, and a Stream is Quickly "Fished out"
Sportsmen and gunners, for God's sake elevate your viewpoint of the game of the world. Get out of the groove in which man has run ever since the days of Adam! There is something in a game bird over and above its pound of flesh. You don't "need" the meat any longer; for you don't know what hunger is, save by reading of it. Try the field-glass and the camera, instead of the everlasting gun. Any fool can take a five-dollar gun and kill a bird; but it takes a genius to photograph one wild bird and get "a good one." As hunters, the camera men have the best of it. One good live-bird photograph is more of a trophy and a triumph than a bushel of dead birds. The birds and mammals now are literally dying foryourhelp in the making of long close seasons, and in the real stoppage of slaughter. Can you not hear the call of the wild remnant?
It is time for the people who don't shoot to call a halt on those who do; "and if this be treason, then let my enemies make the most of it!"
Since the above was written, I have read in theOutdoor Worldfor April, 1912, the views of a veteran sportsman and writer, Mr. Emerson Hough, on the wild-life situation as it seems to him to-day. It is a strong utterance, even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion which I do not share. Altogether, however, its breadth of view, its general accuracy, and its incisiveness, entitle it to a full hearing. The following is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled, "God's Acre:"
EMERSON HOUGH'S VIEW OF THE SITUATIONThe truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face. There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them have failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of America would prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has failed. Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed. Our game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone. America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.There are many reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game. All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow.Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible North American continent?It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, alltoo easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that—to follow their plans with deeds.I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called. It has been class legislation and organized selfishness—that is what it has been, and nothing else. I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the sportsmen of America selfish and thoughtless. I do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and looking to destruction rather than to protection. At least that has been their actual result. I have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else, and no reverence for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman. He has got to be a man. He has got to be a citizen.I have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain and under the plow in my own time, so that the passing whisper of the wild fowl's wing has been forgotten there now for many years. I have seen a half dozen species of fine game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the American people.And you and I have seen one protective society after another, languidly organized, paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each year, and so swiftly passing, also to be forgotten. We have seen one code and the other of conflicting and wholly selfish game laws passed, and seen them mocked at and forgotten, seen them all fail, as we all know.We have seen even the nation's power—under that Ark of the Covenant known as the Interstate Commerce Act—fail to stop wholly the lessening of our wild game, so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons.We have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsmen's journals attempt to solve this problem and fail to do so. Some of them were great and broad-minded journals. Their record has not been one of disgrace, although it has been one of defeat; for some of them really desired success more than they desired dividends. These, all of them, bore their share of a great experiment, an experiment in a new land, under a new theory of government, a theory which says a man should be able to restrain himself, and to govern himself. Only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally important phases.But now, as we know, all of these agencies, selfish or unselfish, have failed to effect the salvation of American wild game. Not by any scheme, device, or theory, not by any panacea can the old days of America be brought back to us.
EMERSON HOUGH'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION
The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face. There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them have failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of America would prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has failed. Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed. Our game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone. America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.
There are many reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game. All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow.
Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible North American continent?
It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, alltoo easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that—to follow their plans with deeds.
I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called. It has been class legislation and organized selfishness—that is what it has been, and nothing else. I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the sportsmen of America selfish and thoughtless. I do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and looking to destruction rather than to protection. At least that has been their actual result. I have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else, and no reverence for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman. He has got to be a man. He has got to be a citizen.
I have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain and under the plow in my own time, so that the passing whisper of the wild fowl's wing has been forgotten there now for many years. I have seen a half dozen species of fine game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the American people.
And you and I have seen one protective society after another, languidly organized, paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each year, and so swiftly passing, also to be forgotten. We have seen one code and the other of conflicting and wholly selfish game laws passed, and seen them mocked at and forgotten, seen them all fail, as we all know.
We have seen even the nation's power—under that Ark of the Covenant known as the Interstate Commerce Act—fail to stop wholly the lessening of our wild game, so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons.
We have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsmen's journals attempt to solve this problem and fail to do so. Some of them were great and broad-minded journals. Their record has not been one of disgrace, although it has been one of defeat; for some of them really desired success more than they desired dividends. These, all of them, bore their share of a great experiment, an experiment in a new land, under a new theory of government, a theory which says a man should be able to restrain himself, and to govern himself. Only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally important phases.
But now, as we know, all of these agencies, selfish or unselfish, have failed to effect the salvation of American wild game. Not by any scheme, device, or theory, not by any panacea can the old days of America be brought back to us.
Mr. Hough's views are entitled to respectful consideration; but on one vital point I do not follow him.
I believe most sincerely—in fact,I know,—that it ispossibleto make a few new laws which, in addition to the many, many good protective laws we already have, will bring back the game, just as fast and as far as man's settlements, towns, railroads, mines and schemes in general ever can permit it to come back.
If the American People as a whole elect that our wild life shall be saved, and to a reasonable extent brought back, then by the Eternal it will be saved and brought back! The road lies straight before us, and the going is easy—ifthe Mass makes up its mind to act. But on one vital point Mr. Hough is right. The sportsman alone never will save the game! The people who do not kill must act, independently.