CHAPTER XXVLAW AND SENTIMENT AS FACTORS IN PRESERVATION
CHAPTER XXV
LAW AND SENTIMENT AS FACTORS IN PRESERVATION
There is grave danger that through ignorance of the true character of about 80 per cent of the men and boys who shoot wild creatures, a great wrong will be done the latter. Let us not make a fatal mistake.
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. It is a disagreeable term, but it was brought into use to apply to a class of very disagreeable persons.
A "game-hog" is a hunter of game who knows no such thing as sentiment or conscience in the killing of game, so long as he keeps within the limit of the law. Regardless of the scarcity of game, or of its hard struggle for existence, he will kill right up to the bag limit every day that he goes out, provided it is possible to do so. He uses the "law" as a salve for the spot where his conscience should be. He will shoot with any machine gun, or gun of big calibre, in every way that the law allows, and he knows no such thing as giving the game a square deal. He brags of his big bags of game, and he loves to be photographed with a wagon-load of dead birds as a background. He believes in automatic and pump guns, spring shooting, longer open seasons and "more game." He is quite content to shoot half tame ducks in a club preserve as they fly between coop and pond, whenever he secures an opportunity. He will gladly sell his game whenever he can do so without being found out, and sometimes when he is.
Often a true sportsman drifts without realizing it into some one way of the confirmed game-hog; but the moment he is made to realize his position, he changes his course and his standing. The game-hog is impervious to argument. You can shame a horse away from his oats more easily than you can shame him from doing "what the Law allows."
There are hundreds of thousands of gentlemen and gentlewomen who never once have come in touch with real cloven-footed game-hogs, who do not understand the species at all, and do not recognize its ear-marks. Thousands of such persons will tell you: "In my opinion, the best way to save the wild life is toeducate the people!" I have heard that, many, many times.
For right-hearted people, a little law is quite sufficient; and the bestpeople need none at all! But the game-hogs are different. For them, the strict letter of the law, backed up by a strong-arm squad, is the only controlling influence that they recognize. To them it is necessary to say: "You shall!" and "You shall not!"
Only yesterday the latest game-hog case was related to me by a game-protector from Kansas. Into a certain county of southern Kansas, from which the prairie-chicken had been totally gone for a dozen years or more, a pair of those birds entered, settled down and nested. Their coming was to many habitants a joyous event. "Now," said the People, "we will care for these birds, and they will multiply, and presently the county will be restocked."
But Ahab came! Two men from another county, calling themselves sportsmen but not entitled to that name, heard of those birds, and resolved to "get them." They waited until the young were just leaving the nest: and they went down and camped near by. On the first day they killed the two parent birds and half the flock of young birds, and the next day they got all the rest.
But there is a sequel to this story. One of those men was a dealer in guns and ammunition; and when his customers heard what he had done, "they simply put him out of business, by refusing to trade with him any more." He is now washing dirty dishes in a restaurant; but at heart he is a game-hog, just the same.
Near Bridgeport, Connecticut, a gentleman of my acquaintance owns a fine estate which is adorned with a trout stream and a superfine trout pond. Once he invited a business man of Bridgeport to be his guest, and fish for trout in his pond. On that guest, during a visit of three days all the finest forms of hospitality were bestowed.
Two weeks later, my friend's game-warden caught that guest, early on a Sunday morning,poachingon the trout-pond, and spoiled his carefully arranged get-away.
In his book "Saddle and Camp in the Rockies," Mr. Dillon Wallace tells a story of a man from New York who in the mountains of Colorado deliberately corrupted his guides with money or other influences, shot mountain sheepin midsummer, and "got away with it."
In northern Minnesota, George E. Wood has been having a hand-to-hand fight with the worst community of game-hogs and alien-born poachers of which I have heard. There appears to be no game law that they do not systematically violate. The killers seem determined to annihilate the last head of game, in spite of fines and imprisonments. The foreigners are absolutely uncontrollable. The latest feature of the war is the discovery of a tannery in the woods, where the hides of illegally-slaughtered deer and moose are dressed. Apparently the only kind of a law that will save the game of northern Minnesota is one that will totally disarm the entire population.
In Pennsylvania, there exists an association which was formed for theexpress purpose of fighting the State Game Commission, preventing the enactment of a hunter's license law and repealing the law against the killing of female deer and hornless fawns. The continued existence of that organization on that basis would be a standing disgrace to the fair name of Pennsylvania. I think, however, that that organization was founded on secret selfish purposes, and that ere long the general body of members will awaken to a realizing sense of their position, and range themselves in support of the excellent policies of the commission.
A Pot-Hunteris a man or boy who kills game as a business, for the money that can be derived from its sale, or other use. Such men have the same feelings as butchers. From their point of view, they can see no reason why all the game in the world should not be killed and marketed. Like the feather-dealers, they wish to get out of the wild life all the money there is in it; that is all. 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.
Nor can anyone educate the heartless woman of fashion who is determined to wear aigrettes as long as her money can buy them. The best women of the world havealready been educatedon the bird-millinery subject, and they are already against the use of the gaudy badges of slaughter and extermination. But in the great cities of the world there are thousands of women who are at heart as cruel as Salome herself, and whose vicious tastes can be curbed only by the strong hand of the law. "Sentiment" for wild birds is not in them.
Because of the vicious and heartless elements among men and women, we say, Give usfar-reaching, iron-boundLAWS for the protection of wild life,and plenty of courageous men to enforce them.