CHAPTER XXXVIIIPRIVATE GAME PRESERVES
CHAPTER XXXVIII
PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES
Primarily, in the early days of the Man-on-Horseback, the self-elected and predatory lords of creation evolved the private game preserve as a scheme for preventing other fellows from shooting, and for keeping the game sacred to slaughter by themselves. The idea of conserving the game was a fourth-rate consideration, the first being the estoppel of the other man. The old-world owner of a game preserve delights in the annual killing of the surplus game, and we have even heard it whispered that in the Dark Ages there were kings who enjoyed the wholesale slaughter of deer, wild boar, pheasants and grouse. If we may accept as true the history of sport in Europe, there have been men who have loved slaughter with a genuine blood-lust that is quite foreign to the real nature-loving sportsman.
In America, the impulse is different. Here, there is raging a genuine fever for private game preserves. Some of those already existing are of fine proportions, and cost fortunes to create. Every true sportsman who is rich enough to own a private game preserve, sooner or later acquires one. You will find them scattered throughout the temperate zone of North America from the Bay of Fundy to San Diego. I have had invitations to visit preserves in an unbroken chain from the farthest corner of Quebec to the Pacific Coast, and from Grand Island, Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. It was not necessarily to hunt, and kill something, but toseethe game, and the beauties of nature.
The wealthy American and Canadian joyously buys a tract of wilderness, fences it, stocks it with game both great and small, and provides game keepers for all the year round. At first he has an idea that he will "hunt" therein, and that his guests will hunt also, and actually kill game. In a mild way, this fiction sometimes is maintained for years. The owner may each year shoot two or three head of his surplus big game, and his tenderfoot guests who don't know what real hunting is may also kill something, each year. But in most of the American preserves with which I am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big game" is almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so attached to his big game, and admires it so sincerely, he has not the heart to kill it himself; and he finds no joy whatever in seeing it shot down by others!
In this country the slaughter of game for the market is not considered a gentlemanly pastime, even though there is a surplus of preserve-bredgame that must be reduced. To the average American, the slaughter of half-tame elk, deer and birds that have been bred in a preserve does not appeal in the least. He knows that in the protection of a preserve, the wild creatures lose much of their fear of man, and become easy marks; and shall a real sportsman go out with a gun and a bushel of cartridges, on a pony, and without warning betray the confidence of the wild in terms of fire and blood? Others may do it if they like; but as a rule that is not what an American calls "sport." One wide-awake and well-armed grizzly bear or mountain sheep outwitted on a mountain-side is worth more as a sporting proposition than a quarter of a mile of deer carcasses laid out side by side on a nice park lawn to be photographed as "one day's kill."
In America, the shooting of driven game is something of which we know little save by hearsay. In Europe, it is practiced on everything from Scotch grouse to Italian ibex. The German Crown Prince, in his fascinating little volume "From My Hunting Day-Book," very neatly fixes the value of such shooting, as a real sportsman's proposition, in the following sentence:
"The shooting of driven game is merely a question of marksmanship, and is after all more in the nature of a shooting exercise than sport."
I have seen some shooting in preserves that was too tame to be called sport; but on the other hand I can testify that in grouse shooting as it is done behind the dogs on Mr. Carnegie's moor at Skibo, it is sport in which the hunter earns every grouse that falls to his gun. At the same time, also, I believe that the shooting of madly running ibex, as it is done by the King of Italy in his three mountain preserves, is sufficiently difficult to put the best big-game hunter to the test. There are times when shooting driven game calls for far more dexterity with the rifle than is ordinarily demanded in the still-hunt.
In America, as in England and on the Continent of Europe, private game preserves are so numerous it is impossible to mention more than a very few of them, unless one devotes a volume to the subject. Probably there are more than five hundred, and no list of them is "up to date" for more than one day, because the number is constantly increasing. I make no pretense even of possessing a list of those in America, and I mention only a few of those with which I am best acquainted, by way of illustration.
One of the earliest and the most celebrated deer parks of the United States was that of Hon. John Dean Caton, of two hundred acres, located near Ottawa, Ill., established about 1859. It was the experiments and observations made in that park that yielded Judge Caton's justly famous book on "The Antelope and Deer of America."
The first game preserve established by an incorporated club was "Blooming Grove Park," of one thousand acres, in Pennsylvania, where great success has been attained in the breeding and rearing of white-tailed deer.
In the eastern United States the most widely-known game preserve is BlueMountain Forest Park, near Newport, New Hampshire. It was founded in 1885, by the late Austin Corbin, and has been loyally and diligently maintained by Austin Corbin, Jr., George S. Edgell and the other members of the Corbin family. Ownership is vested in the Blue Mountain Forest Association. The area of the preserve is 27,000 acres, and besides embracing much fine forest on Croydon Mountain, it also contains many converted farms whose meadow lands afford good grazing.
This preserve contains a large herd of bison (86 head), elk, white-tailed deer, wild boar and much smaller game. The annual surplus of bison and other large game is regularly sold and distributed throughout the world for the stocking of other parks and zoological gardens. Each year a few surplus deer are quietly killed for the Boston market, but a far greater number are sold alive, at from $25 to $30 each in carload lots.
In the Adirondacks of northern New York, there are a great many private game preserves. Dr. T.S. Palmer, in his pamphlet on "Private Game Preserves" (Department of Agriculture) places the number at 60, and their total area at 791,208 acres. Some of them have caused much irritation among some of the hunting, fishing and trapping residents of the Adirondack region. They seem to resent the idea of the exclusive ownership of lands that are good hunting-grounds. This view of property rights has caused much trouble and some bloodshed, two persons having been killed for presuming to assert exclusive rights in large tracts of wilderness property.
"In the upland preserve under private ownership." says Dr. Palmer, "may be found one of the most important factors in the maintenance of the future supply of game and game birds. Nearly all such preserves are maintained for the propagation of deer, quail, grouse, or pheasants. They vary widely in area, character, and purpose, and embrace some of the largest game refuges in the country. Some of the preserves in North Carolina cover from 15,000 to 30,000 acres; several in South Carolina exceed 60,000 acres in extent." The Megantic Club's northern preserve, on the boundary between Quebec and Maine, embraces nearly 200 square miles, or upward of 125,000 acres.
Comparatively few of the larger preserves are enclosed, and on such grounds, hunting becomes sport quite as genuine as it is in regions open to free hunting. In some instances part of the tract is fenced, while large unenclosed areas are protected by being posted. The character of their tenure varies also. Some are owned in fee simple; others, particularly the larger ones, are leased, or else comprise merely the shooting rights on the land. In both size and tenure, the upland preserves of the United States are comparable with the grouse moors and large deer forests of Scotland.
Of the game preserves in the South, I know one that is quite ideal. It is St. Vincent Island, near Apalachicola, Florida, in the northern edge of the Gulf of Mexico. It was purchased in 1909 by Dr. Ray V. Pierce, and his guests kill perhaps one hundred ducks each year out of the thousands that flock to the ten big ponds that occupy the eastern third of the island. Into those ponds much good duck food has beenintroduced,—Potamogeton pectinatusandperfoliatus. The area of the island is twenty square miles. Besides being a great winter resort for ducks, its sandy, pine-covered ridges and jungles of palms to and live oak afford fine haunts and feeding grounds for deer. Those jungles contain two species of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus louisianaandosceola), and Dr. Pierce has introduced the Indian sambar deer and Japanese sika deer(Cervus sika), both of which are doing well. We are watching the progress of those big sambar deer with very keen interest, and it is to be recorded that already that species has crossed with the Louisiana white-tailed deer.
MAP OF MARSH ISLAND AND ADJACENT WILD-FOWL PRESERVES
During the autumn of 1912, public attention in the United States was for a time focused on the purchase of Marsh Island, Louisiana, by Mrs. Russell Sage, and its permanent dedication to the cause of wild-life protection. This delightful event has brought into notice the Louisiana State Game Preserve of 13,000 acres near Marsh Island, and its hinterland (and water) of 11,000 acres adjoining, which constitutes the Ward-McIlhenny Wild Fowl Preserve. These three great preserves taken together as they lie form a wild-fowl sanctuary of great size, and of great value to the whole Mississippi Valley. Now that all duck-shooting therein has been stopped, it is safe to predict that they shortly will be inhabited by a wild-fowl population that will really stagger the imagination.
Duck-Shooting "Preserves."—A ducking "preserve" is a large tract of land and water owned by a few individuals, or a club, for the purpose of preserving exclusively for themselves and their friends the bestpossible opportunities for killing large numbers of ducks and geese without interference. In no sense whatever are they intended to preserve or increase the supply of wild fowl. The real object of their existence is duck and goose slaughter. For example, the worst goose-slaughter story on record comes to us from the grounds of the Glenn County Club in California, whereon, as stated elsewhere, two men armed with automatic shotguns killed 218 geese in one hour, and bagged a total of 452 in one day.
I shall not attempt to give any list of the so-called ducking "preserves." The word "preserve," when applied to them, is a misnomer. Thirteen states have these incorporated slaughtering-grounds for ducks and geese, the greatest number being in California, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia. California has carried the ducking-club idea to the limit where it is claimed that it constitutes an abuse. Dr. Palmer says that one or two of the club preserves on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley contain upward of40 square miles, or 25,000 acres each! With considerable asperity it is now publicly charged (in the columns ofThe Examinerof San Francisco) that for the unattached sportsmen there is no longer any duck-shooting to be had in California, because all the good ducking-grounds are owned and exclusively controlled by clubs. In many states the private game preserves are a source of great irritation, and many have been attacked in courts of law.[N]
But I am not sorrowing over the woes of the unattached duck-hunter, or in the least inclined to champion his cause against the ducking-club member. As slaughterers and exterminators of wild-fowl, rarely exercising mercy under ridiculous bag-limits, they have both been too heedless of the future, and one is just as bad for the game as the other. If either of them favored the game, I would be on his side; but I see no difference between them. They both kill right up to the bag-limit, as often as they can; and that is what is sweeping away all our feathered game.
Curiously enough, the angry unattached duck-hunters of California are to-day proposing to have revenge on the duck-clubbers byremoving all restrictions on the sale of game! This is on the theory that the duckless sportsmen of the State of California would like tobuydead ducks and geese for their tables! It is a novel and original theory, but the sane people of California never will enact it into law. It would be a step justtwenty years backward!
The Public vs. The Private Game Preserve.—Both the executive and the judiciary branches of our state governments will in the future be called upon with increasing frequency to sit in judgment on this case. Conditions about us are rapidly changing. The precepts of yesterday may be out of date and worthless tomorrow. By way of introspection, let us see what principles of equity toward Man and Nature we would lay down as the basis of our action if we were called to the bench. Named in logical sequence they would be about as follows:
In private game preserves the time has arrived when lawmakers and judges must begin to apply the blood-test, and separate the true from the false. And at every step,the welfare of the wild life involvedmust be given full consideration. No men, nor body of men, should be permitted to practice methods that spell extermination.
EGRETS AND HERONS IN SANCTUARY ON MARSH ISLAND