72 COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



argument of the plaintiff in error substantially asserts that the State 

 statute is an unqualified right to kill game, when in fact it is only 

 given upon the condition that the game killed be not transported 

 beyond the state limits. It was upon this power of the State to 

 qualify and restrict the ownership in game killed within its limits that 

 the court below rested its conclusion, and similar views have been 

 expressed by the courts of last resort of several of the States. In 

 State v. Rodman, 58 Minnesota, 393, 400, the Supreme Court of Min- 

 nesota said: 



" 'The preservation of such animals as are adapted to consumption 

 as food or to any other useful purpose, is a matter of public interest; 

 and it is within the police power of the State, as the representative 

 of the people in their united sovereignty, to make such laws as will 

 best preserve such game, and secure its beneficial use in the future 

 to the citizens, and to that end it may adopt any reasonable regula- 

 tions, not only as to time and manner in which such game may be 

 taken and killed, but also imposing limitations upon the right of 

 property in such game after it had been reduced to possession. Such 

 limitations deprive no person of his property, because he who takes 

 or kills game had no previous right of property in it and when he 

 acquires such right by reducing it to possession he does so subject 

 to such conditions and limitations as the legislature has seeen fit to 

 impose.' See, also, State v. Northern Pacific Express Co., 58 Min- 

 nesota, 403. 



"So, also, in Magner v. The People, 97 Illinois, 320, 333, the 

 Supreme Court of Illinois said: 



" 'So far as we are aware it has never been judicially denied that 

 the government under its police powers may make regulations for the 

 preservation of game and fish, restricting their taking and molesta- 

 tion in certain seasons of the year, although laws to this effect, it is 

 believed, have been enforced in many of the older states since the 

 organization of the Federal Government. . . . The ownership 

 being in the people of the State, the repository of the sovereign au- 

 thority, and no individual having any property rights to be affected, 



