APPENDIX. 73 



it necessarily results that the legislature, as the representative of the 

 people of the State, may withhold or grant to individuals the right 

 to hunt and kill game or qualify or restrict as in the opinions of its 

 members will best subserve the public welfare. Stated in other 

 language, to hunt and kill game is a boon or privilege, granted either 

 expressly or impliedly by the sovereign authority — not a right in- 

 herent in each individual, and consequently nothing is taken away 

 from the individual, when he is denied the privilege at stated seasons 

 of hunting and killing game. It is, perhaps, accurate to say that the 

 ownership of the sovereign authority is in trust for all the people of 

 the State, and hence by implication it is the duty of the legislature 

 to enact such laws as will best preserve the subject of the trust and 

 secure its beneficial use in the future to the people of the State. But 

 in any view, the question of individual enjoyment is one of public 

 policy and not of private right.' 



"See also Ex parte Maier, 103 California, 476; Organ v. The State, 

 56 Ark. 267., It is, indeed, true that in State v. Saunders, 19 Kansas, 

 127, and Territory v. Evans, 2 Idaho, 658, it was held that a State law 

 prohibiting the shipment outside of the State of game killed therein 

 violated the interstate commerce laws of the Constitution of the 

 United States, but the reasoning which controlled the decision of these 

 cases is, we think, inconclusive from the fact that it did not consider 

 the fundamental distinction between the qualified ownership in game 

 and the perfect nature of ownership in other property, and thus 

 overlooked the authority of the State over the property in game killed 

 within its confines, and the consequent power of the State to follow 

 such property into whatever hands it might pass with the conditions 

 and restrictions deemed necessary for the public interests. 



"Aside from the authority of the State, derived from the common 

 ownership of game and the trust for the benefit of its people which 

 the State exercises in relation thereto, there is another view of the 

 power of the State in regard to the property in game, which is equally 

 conclusive. The right to preserve game flows from the undoubted 

 existence in the State of a police power to that end, which may be 



