12 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



Now, as to the shore sanctuaries, which are fully as important for 

 Massachusetts as the inland ones, because many gunners come from a 

 long distance to shoot shore-birds, ducks, and coots. It is a difficult thing 

 to see how proper areas can be created at present, except through private 

 initiative. The Commissioner of Conservation has no money available 

 with which to purchase land, and the public sentiment is not yet strong 

 enough to increase the budget of the department. In the meantime, there- 

 fore, much good of an educational sort can be accomplished by carefully 

 selecting a few easily accessible areas and getting societies or individuals 

 to deed them over to the state. These need not at first be large, but they 

 ought to be places that can be easily looked after. If they are near large 

 public shooting grounds, so much the better. 



The arguments against the sanctuary should be briefly touched upon. 

 They are roughly these: 



1. Migratory game is well enough protected anyway. 



2. If we have sanctuaries all the game will go there and consequently 

 the gunners will not be able to get even as much shooting as they do now. 



3. Sanctuaries will take away too much of the public shooting 

 ground from the average shooter. 



4. There are enough sanctuaries already created in city and metro- 

 politan parks and waterways 



5. Sanctuaries don't increase game and only become a breeding place 

 for foxes and other vermin. 



These and other arguments have been put forth by those who cannot 

 see the hand-writing on the wall, and will not look ahead a sufficient dis- 

 tance. Does anybody know of a single instance where game has been 

 protected and increased in this country up on the point of saturation? 

 Perhaps at one time the Maine deer were about as numerous as the country 

 could support, but such instances are exceedingly few. In the Maine case 

 the deer increased to such numbers because: 



1st. The wolves were exterminated. 



2nd. The forest was lumbered off, providing more brush for feed. 



3rd. The moose and caribou were reduced. 



Thus the condition was largely an artificial one. 



There is little likelihood that the most strenuous labors of all game- 

 bird conservationists will ever result in doing more than keeping abreast of 

 the rapidly increasing population of this country, and the greater and 

 greater army of shooters that take the field each year. The only compen- 

 sation is perhaps in the fact that each generation is becoming more and 

 more unskillful as hunters, so that it takes a great many more men to ac- 

 complish the same amount of destruction. And at the same time the bom- 

 bardment which starts upon the opening day is of high educational value 

 (to the birds) and they learn more now in the first two days than they 

 formerly did in a whole open season. 



