CONCLUSION. 
In view of all our experience it is clear that Amer- 
ican sportsmen cannot continue to kill off their game 
and still to have their covers full of birds. I believe 
that a time will come when there will be good shooting 
in many parts of the country, but this will not be until 
gunners have been taught the lesson of self-control. 
Methods must be devised for restocking our fields and 
woods, and the birds put out must have an opportunity 
to live and to reproduce their kind. This means better 
enforcement of law, shorter open-seasons and a bag 
limit. As conditions precedent to good shooting, must 
come also game refuges and the private preserve. If 
sportsmen long ago had been wise enough to demand 
from the legislatures the establishment of game refuges, 
we should now have public preserves which might have 
been large enough for anyone. Instead of demanding 
this, gunners often grumbled bitterly when land own- 
ers posted their fields and declined to allow everyone 
to run over their land, tear down their fences and 
shoot their domestic fowls, and even their animals. 
The private preserve has come to stay, and it is a 
good thing for gunners at large that it has come. 
What the general public should now demand is game 
refuges—public preserves—where the birds may in- 
crease and from which they will certainly scatter out 
550 
