560 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



afield, cultivates the love of nature, ensures a sufficient amount 

 of outdoor exercise and greatly improves their health. Fur- 

 thermore, a violent death is the natural end of most birds. 

 Usually they are killed for food by their natural enemies if 

 not by man. This is a much quicker and less painful end, 

 on the whole, than the slower death which results from old 

 age, disease or starvation and exposure that otherwise would 

 be their fate. Legitimate hunting, then, if not carried to 

 excess, is, from the sportsman's viewpoint, a benefit rather 

 than an injury to the birds, particularly where the sportsman 

 himself is instrumental in increasing rather than in diminish- 

 ing the game which he hunts. 



These are facts that the altruistic nature lover who decries 

 field sports should consider; while, on the other hand, the 

 sportsman should be similarly tolerant of the desires of the 

 nature lover, that both may work together for the rational 

 protection and increase of the game in which both are equally 

 interested, even though they regard it from totally different 

 viewpoints. 



The perpetual close season should be and must be utilized 

 to save those species which are now most in danger of extinc- 

 tion; but it is impracticable, if not impossible, to go farther 

 than that. A perpetual close season on all game could not be 

 enforced, as nearly all hunters and sportsmen who are now self- 

 ishly interested (if you will) in saving the game would lose their 

 interest in game protection, and the poacher and lawbreaker 

 would continue to hunt. The vast sum now derived from 

 hunters' licenses in this country would be lost to game protec- 

 tion. State game commissions would be unsupported, and 

 neither game laws nor bird laws would be so well enforced as at 

 present. How, then, shall we maintain and increase our game.? 



A close season enforced on all game on a limited territory 

 for a few years might make game plentiful there, but if that 

 territory were again opened to shooting, gunners would swarm 

 there and the last condition would be worse than the first. 



If we look abroad we find that in countries that have been 

 settled for many centuries game is far more plentiful than 

 here. If we are to have birds numerous in our coverts and 



