GAME LAW ENFORCEMENT 



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offenders against the game laws are of this class, and ex- 

 perience has demonstrated that to secure obedience the 

 alternative corrective, imprisonment, must be allowed ; other- 

 wise, many violations go unpunished. 



It would be very difficult to secure convictions under the 

 game laws where punishment was limited to imprisonment 

 alone. On the other hand such laws are often very lightly 

 respected when offenders know that the only punishment 

 is a fine. It would seem, therefore, that the provision in 

 the penal clause of the game laws of most states author- 

 izing fine or imprisonment, or both, is the proper scheme 

 of punishment. 



The Market Hunter and Fur Poacher: One of the first 

 restrictions placed upon hunting in this country was upon 

 the taking of wild animals in quantity for the purpose of 

 selling them, that is the prohibition of " market hunting." 

 At first the restrictions applied to only a few species of 

 wild life but today practically every state has fixed " bag 

 limits " on the seasonal take for various species of wild 

 game. The market hunter whose very business consists in 

 killing wild game and selling it, cannot operate successfully 

 within the proscribed bag limits and therefore he disregards 

 them. Consequently, the market hunter is looked upon as 

 one of the most dangerous enemies of conservation. 



The trapper who, visualizing the easy profits obtainable 

 by taking fur animals within game refuges or in other areas 

 closed to the ordinary trapper, is likewise a major menace to 

 conservation policies. Taken altogether, the activities of the 

 market hunter and the fur poacher constitute a very serious 

 problem in some sections of the country. 



In the first place, it is not a relatively simple battle be- 

 tween the small-town loafer and the forces of conservation 

 as in the cases cited above, but a real struggle between 



