VALUABLE WILD LIFE 15 



once; and when that limit has expired, give it 

 another." 



Wherever killable wild life is found, greed and 

 ignorance are quite as deadly as shot-guns. At this 

 moment, the gunners and sportsmen of Nebraska, 

 Oklahoma, Iowa and Minnesota diligently and 

 even joyously exercise the right that their state 

 lawmakers still foolishly extend them to hunt and 

 kill the pinnated grouse. In those states the man- 

 with-a-gun is deaf to the appeal to reason, blind to 

 the lessons of history. If the law continues its per- 

 mission, those gunners very soon will shoot down 

 the last pinnated grouse. Yes ; very earnest efforts 

 have been made to awaken those sodden people, but 

 thus far in vain. In view of the army of gunners, 

 the uncountable thousands of guns, the dogs, 

 wagons, automobiles, tents and other munitions of 

 war that annually take the field against the prairie- 

 chicken remnant, every observer is compelled to 

 believe that without a quick and sweeping reform, 

 the end of the species is in sight. 



At the same time other species, elsewhere, are 

 similarly threatened. Consider the sage-grouse 

 and the sharp-tailed grouse of the northwestern 

 quarter of our great plains ; the wild turkey in half 

 a dozen states ; the quail in a dozen states ; the shore- 

 birds of every species; the sandhill and whooping 

 cranes; the swan; the ptarmigan; the mule deer in 

 several states; the mountain sheep in Wyoming, 

 Montana, Idaho and Washington. 



