290 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



them State or national parks or reserves. It is foolish to 

 regard proper game laws as undemocratic, unrepublican. 

 On the contrary, they are essentially in the interests of 

 the people as a whole, because it is only through their 

 enactment and enforcement that the people as a whole 

 can preserve the game and can prevent its becoming 

 purely the property of the rich, who are able to create and 

 maintain extensive private preserves. The wealthy man 

 can get hunting anyhow, but the man of small means is 

 dependent solely upon wise and well-executed game laws 

 for his enjoyment of the sturdy pleasure of the chase. In 

 Maine, in Vermont, in the Adirondacks, even in parts of 

 Massachusetts and on Long Island, people have waked 

 up to this fact, particularly so far as the common white- 

 tail deer is concerned, and in Maine also as regards the 

 moose and caribou. The effect is shown in the increase 

 in these animals. Such game protection results, in the 

 first place, in securing to the people who live in the neigh- 

 borhood permanent opportunities for hunting; and in the 

 next place, it provides no small source of wealth to the 

 locality because of the visitors which it attracts. A deer 

 wild in the woods is worth to the people of the neighbor- 

 hood many times the value of its carcass, because of the 

 way it attracts sportsmen, who give employment and leave 

 money behind them. 



True sportsmen, worthy of the name, men who shoot 

 only in season and in moderation, do no harm whatever 

 to game. The most objectionable of all game destroyers 

 is, of course, the kind of game butcher who simply kills 

 for the sake of the record of slaughter, who leaves deer 



