462 PRACTICAL ZOOLOGY 



hunt without licenses, and adding these together with those that 

 hunt in the remaining states, an estimate of 2,600,000 is reached. 

 This army of shooters annually kills off the natural increase as 

 well as part of the original supply of game. The result is a 

 noticeable decrease from year to year. It is reasonable to 

 state that there is at present only about two per cent as much 

 game as existed here fifty years ago. 



Some of these hunters are more destructive than others, and 

 all of them should not be condemned. The term "game hog " 

 has of recent years been applied to those who kill more than a 

 reasonable amount of game. Even worse than the game hog 

 is the market hunter who kills birds and mammals by the 

 thousands, which he sells either for food or for millinery purposes. 

 " In a three months' shoot in Iowa and Minnesota, one market 

 hunter killed 6250 game birds. In one winter's duck hunting 

 in the South, he killed 4450 ducks. During his forty years' 

 market hunting he killed 61,752 ducks, 5291 prairie chickens, 

 8117 useful blackbirds, 5291 quail, 5066 snipe, and 4948 plover. 

 His grand total of slaughter was 139,628 game birds and sundries, 

 representing twenty-nine species, several of them not game and 

 useful." 1 Fortunately the sale of game has been stopped by law 

 in many states, and will no doubt soon be discontinued through- 

 out the entire country. 



Several of the most notorious abuses of our wild life have been 

 the destruction of the vast herds of bison (buffaloes) and the 

 enormous flocks of passenger pigeons that once inhabited this 

 country. The last wild buffalo of the United States outside of 

 the Yellowstone National Park was killed in 1897. The original 

 range of the buffalo extended from central New York to eastern 

 Oregon and from northern Mexico to Great Slave Lake, nearly 

 touching the Atlantic coast in Georgia and the Gulf coast in 

 Louisiana. By 1730 the last buffalo east of the Alleghenies had 

 been killed. By 1810 none were to be found east of the Missis- 

 sippi. In 1870 those that were left were confined to two great 



1 Hornaday, Wild Life Conservation. 



