294 THE SLAUGHTER OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 



Every appliance and assistance that money can buy, the 

 modern sportsman secures to help him against the game. 

 The game is beset during its breeding-season by various wild 

 enemies — foxes, cats, wolves, pumas, lynxes, eagles and many 

 other predatory species. The only help that it receives is in 

 the form of an annual close season — which thus far has saved 

 in America only a feiv local moose, white-tailed deer and a few 

 game birds from steady and sure extermination. 



The bag limits, on which vast reliance is placed to preserve 

 the wild game, are a fraud, a delusion and a snare! The few 

 local exceptions only prove the generality of the rule. In 

 every state, without a single exception, the bag limits are far 

 too high, and the laws are of deadly liberality. In many states 

 the bag-limit laws on birds are an absolute dead letter. Fancy 

 the 125 wardens of New York enforcing the bag-limit laws 

 on 150,000 gunners! It is this horrible condition that is 

 enabling the licensed army of destruction to get in its deadly 

 work on the game, all over the world. In America the over- 

 liberality of the laws is to blame for two-thirds of the car- 

 nival of slaughter, and the successful evasions of the law are 

 responsible for the other third. 



Market-Hunting. — The most destructive form of bird- 

 slaughter according to law is market-killing. The market- 

 hunter works seven days a Aveek, regardless of weather. He 

 begins at sunrise and shoots until sunset, or after. He is 

 rarely hampered by any bag limits or checked by game 

 wardens, and his only "limit" is the range of his guns. When 

 market-hunting is allowed by law, he can also use automatic 

 and "pump" guns, shotguns of large calibre, batteries, sink- 



