I 9 4 HUNTING CAMPS. 



A good deal of nonsense is talked in connection with 

 this subject as to the inherent right of the Indian to shoot 

 deer without being bound by any game-law limitations, as 

 are sportsmen who come for pleasure or settlers who hunt 

 for meat. But the game laws are framed in the interests of 

 future generations, and if impartially enforced would actu- 

 ally tend more to the advantage of the Indians than of 

 any other class of the community. 



The policy of many of those who make the game laws 

 in our colonies, in America, or indeed all the world over, has 

 always seemed to me to be extraordinarily short-sighted. 

 Take Newfoundland as an example. The number of caribou 

 allowed under the licence to each sportsman is three ; to 

 each settler five deer in every year ; but this law imposes 

 small restriction on the settlers in the country and practically 

 none upon the Indians, who act as if it did not exist. As 

 to the settlers, when a man has shot his own five he goes on 

 to shoot for his friends, and if either Indian or settler sees a 

 stag with a fine head he shoots it for its horns, not to keep, 

 but to sell. 



As I have said in a previous chapter the only possible 

 way even to partially stop this wholesale slaughter would 

 be to forbid the private sale or exposure for sale of trophies 

 in shops. This should be the first aim of any code of game 

 laws, the more especially as the demand for trophies is 

 becoming greater and greater every year. Nor would it 

 bear hardly upon the settler or the Indian, for little enough 

 of the ultimate price falls to their share ; the bulk goes to 

 fill the capacious pockets of the middlemen taxidermists, 

 and until these facts are taken into account by the framers 

 of game laws there will be no real game protection. 



How can there be, when every stag with a good head 

 is shot down ? It will be contended that this is precisely 

 what the sportsman does. True, but the number he can 

 kill is closely limited, and he shoots according to certain 



