ON THE GANDER RIVER. 195 



rules the rules of the game. He is the man who brings 

 not only money into the country, but knowledge, and 

 also a very real, if to some extent a selfish, interest in the 

 maintenance of wild animal life. Yet it is practically 

 always against him that modern game laws are directed, 

 instead of against the pot-hunter. The latter is the man 

 whose works live after him. He has already devastated more 

 than one country. Antlers and hide mean so much money 

 to him, no more ; the extinction of a species is no cause 

 of regret to him his concern lies solely with the dollars. 

 But he has a vote, and so the politicians pamper him. 



The game laws of Newfoundland are as sound as those of 

 any country I have visited. They do not permit the guides 

 to shoot when accompanying a sportsman, though of course 

 at other times each guide has his right, as a citizen, to kill 

 five deer. This is an excellent regulation, for when the 

 sportsman has shot his three heads he can kill no more, 

 and may as well leave the country. In other circumstances 

 he might buy from his men their right to shoot the five each 

 to which they are entitled, and a certain number of sports- 

 men would undoubtedly do so an evasion of the law which 

 could only lead to bad results. If Newfoundland would 

 but add an absolute prohibition, under a heavy penalty, 

 of the sale or exposure for sale of the trophy of any in- 

 digenous wild animal, her game laws would be as nearly 

 perfect as one can expect such laws to be. Perhaps, however, 

 they might be altered in one other point. A 10 licence 

 permits the foreigner or visiting sportsman to shoot three 

 stags. This places the person who goes up to Howley and 

 in two days shoots that number of prickets as the deer 

 cross the line on their migration on the same footing with 

 the man who spends six weeks in the interior looking for 

 three fine heads. If, instead of this, the law allowed a 

 stag for every week spent hunting, the law would be more 

 just and fewer stags be unworthily slain. Incidentally the 



