[discussing Geer v. Connecticut/ ... it is there held the power of the state over game within its 

 territorial limits is not terminated by the act of the individual in reducing it to his exclusive and lawful 

 possession, but, on the contrary, the power of the state follows the game into the hands of the lawful 

 exclusive possessor, and in the assertion of its title held therein in trust for all the people of the state it 

 may so control its use and disposition as to absolutely forbid and prohibit its coming under the 

 protection and control of the commerce clause of the national Constitution. And the reason for the rule 

 is apparent. If the state, either by its laws, or in the absence of prohibitive laws, once permits game to 

 come under the authority of the commerce clause of the national Constitution, then all state control or 

 authority thereover of necessity must cease to exist, and its trust title for the common good of all the 

 people of the state be cut off and destroyed . . . 



Speaking after enactment of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and before Missouri v. Holland, the 

 District Court for the Western District of Missouri said: 



Primarily the state, both as trustee for the rights of all its people and in the exercise of its police power, 

 has control over the right to reduce animals ferae naturae to possession. [Citations omitted] And in the 

 absence of treaty there appears to have been no delegation of paramount authority to the federal 

 government. Under the foregoing authorities, therefore, as well as on principle, this act, in the absence of 

 treaty, would be unconstitutional, as exceeding the legitimate powers of Congress, and so it has been 

 held in cases substantially identical. United States v. Shauver, 214 Fed. 154; United States v. McCullagh, 

 221 Fed. 288. That this power in the state is subject to any valid exercise of authority under the 

 provisions of the federal Constitution is clear; and that a valid exercise of the treaty making power may 

 be recognized as such a valid exercise of authority has been foreshadowed by necessary implication or by 

 express reservation in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. [Citations omitted.] 



Eight years after Missouri v. Holland, the Supreme Court held that the commerce clause could reach 

 shell fish shipped and sold in interstate commerce. In Foster-Fountain Packing Co. v. Louisiana, 278 

 U.S. 1 (1928), Foster-Fountain challenged the Louisiana Shrimp Act, which asserted the State's 

 ownership of shrimp within its waters and provided that shrimp caught in its waters must be headed and 

 hulled before being shipped out of the State. Distinguishing this case from Geer v. Connecticut because 

 the Shrimp Act expressly authorized shrimp meat and bran to be shipped and sold in interstate 

 commerce, the Court said, 278 U.S. at 12: 



Consistently with the Act all may be, and in fact clearly all is, caught for transportation and sale in 

 interstate commerce. As to such shrimp the protection of the commerce clause attaches at the time of 

 the taking . . . But, in direct opposition to conservation for intrastate use, this enactment permits all 

 parts of the shrimp to be shipped and sold outside the State. The purpose is not to retain the shrimp for 

 the use of the people of Louisiana; it is to favor the canning of the meat and the manufacture of bran in 

 Louisiana by withholding raw or unshelled shrimp from the Biloxi plants. But by permitting its shrimp 

 to be taken and all the products thereof to be shipped and sold in interstate commerce, the State 

 necessarily releases its hold and, as to the shrimp so taken, definitely terminates its control. Clearly such 

 authorization and the taking in pursuance thereof put an end to the trust upon which the State is 

 deemed to own or control the shrimp under the authority of the Act necessarily thereby become 

 entitled to the rights of private ownership and the protection of the commerce clause. [Emphasis 

 added.] 



The paramount authority of the commerce clause was challenged again in 1948 when citizens of 

 Georgia sued to enjoin South Carolina State officials from enforcing statutes of that State regulating 

 commercial shrimp fishing in the three-mile maritime belt off the coast."* One of the statutes challenged 



"*7V>omer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 335 (1948). 



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