146 



THE OOLOaiST 



army of destruction is the so-called 

 sportsman here in the north. Not the 

 loyal, law-abiding real sportsman, who 

 kills only game birdSf and these only 

 in the open season, and stops when 

 he gets the bag limit. 1 am talking 

 of the other kind, the pot hunter, the 

 game hogs. The men who go out 

 when the birds are half grown and 

 pot whole coveys of quail on the 

 ground. And wlio. when they do not 

 find enough of these to make good 

 shooting, and that is nearly always 

 nowadays, for there is very little 

 game left anywhere, kill everything 

 that comes in reach of them, robins, 

 meadowlarks, blackbirds, bluejays. 

 thrushes and even smaller birds. Such 

 of these as are edible they take home 

 and eat. The others, such as herons, 

 biterns, gulls, hawks, owls, etc., they 

 throw away. 



Small Boy Also Busy. 



The fourth corps in this army of 

 destruction is the small boy with his 

 22-caliber rifle, or his little single 

 barrel shotgun, or his air rifle. There 

 are hundreds of thousands of these 

 three types of weapons in use in the 

 country and they annually slaughter 

 millions of birds. 



I wonder if it ever occurred to any 

 person in this audience to inquire 

 how many shotguns there are in use 

 in this country. Well, I made a care- 

 ful computation of that subject a year 

 ago and I found that beyond all ques 

 tion, there are over 10,000,000 shot- 

 guns at work in this country today. 

 A small percentage of these are in 

 the hands of loyal, law-abiding sports- 

 men, who never kill song birds; but 

 it safe to say that 75 to 80 per cent of 

 them are in the hands of vandals, men 

 and boys who kill every bird they can 

 get in reach of, no matter what it Is, 

 or what its value is to the farmer and 

 the fruit grower. 



You know all about the ravages be- 



ing committeed on the forests, the 

 fruit trees, the shade trees and the 

 shrubbery in New England by the 

 gypsy moth, the brown-tailed moth, 

 the leopard moth, the elm-leaf beetle 

 and other insects. There are 30,000 

 acres of second growth oak forest in 

 one body, in the hills of Massachu- 

 setts, every tree in which has been 

 killed by insects. And many smaller 

 bodies of timber have been totally 

 wiped out by them. 



It is the most natural thing in the 

 v%orld for a boy, as soon as he gets to 

 be eight or ten yeares old, or for a 

 man either, to want to get out and 

 kill something. And I don't blame 

 anyone for having this instinct. Ws 

 have all inherited from our ancestors 

 the love of killing things. They were 

 all hunters, from necessity. They had 

 to live largely on the game of the 

 fields and the forests, and we have in- 

 herited from them the love of the 

 chase, to put it politely; in other 

 words the blood lust that is in ou'' 

 hearts today. 



Must Banish Blood Lust 



Fortunately, this love of slaughter 

 has been educated out many of us, 

 and the time has come when it must 

 be banished from the others if we are 

 to leave any birds or animals for 

 posterity to even look at; or any 

 birds to protect the forests, the fruit 

 trees, the shrubbery and the farm 

 crops for the next generation. 



Now what I have been leading up 

 to is this: 



That the time has come when we 

 must absolutely stop all shooting, 

 everywhere and at all times of the 

 year, if we are to leave any birds for 

 posterity even to look at, or to pre- 

 serve the trees and the farm crops. 

 Abolish the Game Laws 



We have tried game laws and 

 game wardens for nearly 50 years. 

 You have had good game laws in 



