A NEAR VICTORY IN MINNESOTA 



AFTER twenty years of too-liberal game laws, too many 

 lawless aliens, and far too much game slaughter, we 

 find Minnesota on the straight road that leads to real game 

 conservation. During the years 1912, 13 and 14, the amount 

 of persistent lawbreaking in northern Minnesota, chiefly 

 by Austrian and Scandinavian settlers and lumbermen, was 

 positively appalling. The devilish persistence with which 

 they kept up illegal killings of all kinds, in spite of abundant 

 arrests and fines, was fairly maddening. 



The chief trouble lay in the fact that the State Game Pro- 

 tection Department was not sufficiently backed up by pub- 

 lic sentiment, and the public seemed to feel that all pro- 

 tecting and detecting should be done by the regular wardens. 



Our first stop on the western tour was at Minneapolis, 

 on August 27. We found the Minnesota Game and Fish 

 Protective League a very strong and effective organization, 

 flushed with its great victory in creating the Lake Minne- 

 tonka Game Refuge. That sanctuary, in which all shooting 

 is forever barred, embraces all of Lake Minnetonka and its 

 environs, with a total area of 64,000 acres. In the cam- 

 paign for this sanctuary the association raised and expend- 

 ed over $5,000. The officers who led in this work were: 



Clinton M. Odell, President ; 

 Frank D. Blair, Field Superintendent ; 

 Walter Eggleston, Chairman of the Minnetonka 

 Refuge Committee. 



The next important action of the League, after the found- 

 ing of their game sanctuary, was to call a convention of 

 Minnesota sportsmen to assemble in Minneapolis on August 

 27, and organize a state League. Our appearance was 

 timed to meet that convention, and the occasion was one to 



