SECOND BIENNIAL STATEMENT 155 



legislature during its last hours, providing for a return to 

 the killing of female deer, at the demand of the guides 

 of the Adirondacks. And this in the state of New York, 

 which for five years has led the van of game-protecting 

 states ! 



While our national, state, and individual sins against 

 wild life are as the sands of the seven seas for multitude, 

 we are not by any means totally depraved. If the Men of 

 Ethics were only more numerous, and more determined, 

 our wild life could be saved on a continuing basis ; but we 

 are shorthanded. 



There are thousands of American sportsmen who do be- 

 lieve in the square deal for wild life. They scorn to shoot 

 in any breeding season. They sell no wild game, and de- 

 spise those who do. They kill no female hoofed game, nor 

 young animals. They stop when they have two or three 

 head of game, no matter how much more their hunting 

 licenses offer them according to law. I know a big-game 

 sportsman who went sheep-hunting all the way from Detroit 

 to Montana; and when the only male sheep that he could 

 find proved to be a three-year old ram, he refused to kill 

 that immature animal and went home sheepless. A sports- 

 man with a code of ethics shoots no birds on the ground, 

 despises gang hooks and big rods for small fish, and glories 

 in small, breakable rods and lines for "the big game of the 

 sea." He kills and eats no bobolinks as "game." 



Some of these men have laid aside their 12-gauge shot- 

 guns, and taken up the 16, the 22, and even the 28-guage, 

 because those weapons "give the game a show," and call for 

 superior skill in the man behind the gun. 



In the ethics of fair and gentlemanly sport with the shot- 

 gun, the automatic shotgun is like a pair of scales for the 

 weighing of men. As a separator of sheep from goats, it 

 has few equals and no superiors. 



One of the greatest battles for correct ethics in the killing 

 of game ever waged in any country was the fight against 

 the use of those machine guns for bird slaughter. They 



