THE GAME SHOOTER'S PLEA 



From the Des Moines Register, March 24, 1917. 

 By Leroy Miller. 



ALBIA, IA.— To the Editor: "The Game Shooter's Reply 

 to Hornaday" was a very proper heading to the labored 

 efforts of Mr. Seeburger. They usually masquerade as con- 

 servatives and protectors of game, and this, in spite of their 

 record of giving the protection "that vultures give to 

 lambs!" 



Native game in this country has always been on the road 

 to extinction because the "game shooters" and hunters have 

 had unbridled license to show us how to conserve it with 

 powder and lead and dogs. In the early seventies there 

 was nothing left of the countless millions of American buf- 

 falo except their bones scattered all over the prairies of the 

 west as telltale evidence of the savage, wasteful slaughter 

 of "game shooters" conserving game. 



There is other game they can no longer conserve because 

 it has succumbed to the ravages of these flesh-eating bipeds. 

 They have conserved out of existence the elk, the antelope 

 and mountain sheep, and the wild turkey and pheasant have 

 about all found salvation at the mouth of gun barrels. 



We read "by their fruits ye shall know them." This is 

 their fruit. They profess to be decent and respectable, but 

 they are outlaws. They will shoot game in season and out 

 of season. They will trespass when a farmer is absent from 

 home, regardless of signs of "no hunting allowed," even 

 shooting game in his garden. They shoot wild turkeys that 

 are white or red, and very tame. They are equal to steal- 

 ing the "livery of heaven to serve the devil in" when they 

 profess to be real conservators of game. 



