130 WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 



who for selfish and unmanly reasons are, year 

 after year, willing and anxious to secure the repeal 

 of a good law and the enactment of a bad law to 

 the certain disgrace of the State, and without one 

 good reason for the retrogression that they de- 

 mand. 



Is there today one man in the New York legislature who 

 sincerely believes that this State can, for any reason or 

 group of reasons, go back to doe killing, even for one year, 

 without being publicly disgraced by that act? 



If the men of the Adirondacks, or the bungling hunters 

 of this State at large, are so lawless that in case they do 

 not now gain their end they will go on killing does and 

 leaving them in the woods to spoil, then on their heads 

 alone will fall the odium for the final extermination of the 

 deer of New York. 



Let us not make a bargain with bungling or lawless men 

 in order to induce them to be something different from what 

 they are said to be. If the deer-hunters finally exterminate 

 our deer, then let the last deer die, and the species dis- 

 appear from our State, before we sully our State reputation 

 and blacken a page of our State history by a disgraceful 

 and indefensible enactment. 



The people of this State who believe in manly sport and 

 good ethics in hunting now, as heretofore, rely upon the 

 Senate and the Assembly to refuse to send the State back 

 into savagery in the treatment of our deer. Last year some 

 of us did our utmost to prevent the initiative in game legis- 

 lation from being taken out of the hands of the elected 

 representatives of the people and being placed in the hands 

 of a geographically-selected commission of nine. We said 

 then, and we say now, that for twenty years the members 

 of the various legislatures of this State have so admirably 

 protected the interests of our wild life and of sport that 

 today New York is the foremost game-protecting state of 

 our country. In 1915 we stated that fact in 23 public 



