142 WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 



souri Idea." It represents two Kansas City sportsmen with 

 legal bags of ducks, and it was taken in the month of 

 March, 1912, just before the federal law against spring 

 shooting went into effect. It represents what the members 

 of the Interstate Sportsmen's Association desire to obtain 

 by a special dispensation to be wrung from the Biological 

 Survey by the use of the big stick and the sand-bag. 



REASONS AGAINST THE MISSOURI DEMAND 



The reasons against the granting of spring shooting (to 

 March 31) to the enemies of the migratory bird law in the 

 south central West are not far to seek, nor are they obscure 

 to the vision. They may be enumerated as follows : 



1. The principle of shooting game birds of any kind 

 during their spring migration for mating and breeding, is 

 exterminatory, barbarous, and utterly intolerable; and the 

 people of the United States as a body are opposed to it. 



2. The contentions of Missouri, that the ducks flying 

 through that State and Kansas do not mate in February and 

 March, and do not nest in Missouri and Kansas, are both 

 absolutely erroneous ; and direct evidence proving it to be 

 erroneous is submitted herewith from two unimpeachable 

 eye-witnesses, Dr. George W. Field and Mr. Eugene A. 

 Howe. 



3. The spring-shooting idea is now so abhorrent to the 

 people of the United States as a whole that they never 

 again will tolerate it unless the complete destruction of 

 the migratory bird law again makes it possible in a few 

 states that have no sense of shame. 



4. The law does not for one moment contemplate that 

 at this late day the sportsmen of any locality can secure 

 all the shooting, and all the game, that greed can desire; 

 and it does not undertake to give "all you want." In 

 America the all-you-want period of game killing has for- 

 ever disappeared! Legitimate hunting now remains only 

 as a mere remnant of sport that once was universal and 



