T he Game Breeder 



VOLUME XV 



SEPTEMBER, J9I9 



Co} 



SURVEY OF THE FIELD. 



NUMBER 6 



Farmers and Sportsmen. 



Long we have known that one of the 

 chief reasons why America became 

 gameless, or nearly so, is the lack of 

 harmony between the sportsmen and the 

 farmers who own most of the good 

 shooting grounds. 



Able agriculturists and prominent 

 sportsmen are aware of the inharmoni- 

 ous relation which has resulted in many 

 legal absurdities, a perfect bedlam in the 

 matter of game legislation and a chaotic 

 condition in the many court decisions 

 which have been rendered. The situa- 

 tion is well known to all lawyers of 

 ability. There are decisions that the 

 state owns the game; there are decisions 

 that the farmer owns it or has a "quali- 

 fied ownership" in it while it remains on 

 his farm. There are very few, if any, 

 decisions as to who owns the game pro- 

 duced by a rapidly growing industry. 

 There are laws and decisions which pre- 

 vent the sale of the desirable food, the 

 effects of which are to stop industry. 

 It has been decided that a person who 

 legally takes a desirable food bird by his 

 industry and at some expense does not 

 own it after he procures it. It is no 

 wonder that we have no game as a food 

 supply in America. 



Crimes Galore. 



Although the game laws and the de- 

 cisions have not produced, any game or 

 good shooting, or even kept the upland 

 game birds sufficiently plentiful to make 

 it safe to permit any shooting, they have 

 produced a vast amount of undesirable 

 crime, much of it of an unusual, startling 

 and even shocking character. Thou- 

 sands of arrests and convictions are 

 made and secured every year for of- 



fenses without moral turpitude; for 

 doing things, in fact, which are deemed 

 praiseworthy in all civilized countries 

 where the game is an abundant and 

 cheap food. The arrests and convictions 

 of people because they have stock birds 

 or eggs in their possession or because 

 they produce food on their farms or 

 even offer such food produced by indus- 

 try for sale, do not seem right to people 

 who are not professional game-savers, or 

 employed to make such arrests. 



Two Minks as an Illustration. 



A farmer in Iowa was arrested, con- 

 victed and fined for killing a mink in the 

 closed season for fur-bearing animals. 

 The mink had killed about fifty of the 

 farmer's hens. The farmer elected to 

 go to jail, although able to pay a fine. 

 A farmer in New Hampshire killed a 

 mink which was swimmnig behind his 

 geese in his pond. The Supreme Court 

 of the State decided that the farmer had 

 the right to defend his property. So 

 there you are. A crime and not a crime 

 to do the same thing in the United 

 States. There has been far too much 

 crime of this character in the country 

 and much of it can be obviated when 

 simple and proper game laws are 

 enacted. 



A sportsman legally killed a pheasant 

 in a county in New York where it was 

 legal to do so. In order to take the 

 food home to another county where it 

 was legal to possess the food he was 

 obliged to travel through a third county 

 having a closed season. Game wardens 

 aware of the fact traveled with the 

 owner of the food in order to make an 

 arrest in the proper county. 



People traveling through New Jersey 



