166 



THE GAME BREEDER 



with food legally procured were appre- 

 hended so often that the matter became 

 a public scandal and disgrace until an 

 able state officer put an end to the per- 

 formance and the graft and fines due 

 to the game laws. People shooting in 

 the South and returning with food le- 

 gally taken were held up and fined upon 

 their return home until the New York 

 State Game Officer denounced the per- 

 formances and put an end to them. A 

 vast amount of crime of this character 

 has not resulted in the people having 

 cheap game to eat or even in the sports- 

 men having good shooting. 



Opposing Interests. 



Organized sportsmen and game-savers 

 'continually are at work pushing new 

 legislation supposed to be in the interest 

 of saving the game for shooting. Or- 

 ganized farmers continually urge the 

 legislators to make further restrictions 

 intended to keep the gunners off the 

 farms. As a last resort the farmers al- 

 ways favor laws prohibiting shooting for 

 terms of years or forever, although in 

 so doing they prohibit themselves from 

 eating a desirable food which always 

 should be abundant on the farms, and 

 profitably so, and which should be a 

 cheap food for all of the people. 



Hostile Interests. 



Those who have studied the subject 

 are well aware that to continue to enact 

 the legislation asked for annually by the 

 farmers who own the shooting grounds 

 and the sportsmen who propose to make 

 the laws regulating sport on the farms, 

 can only result in the sportsmen having 

 no shooting and in the farmers having 

 very little or no game and certainly none 

 to eat or sell. 



The importance of making a simple 

 law satisfactory to both interests is evi- 

 dent. If a short, simple enactment, sat- 

 isfactory to both the farmers and the 

 sportsmen, can be placed in the books, 

 millions of dollars which annually are 

 wasted in the efforts to secure new laws 

 and in various game saving enterprises 

 can be saved. Thousands of contradic- 

 tory statutes and court decisions and' 



many thousands of improper arrests can 

 be done away with. Legal traps and 

 snares for the unwary and really inno- 

 cent people can be abolished. State Game 

 Departments can be made of great eco- 

 nomic importance. 



What Can Be Done. 



Having interviewed hundreds of 

 sportsmen and some farmers and others 

 interested in agriculture, we have ar- 

 rived at the. conclusion that a short, sim- 

 ple law which will remain permanent 

 and which will put an end to a vast 

 amount of legislation and litigation can 

 be written and enacted. Before such 

 a law can be enacted it is quite necessary 

 that the whole subject of game manage- 

 ment should be studied and that a wide 

 publicity be given to the investigations 

 which must be made in order to deter- 

 mine what can be accomplished. It will 

 be necessary for the sportsmen to con- 

 cede that the farmer has the right to per- 

 mit or prohibit shooting on his farm. It 

 seems necessary to admit that it should 

 not be a crime profitably to produce the 

 desirable food on the farms and to sell 

 it under proper regulations. We have 

 failed to find a single person who will 

 say that the profitable production of food 

 should be criminal. If any such there 

 be we will be glad to give publicity to 

 his reasons for the assertion and will 

 pay for the article. 



There is a nation-wide regret that the 

 game laws have not resulted in preserv- 

 ing upland shooting. Sportsmen, with 

 the possible exception of some sporting 

 politicians, are quite ready to have an 

 investigation made in order to determine 

 if it is necessary to put the quail on the 

 song-bird list and to prohibit upland 

 shooting for terms of years or forever. 

 All sportsmen, we are quite sure, are 

 ready to have the subject carefully 

 studied by those interested in agricul- 

 ture and those sincerely interested in 

 field sports. Prominent naturalists 

 should be consulted about the natural 

 laws relating to the increase and decrease 

 of species and the control of harmful 

 species and the kind and amount of such 

 control, with a view to disposing of this 



