64 



THE, GAME BREEDER 



T^5 Game Breeder 



Published Monthly 



Edited by DWIGHT W. HUNTINGTON 



NEW YORK, MAY, 1917. 



TERMS : 



10 Cents a Copy— $1.00 a year in Advance. 



Postage free to all subscribers in the United States. 

 To All Foreign Countries and Canada, |i 25. 



The Game Conservation Society, Inc. 

 publishers, 150 nassau st., new york 



D. W. Huntington, President, 



F. R. Peixotto, Treasurer, 



J. C. Huntington, Secretary. 



Telephone. Beekman 3685. 



THREE YEARS OF CONFERRING 

 AND PREACHING. 



The third annual conference on game 

 breeding of the American Game Protec- 

 tive Association was interesting. Sev- 

 eral score of game wardens, breeders 

 and game keepers attended and numer- 

 ous excellent papers were read. 



A game breeder who attended asked 

 us if we could inform him where he 

 could get a few pair, or even one pair, 

 of ruffed grouse or prairie grouse for 

 breeding. He said he would pay $20 

 per pair. We informed him that many 

 members of our society have plenty of 

 grouse but that we feared the State and 

 national laws would prevent them from 

 selling or even giving him any birds. 



It occurred to us that after three years 

 of conferring by the Protective Associ- 

 ation and after more than three years 

 of preaching by The Game Breeder that 

 the progress in the production of grouse 

 for the market was not very encourag- 

 ing. 



As a result of the preaching, supple- 

 mented by the conferring, many States 

 have enacted laws permitting the profit- 

 able breeding of all or certain species of 

 game. Wild ducks, or perhaps we 

 should say near-wild ducks, have be- 

 come very abundant in many places and 

 where they are kept strong on the wing 

 they afford excellent shooting and eat- 



ing. Hundreds of thousands of pheas- 

 ants are now reared and at some places 

 the bag runs into thousands of birds in 

 a season. The birds are sold in the 

 markets in increasing numbers. We are 

 convinced the laws should be made more 

 liberal in order to permit the sale and 

 shipping of grouse both alive for prop- 

 agation and also as food in the markets. 

 Amend the laws and we will, at once, 

 send a lot of birds to the game farms 

 and preserves where they should be 

 produced in great abundance in protect- 

 ed fields and woods. 



We would suggest to the Game Pro- 

 tective Association that it get busy and 

 see that the laws permitting the profit- 

 able breeding of pheasants and ducks be 

 amended so as to permit the breeding of 

 all species, and we will encourage the 

 members of our society to increase the 

 numbers of their grouse; we are sure 

 they are now willing to sell some if such 

 sales can be legalized. 



REFLECTIONS ON "MORAL TUR- 

 PENTINE." 



There is a difference between acts 

 which are simply naughty and *those 

 which are criminal. 



There is a difference between crim- 

 inal acts which have and those which 

 have not the element of moral turpitude 

 — "moral turpentine," as the Southern 

 game warden expressed it when he said 

 he was forced to admit that game law 

 crimes do not contain this element of 

 wrong doing. 



Since there is, evidently, no "moral 

 turpentine" in trapping stock birds in 

 order to make ten food birds grow where 

 only one or none grew before, or in 

 having stock birds in possession for 

 breeding purposes (especially where the 

 birds have been acquired by purchase by 

 an owner who is unaware that he must 

 pay an advance penalty for the right to 

 produce food on his farm from stock 

 legally obtained), we do not think State 

 game officers should be permitted to raid 

 such innocent food producers, to confis- 

 cate their stock birds and to threaten 

 them with excessive fines and long terms 



