THE GAME BREEDER 



21 



By D. W. Huntington. 



Prior to publishing a series of articles 

 about the numerous enemies of game 

 and how to control them, I wish to 

 point out to sportsmen and farmers who 

 are equally interested in this subject the 

 importance of amending the laws in 

 places where such amendments are nec- 

 essary, so as to make it legal to trap 

 injurious game and poultry enemies at 

 any time on places where game or poul- 

 try are bred for profit. 



It cannot be denied that certain game 

 enemies are valuable on account of 

 their fur and that many of them are 

 TDcneficial in various ways. Certain 

 hawks, for example, are said to be ben- 

 eficial because they eat grasshoppers. 

 These may well be protected in places 

 where no game or poultry are reared, 

 but the owner of a pheasantry or poul- 

 try yard should have the right to de- 

 stroy them when they are observed do- 

 ing considerable damage to the food he 

 is engaged in producing. I have seen 

 places where the pheasants were so* tre- 

 mendously abundant that there were not 

 enough grasshoppers to go round. 



Certain game enemies destroy mice, 

 undoubtedly, but on places where game 

 and poultry are reared the mice can be 

 controlled with traps and terriers. I have 

 seen terriers on game farms that were 

 much faster in destroying both rats and 

 mice than the most skilled hawk or owl. 



In places where shooting has been 

 prohibited for ten years or more, the 

 deer have become abundant, largely be- 



cause the wolves and other enemies do 

 not occur, the deer often do damage to 

 the farmer's grain and fruit trees. Laws 

 protecting the deer have been amended 

 in some places so as to permit the farmer 

 to kill the deer when found injurious. 

 Such statutes are in harmony with a very 

 early decision in Massachusetts : the 

 court acquitted a man without leaving 

 the bench when it appeared that the deer 

 he shot was doing damage. 



I published the story some time ago of 

 a man who was arrested by a game war- 

 den because he killed a mink after it" had 

 destroyed fifty-seven of his hens. The 

 justice decided in favor of the game 

 warden (wrongly, I think) and the 

 owner of the hens elected not to pay 

 the fine but to go to jail. 



Such performances tend to bring the 

 laws into contempt and there have been 

 entirely too many such cases. 



The owners of game and poultry are 

 intelligent and industrious people. Easily 

 they can be persuaded not to destroy 

 species which are beneficial and harm- 

 less. They can not so easily be per- 

 suaded to harbor fur bearers or even 

 deer in places where these animals de- 

 stroy the profits of their industry. 



Game farmers and poultrymen are not 

 opposed to those who rear fur bearing 

 animals for profit; they are not op- 

 posed to laws protecting any harmful 

 species on public lands or on private 



(^Continned on poge ^5.) 



