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THE GAME BREEDER 



York game banditti, who legally are en- 

 titled to dispossess people of the food 

 they own provided they decide to take 

 it home to eat. We thought the infested 

 region of New Jersey, where similar out- 

 rages occurred at one time, abundantly, 

 was the limit. The State game officer, 

 however, issued permits to some of the 

 writer's friends giving them a reasonably 

 safe journey through the infested region 

 until the band was broken tip. New 

 York now is . entitled to first honors 

 when it comes to . working "the annual 

 game law outrage." 



Quite a List of Prisoners. 



The article in the Sun gives the names 

 ojE quite a long list of prominent people 

 who were shaken down for various sums 

 (about what they would stand) in order 

 to avoid going to jail. They lost the 

 food they owned ; .they paid in order to 

 avoid going to jail. There are cities in 

 the United States where such outrages 

 are not tolerated. No regular policeman 

 could be found willing to perform the 

 nasty work the game police do. No self- 

 respecting sheriff or constable could be 

 found willing to perform as the game 

 police are required to perform. Hence 

 it is we must have an extraordinary 

 force, operating independently of the po- 

 lice, sheriffs and constables, whose 

 duties only require them to arrest people 

 who are guilty of wrongdoing. This ele- 

 ment of wrongdoing is absent in most of 

 our so-called game law crimes. 



Is it a crime to rear food birds? To 

 have food legally procured in possession ? 

 To take it home and eat it? Certainly 

 not! "Truly," said the dean of Amer- 

 ican sportsmen, Charles Hallock, "we 

 need a revolution of thought and a re- 

 vival of common sense." 



Let Her Go Gallagher and the Turkeys 



It was Gallagher who informed us 

 that we could not eat the wild turkeys, 

 reared by industrious game breeders and 

 donated to the Game Conservation So- 

 ciety for its dinner. Of course we did 

 not wish to have unsuspecting guests of 

 the society taken to the jails for such 

 crime and we gracefully submitted, using 

 tamer turkeys for the dinner. We can 



readily understand that the average game 

 policeman might make a mistake since 

 the wild turkey undoubtedly is related to 

 the quail and the quail is being "pro- 

 tected off the face of the earth," by game 

 laws, as the distinguished naturalist, Dr. 

 Shufeldt, has well said. 



We do not quite understand how it is 

 that turkeys not quite so wild as those 

 donated for the dinner are exempt from 

 "fool" game laws while the others (also 

 produced by industry) are not exempt. 

 To be logical it occurs to us the statutes 

 should protect the tame turkeys "off the 

 face of the earth." Blackstone says 

 criminal laws should be uniform, uni- 

 versal and easily to be understood. Why 

 it is a crime to eat one turkey produced 

 by industry and not another, which re- 

 sembles it more than it does a quail, we 

 fail to understand. 



A Dangerous Overflow. 



A man who called at the office of the 

 Game Breeder a few days ago said that 

 one of the gamekeepers at a club in 

 which we are interested told him the 

 following interesting little story. 



A neighbor remarked to the keeper 

 one day that he was tempted to shoot 

 one of the pheasants which overran his 

 place, evidently coming from the club 

 grounds. The keeper said he had heard 

 Mr. Huntington say that was what the 

 "overflow" was for, and that he was sure 

 there would be no objection if he shot 

 pheasants on his land, provided the game 

 officers did not object; the club certainly 

 would not. A few days later the neigh- 

 bor returned to say that he saw a bird 

 moving in some tall grass ; thought it 

 was a pheasant and fired, but he found 

 he had killed one of his own Plymouth 

 Rock hens. He wished to know if the 

 keeper thought the club would pay dam- 

 ages for the mistake which was due to 

 the advice given him by the keeper. 



Game Breeders' Advantages. 



Everyone now seems to agree to the 

 fact that game producers should have 

 some advantages ; otherwise there would 

 be no game breeding and in most places 

 there would be nothing but game laws. 

 Simply jailing people for having their 



