190 
WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 
own ground and hearing the thunder of a rising flock. Do 
not rob the boy of his rightful inheritance of wild game and 
gentlemanly sport with the gun. You have had your share; 
give him his. Give both him and his game a square deal! 
See to it that laws are passed right now that will give 
the boy a taste of what you have enjoyed in such abundance. 
Do not make it necessary for John and Billy to go to your 
state museum in order to see what a sage grouse looks like! 
Any man who will rob his boy of his share of game is— 
but I will let the Reader finish the sentence. 
Don’t butcher grouse in August. And don’t kill a wheel¬ 
barrow load of it in any one day. Put the grouse, the quail, 
the deer and the sheep on a continuing basis. If you kill 
more than the annual increase, as sure as Time that course 
will spell total extinction. Remember the greed and folly 
that wiped out the bison, the passenger pigeon, the heath 
hen and other species, so quickly that it was all over and 
done before people knew that it was happening. 
NO RESTOCKING POSSIBLE. 
NO! You can not now, nor at any time in the future, 
bring back the sage grouse, nor any other grouse, by breed¬ 
ing it in captivity, and restocking your barren covers with 
hand-reared birds! It can not be done. If you lose your 
American grouse and quail once , you lose them forever! 
Make no mistake about that. If you do not care to accept 
this statement from me alone, ask any other man who 
knows, to show you a state, or even one-tenth of a state, 
that has been restocked with quail or grouse, of any kind 
that has once been exterminated. 
The heath hen was brought back to its special game pre¬ 
serve on Martha’s Vineyard by ten years of careful nursing 
on its own ground , in a mild and natural state. In 1906 the 
whole existing stock consisted of 21 birds! On January 1, 
1916, the flocks contained about 2,000 birds; which was a 
great triumph for the bird defenders of Massachusetts. 
