136 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 22, 1911. 
The Use of Game. 
Copper Center, Alaska, July 3.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: I have been a regular reader of 
Forest and Stream for a third of a century 
and am somewhat familiar with the evolution of 
the game laws of the various States. During 
that time I have seen our game birds and ani¬ 
mals becoming scarcer and scarcer, until now the 
problem of game conservation is getting des¬ 
perate and serious, and has simmered down to 
the one of prevention of utter extinction. 
Nearly fifty years of application of man-made 
laws, aimed in the main to meet petty special 
and exceptional cases of game destruction in¬ 
stead of based upon general principles of pro¬ 
tection and conservation, have accomplished 
what ? 
Only those who saw the buffalo and antelope 
on the plains of fifty years ago; only those that 
witnessed the passing of the passenger pigeon 
and the wild turkey, know the story and can 
realize to what an end we have arrived. Once 
I thought the story of the buffalo might be made 
to serve as an object lesson in conservation, but 
so long as the civilization of to-day is steeped 
deeper in the crime of extermination than was 
the civilization of yesterday, object lessons are 
of no avail. 
The crime of the past may be condoned, but 
what of to-day? The Indian and the buffalo 
barred the trail of civilization and they had to 
go. One of our Alaska statesmen, a learned 
judge, only yesterday publicly proclaimed that 
the complete and speedy annihilation of the en¬ 
tire fur seal herd was the only solution of the 
diplomatic problem of preventing a war with 
Japan. In the story of the fur seal and sea 
otter are we not right now with wide open eyes 
re-enacting the tragedy of the buffalo? 
Once it was thought that men could be edu¬ 
cated up to a certain standard known as true 
sportsmen, men that would be content with a fair 
bag, men who would consider it dishonorable to 
pot a bevy of quail on the ground. Some there 
be that saw the light, but until the millennium 
there will be game hogs just as there will always 
be money hogs. Many there be that claim the 
name sportsman that would pot the quail and 
openly preach against the market hunter and 
game hog. The sportsman of fifty years ago 
who, armed with a club, killed a wagon load 
of helpless nestling squabs, was not more de¬ 
structive than the sportsman of to-day armed 
with his modern gun and cartridges, and when 
it comes to the ethics of the two periods—well, 
evolution works along lines of least resistance. 
So from time to time the law was invoked to 
control those who would or could not see the 
light. 
We certainly have an abundance of game laws, 
some of them very drastic, some unconstitutional, 
some conflicting, some inconsistent, some absurd, 
some vicious, all more or less compromises. As 
our game becomes scarcer and scarcer, more 
stringent laws will be hatched out until the legis¬ 
lative mine wiil be exhausted or the game all 
gone. Directly or indirectly, the sportsmen, 
sportsmen’s associations, game wardens and 
sportsmen’s journals have claimed the glory and 
credit for these laws. It is true they did not 
always get what they wanted ; for on the slightest 
alarm of opposition, sandbags of compromise 
were thrown out right and left to save the little 
they obtained. If the sportsmen claim the credit 
and are responsible for our present system of 
game laws, is it not about time to take an in¬ 
ventory of results? The principle of State 
ownership of all native game now generally ac¬ 
cepted, even by Congress, is one of the strongest 
planks in the game conservation platform. The 
State—and by the State I mean all the people— 
have an interest in the conservation and use of 
their game. As yet the State has exerted only 
a sentimental interest in game resources, and 
has not yet arrived at the stage of a scientific 
business management. The farmer has a direct 
traceable interest in game and especially in game 
bird conservation. Once he assumed that be¬ 
cause he fed and sheltered the game, he owned 
it. In spite of the accepted principle of State 
ownership, the farmer still holds the club that 
brings the gunner to time. Finally, the sports¬ 
man has an interest. 
Up to the present time the sportsman class 
have been the only ones to make any effort to 
protect and conserve their interests in game. 
Necessary appropriation to enforce its provisions 
without the best game law that was ever drafted 
would be powerless for good. Might just as well 
leave out the enacting clause. Yet this is just 
what sportsmen and game wardens have been 
getting for fifty years—self-enforcing game laws. 
The sportsmen patted themselves on the back 
and said: “Now we have got him,” but the 
public looked on and laughed. So after a half 
century of periodical alternate passing and re¬ 
pealing of game laws, we find our statute books 
burdened with unconstitutional, vicious, conflict¬ 
ing, inconsistent compromises, game laws with¬ 
out enforcing clauses that stand as a huge bluff 
with which to conserve the game resources of 
the people. Is it not about time that we take 
heed of past experience and seriously inquire 
into the cause of game extinction? If nature is 
at fault, is it not time for science to study the 
problem with a view of assisting nature? If 
our game laws are at fault, is it not about time 
to inquire into the cause and apply a remedy? 
In Massachusetts they claim deer are increas¬ 
ing to such an extent as to become a menace to 
agriculture. Here where we have a population 
of only one human being for every area as large 
as Massachusetts, game i§ not increasing so 
rapidly, and we have similar laws backed by 
Uncle Sam with his powerful army and navy. 
My summer home is above the clouds. From 
my tent as I write this I can see a thousand 
mountain sheep, ewes and lambs grazing just 
at the foot of the glacier. To the right just 
over the ridge is the summer range of the 
rams. I can go there in two hours and see a 
hundred bands of from six to twelve rams. Five 
years ago that range supported ten sheep where 
now only one can be found. In another five 
years that one will be gone. Another chapter 
in the drama of extinction will have been writ¬ 
ten, civilization will give an inaudible sigh, and 
the first pages of the next chapter of the great 
crime will be in type. And yet, if some noble- 
hearted philanthropist should capture a pair of 
those sheep to raise them in captivity to prevent 
their extinction, he could only do so by a will¬ 
ful violation of law. He might capture them 
legally, take them to the States, there to be 
hounded by hair-splitting-letter-of-the-law game 
wardens. There is but one country in the world 
where man is actually free, Alaska, where there 
is no law of God or man. We burn a million 
feet of timber to make a mosquito smudge. We 
glut and despoil and gobble without restraint of 
law or officer. We starve the Indian just to 
see him squirm. We shoot mountain sheep— 
the noblest game God ever made—from the cliffs 
just to see them tumble. We howl about fair 
play and graft while we ourselves are looting 
and. grafting the people's heritage. We have 
neither sentiment nor gratitude. We proclaim 
our best benefactors, the capitalists, as thieves 
and slugs just to bamboozle Congress and the 
people, and we have succeeded beyond all expec¬ 
tation, and yet I would rather live in Alaska 
than in a State where it is a misdemeanor to 
own a ferret, where it is evidence presumptive 
of a violation of a game law if one looks cross¬ 
eyed at a deer; or in a State where one is com¬ 
pelled to wear a red shirt in the woods. 
Suppose I wanted to hunt that noble game, 
bre’r rabbit, in Maryland, a State smaller than 
one of our ordinary glaciers? I would have to 
hire a lawyer for a guide to steer me through 
the nineteen or twenty different open and closed 
seasons in as many different counties. Why, 
even Kansas offers better inducements—see the 
picture of the great pile of rabbit ears in a re¬ 
cent Forest and Stream. Suppose that after 
making my pile in Alaska I desired to come to 
New York and engage in the pleasant and profit¬ 
able business of skunk farming! One of your 
wardens nosing around might smell a skunk in 
my possession out of season and straightaway 
have me fined a hundred dollars (see recent 
papers). I do not blame the wardens; it is the 
law. Just now the tendency of critics is to place 
the small boy—the farmer's small boy—with his 
willow pole and grub worm bait in the class of 
game destroyers, and no doubt legislation will 
be invoked to eliminate the small boy as a factor 
in game depletion. You will find it easier to 
suppress the entire sale and manufacture of fire¬ 
arms than to suppress the small boy. Try it and 
see the American dad rise up in behalf of the 
constitutional rights of the small boy. 
Some day—and it is not very far distant— 
the farmer, the fish breeder, the game breeder, 
the fur breeder, will unite with hotel and res¬ 
taurant interests and rise in their might and wipe 
out every unconstitutional clause that now bur¬ 
dens our game laws. They might have done so 
long ago, but for indifference and lack of or¬ 
ganization. It is a sad commentary on a so- 
called enlightened civilization that it is neces¬ 
sary for interests and classes to combine to 
secure just and equitable laws. When men rep¬ 
resenting sportsmen's associations argue before 
a legislative committee against game breeding, 
and argue that only the class of people who want 
a hot bird and a cold bottle after the theater 
are the ones that demand game as food, such 
arguments are absurd and will hasten the day 
when our present vicious system of game laws 
will be surely wiped out. 
C. W. IT Heideman. 
A Lightning Rod. 
Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler" has 
nothing to say as to the risk of angling with a 
steel rod behind a power house. That lesson 
Max Engles learned for himself one day at 
Mariette, Wis. But they had to work over him 
for some time before he knew that he had 
learned it.-—Springfield Republican. 
