F 0 R E S T AND S T REAM 
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This Sort of Trenching Often Calls the Bait Fishing Reservist Out of Bed at Dawn 
States Federal Inspector for the Lacy Act, relat¬ 
ing to interstate game shipments. He states the 
records of transportation companies show nearly 
200,000 ducks shipped out of Arkansas to Illinois 
during October, November, December, and part of 
January, 1915. The Supreme Court of Arkan¬ 
sas has since decided the exemption of the Chic- 
asawba District to be unconstitutional. This de¬ 
cision, with the new Illinois law and the Mis¬ 
souri law, should put the game sellers and ship¬ 
pers entirely out of business. 
The market shooters were so audacious that 
they did not hesitate to trespass upon the exten¬ 
sive property of the Big Lake Shooting Club and 
conduct a reign of terror, resulting in the shoot¬ 
ing of club keepers and the destruction of club 
houses, one being valued at $20,000. The mem¬ 
bers of this famous club comprised prominent cit¬ 
izens of several states, but their hunting privi¬ 
leges were usually of doubtful value owing to the 
bitter feeling of the several hundred market 
shooters who operated in that locality. 
Conservationists in the East probably have 
never dreamed of such enormous destruction of 
waterfowl as has been going on for years in 
these overflowed sunken lands of Missouri, Ar¬ 
kansas and Tennessee, caused by the earthquake 
of 1811. 
These lands are so extensive and so favorably- 
located that no better place exists anywhere for 
waterfowl to congregate during the entire open 
season provided by the Federal regulations and 
not a single protest was made by the market 
hunters, as the former Illinois law allowed the 
sale of ducks, “from other states,” during Octo¬ 
ber, November, December and January. Mis¬ 
souri prohibited all sale of game, no matter where 
killed, but Illinois only prohibited the sale of 
game killed within her borders. Thus we can 
note what a fine monopoly was enjoyed by these 
Arkansas market hunters and the Illinois dealers. 
Arkansas law prohibits residents from other 
states from hunting there (except non-residents 
owning property in Arkansas, when hunting on 
their own premises, but not for export). 
Is it possible to appreciate how adroitly the 
commercial interests secured the enactment of 
such legislation, or was all this merely a coinci¬ 
dence? 
The northern and middle western states were 
producing annually a great duck crop to be har¬ 
vested by this monopoly. In some localities in 
these states, during the fall seasons provided un¬ 
der the Federal law, the weather was so dry 
that the migrating ducks would hurry on to the 
Arkansas market shooters’ paradise. Sportsmen 
protested at the regulations and were called “en¬ 
emies of wild life,” though the market shooters 
were getting the cream of the shooting and sell¬ 
ing ducks as a monopoly in Arkansas. In Illi¬ 
nois the Federal season is closed on wood ducks 
until 1918. In Arkansas there is no closed sea¬ 
son especially for wood ducks, though in no 
other state are so many killed as in Arkansas. 
Thus we see again how residents of Illinois 
could not shoot wood ducks legally but they could 
purchase them (until the recent state law was 
passed) because the Federal migratory bird law 
contains absolutely no provision against posses¬ 
sion after the Federal closed season, nor bag 
limit shipment or sale during the open season. 
Is it therefore surprising that sportsmen who 
have always been the backbone of the game pro¬ 
tection movement, protested at curtailment of 
their reasonable sport while the commercial in¬ 
terests were laughing at their dilemma of being 
classed as “enemies of wild life,” by persons who 
did not understand the intolerable conditions? 
Now we have opportunity of noting what real 
conservation means. Let me name for special 
praise in this Illinois campaign, for their constant 
and untiring efforts, Senator J. G. Bardill of 
Highland, chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Fish and Game; Representative Arthur Roe of 
Vandalia, chairman of House Committee on Fish 
and Game, besides other legislators—Messrs. Wm. 
J. Graham of Aledo, Robert Scholes of Peoria 
and Senator Dailey, also James H. Aldous of 
Alton, president of Madison County Sportsmen’s 
League, and Arthur D. Holthaus of St. Louis, 
representing the American Game Protective 
League. 
In the Missouri campaign, the Legislative Com¬ 
mittee was: Clark McAdams, H. F. Mardorf, J. 
R. Hickman, A. D. Holthaus and E. T. Grether. 
There were thirty-six organizations and clubs in 
the campaign managed by the Missouri Fish and 
Game League. 
FROM A VIRGINIA SUBSCRIBER 
Hampden-Sidney, Va. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I am glad to be able to say that I like the pres¬ 
ent Forest and Stream very much, and I hope 
that you will never have cause to regret the 
change. There is nothing in the reading line that 
pleases me more than a good story of a quail 
or partridge hunt. M. Blake Mount. 
NEBRASKA FISHING IN WINTER. 
That the older ideas about the proper seasons 
for shooting and fishing have undergone a very 
material change in these modern times, is evi¬ 
denced by the fact that, in this particular lati¬ 
tude, anyway, we could have, if the law did not 
forbid, good fishing—bass, croppie, perch and 
sunfish, all through the winter months. When 
our lakes are not sealed up in icy fetters, on 
any fairly warm and sunshiny day, it is no 
trick at all to make as good a catch of these 
varieties as mark the endeavors of the angler in 
June or July. They will take their minnow or 
worm through a hole in the ice with as much 
avidity as they do in midsummer. 
Sandy Griswold. 
