JUNE 30, 1906.] 
fewer pleasures and less healthful recreation 
than their fathers. 
But if we could protect the migratory game 
throughout all that region of some twenty 
States by an undeviating and equal system of 
fines and imprisonment, which only the national 
Government can wield, the wild fowl would 
rapidly become numerous again, and within ten 
years the American people would have an asset 
worth hundreds of millions of dollars in money 
and food value and a still greater number of 
millions in pleasure, health and beauty. 
We do not want this country to become a 
mere civilized desert, filled with mere numbers 
like China, a materialized population that can 
do nothing but trade, eat and sleep, without 
appreciating and enjoying nature, or the cppor- 
tunity for such enjoyment. But it is towards 
that Chinese civilization that we are tending. 
The wonderful bird and animal life of the 
continent is as much a value in the long run 
as the coal mines, and if the cultivation of 
human character in both its spiritual and in- 
tellectual sides is as important as is generally 
supposed, it is well worth upholding by the 
labor and difficulty of saving the birds and 
animals by an amendment to the Constitution . 
for the benefit of the whole people. 
As it is now, the wild fowl are for the benefit 
of only two classes; (1), a very limited number 
of market gunners who are willing to exter- 
minate them and then turn to something else; 
and (2) a still smaller number of millionaires 
who have bought up great tracts of marsh lands 
into which they decoy the few remaining ducks 
by baiting the ground with corn. 
I have seen some of these great preserves. 
They are not what I mean by preserving. Under 
the present conditions, in which no State will 
enforce laws for the protection of wild fowl, 
the cunning millionaires buy up certain marsh 
feeding grounds, appoint and pay capable men 
to police the ground, keep off all intruders and 
scatter corn over the marsh. The birds shot and 
tormented night and day in every part of their 
flight, come to these millionaire havens of 
refuge in great numbers, feed on the corn and 
become so tame that when within a few weeks 
after the season opens a few members of the 
club come down, they can kill sometimes one 
chundred in a day. 
I once visited one of these preserves, in which 
the tidal creeks leading into the marsh were 
fenced across at the mouth with a gate in the 
middle, padlocked, and the key in the pocket of 
the gamekeeper, so that no one but members 
could enter the creeks. About two hundred 
bushels of corn had been distributed that year. 
The men on guard were of a good class in the 
community, courageous and respectable, well 
armed and well paid and fulfilled their duties to 
the letter. No living soul could enter that pre- 
serve unauthorized. It was in February when I 
visited the club and they showed me the record 
of game that had been shot since November, 
hamely, five thousand and nine head, by the 
twelve active members of the club. 
This is not preserving. It is nothing but a 
‘mere trap to entice game, persecuted every- 
where else, into one place where it can be tamed 
and exterminated by twelve men. All isolated 
nstances of preserving will have the same effect. 
Nothing but a general system covering about 
cwenty States of the Union can possibly be of 
any real benefit. 
Let us follow the example of the millionaires, 
(out extend it in a more democratic way. Let us 
jave game wardens like theirs, who know 
\1either fear nor favor, in twenty States of the 
Union to preserve the wild towl and all the 
\oeautful bird and animal life of the continent, 
1ot for twelve rich men, or for a few score of 
»xterminating shooters, but for the whole 
American people to have in it their regulated 
ind continuous share of pleasure and profit for 
over. 
It can be done. If they can preserve game in 
Zurope, we can do it in America. In fact, the 
uuccess which has attended the protection of 
vild fowl in the north of Europe leads one to 
‘uppose that, by proper laws and protection, we 
night in this country soon have even more wild 

FOREST AND STREAM. 

1033 

fowl than were here one hundred years ago, for, 
when given proper protection and the shooting 
judiciously regulated, certain kinds of game 
thrive better near civilization than in a wilder- 
ness. This is notoriously true of quail, which 
are at their best when protected in a cultivated 
country which contains a certain amount of 
cover. Experiments with wild mallards seem 
to indicate that they would also come within this 
rule, which, in my mind, receives an additional 
illustration from the enormous quantities of 
game I saw some years ago in the Nile Valley in 
Egypt in the midst of a teeming population 
which has been there for thousands of years. 
I might go on illustrating the subject from the 
enormous supplies of game still found in Eng- 
land, where there is to-day 100 per cent. better 
shooting and at less expense than in America; 
and I might show how this has added to the 
value of land in that country, as can easily be 
seen by reading the advertisements of “Shoot- 
ings to rent” in The London Field. There are 
apparently several real estate firms who devote 
themselves to renting these shooting privileges, 
which are often more valuable than farming, and 
in many cases bring in a revenue in addition to 
that of the farming. 
Our national Government has begun game 
regulating in the Territories and tracts of land 
like the Yellowstone Park, where Congress, 
having by the Constitution full jurisdiction, can 
make game laws and impose fine and imprison- 
ment for disobedience of them. Success has al- 
ready attended these efforts, and the next 
natural step is an amendment to give Congress 
constitutional power to pass laws protecting and 
regulating the shooting of migratory game all 
over the country, and the enforcement of these 
laws should be put in charge of a department, 
possibly the Department of Agriculture. 
The fitness of the national over the State gov- 
ernments for this purpose is obvious because, 
among other reasons, migratory birds are inter- 
state birds, and Congress was, by the original 
Constitution, given power over interstate com- 
merce. Every railroad running out of one State 
into another, and every pound of freight carried 
out of one State into another, can be regulated 
by Congress because the framers of the Consti- 
tution clearly saw over a hundred years ago 
that the States could not in practice come to an 
agreement among themselves on such a subject. 
Two of them might possibly agree; but if the 
freight should be carried through five or six of 
them, agreement would become impossible; and 
when it is carried across the continent an 
attempt at agreement is absurd. 
I suppose I shall be laughed at for comparing 
ducks to business enterprise. But let us see. A 
pair of canvasbacks coming from their breed- 
ing place in Alaska at the rate of eighty miles 
an hour, crossing the State lines of the Dakotas, 
Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsyl- 
vania and alighting in Chesapeake Bay, are a 
commodity of definite money value, for, when 
shot, they are worth in the Philadelphia market 
at least $7 for the pair. They weigh about ten 
pounds and cost no freight from Alaska to the 
Chesapeake. They cost merely the expense of 
shooting them; and I doubt if any interstate rail- 
road hauls much freight except gold dust and 
diamonds that pound for pound is more valuable 
than these interstate birds. 
But they have a still greater value of indefinite 
amount. For our sins or the mistakes of our 
ancestors, thousands of us live sedentary lives 
in the cities where we turn ourselves into old 
women writing letters and backing documents 
to be shoved into pigeon holes. 
restoring our manhood and knowing once more 
the zest of real life, we are willing to spend a 
very considerable sum of money every year on 
boats, decoys, guns and general outfit, and em- 
ploy men at good wages in order to be near 
enough to hear the swish of wings and restore 
our nerves by the sight of what is, on the whole, 
perhaps the most wonderful wild life of the 
world. 
We are not anxious to kill great numbers, like 
the market shooters. The number killed by one 
market shooter in a single season would keep 
over a hundred sportsmen going for several 
For the sake of - 
years, and the hundred sportsmen would employ 
as many boatmen, besides spending considerable 
money in other ways in the locality of their 
sport. The market shooter, night hunter and 
netter is both a fool and a criminal. He is 
exterminating his own source of livelihood for 
the future, killing the goose that lays the golden 
egg, and destroying the profit and pleasure of 
hundreds for the sake of the gratification of one. 
Any other duck would be as good an illustra- 
tion as the canvasback. The poor little ruddy 
duck, called a greaser in the Chesapeake, and 
twenty years ago thought not worth shooting, is 
now, I find, called a breakfast duck, and a 
restaurant had the goodness to offer me one 
very much dried up in the cooking for the 
extravagant sum of one dollar and a half. 
Figure it out any way you like on the canvas- 
backs, the redheads, the black ducks, the mall- 
ards, the broadbills or the sprigtails, it is all the 
same thing. Every year they are passing through 
the air going from or returning to the north, 
crossing scores of State lines, flying freight, the 
fastest in the world, worth from two dollars to 
seven dollars a pair in fixed value, and perhaps 
$50 or $100 a pair in the other value which I 
have mentioned. Multiply these figures by 
hundreds of thousands, ‘or whatever you decide 
the numbers of the annual flight to be. Do you 
mean to tell me that when shiftless, unthinking 
or criminal persons threaten to destroy and ex- 
terminate all this value on its interstate passage 
in the air, that there is any less reason for giv- 
ing Congress authority to protect it than for 
giving them authority to regulate interstate 
freight carried along the ground? 
But I have already taken up too much of your 
time in giving my own impressions of a subject 
which you know more about than I do. I am 
writing merely to suggest that. as a statesman, 
you will not forget to consider the remedies for 
the situation, for on such men as you the poor 
sportsmen and nature lovers must rely for the 
little pleasure that may be left them in this 
country. 
I am sure you will understand my motive in 
addressing you, and I have the honor to remain, 
SypNnEy G. FISHER, 
“Forest and Stream” Prize Heads. 
For moose and deer heads taken in 1905, the 
ForEST AND STREAM offered prizes of $20, $10 and 
$5 respectively for the best moose heads, and $15, 
$10 and $5 for other’heads. The prizes have been 
awarded as follows: 
Moose heads: First prize, J. B. Townsend, Jr., 
Philadelphia; second, James Lyle, Washington, 
Pa.; third, W. C. Witherbee, Port Henry, N. Y. 
“Deer heads: First, E. M. Wixon, Wayne, 
N, Y.; second, Francis Lee Jaques, Aitkin, Minn. ; 
third, E. Graves, Haddonfield, N. J. 
The winning moose head will be illustrated in 
our next issue, and the other heads in following 
numbers. 
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