A Message From the President 
OUTLOOK FOR 1938 
Again we may preface our remarks with an optimistic note or 
two. I think it may safely be said that conservation, not only of birds, 
but of all forms of life, is on the march. The conviction is becoming 
increasingly stronger that it is high—yes, the highest-—time to save 
What may be saved in and of our great outdoors. Furthermore, this 
conviction is being crystallized into action more than ever before and, 
still better, into concerted action. The restrictions imposed by the 
federal Bureau of Biological Survey upon wholesale butchery of game 
birds, notably of ducks and geese, have certainly put a crimp into this 
nefarious business, for business it largely is, not sport. We are by 
no means assured that these regulations have been everywhere lived 
up to, nor that transgressions have been generally abated. With the 
naive—if not worse—disregard of laws so rampant in our country, 
that would be too much to expect, especially when it is condoned or 
even encouraged by politicians and office-holders in and out of hunting 
clubs. Violators, however, have become much more circumspect and 
timid in their killing operations. The most hopeful feature of the 
situation is that the federal government has now laid a firm hand 
on hunting and hunters, a hand that will become increasingly heavy 
on law-breakers, and greater effectiveness in the saving of the rem- 
nants of our wildlife may be hoped for. 
How much more needs to be done to eliminate game butchery, and 
make sport decent, sensible and law-abiding, can be seen from an 
excerpt from the following article entitled “The Duck Hunting Racket” 
(American Forests, February, 1937) : 
“Step into the cold-room of a produce house and gaze upon several 
thousand canvasback and black ducks destined, at fancy prices, to 
grace the tables of senators, diplomats, financial and social leaders in 
the National Capital. 
“Help pick up within sight of the Washington monument nearly 
two hundred dead and dying ducks slain by one blast from a nine- 
tubed market hunter’s gun. Or stand alongside a former chief con- 
servation officer of the United States, his identity concealed, and watch 
a long line of “paying guests” (at $10 per fifteen ducks) pour maga- 
zine gunfire into an escaping curtain of bewildered mallards not ten 
yards high. 
“Hear men of wealth and ostensible standing in a community, 
too lazy to hunt quail, boast of their wives’ buying arrangements with 
table bootleggers. Witness, season after season, a parade of hunters 
through commercial duck and goose shooting abattoirs, where, for a 
per diem beyond the reach of the average hunter, dissolute gunning 
tactics accumulate quick meat. 
“Such illustrations are mere drops in the bucket to what has and 
is taking place to obstruct national wildlife restoration. But they 
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