Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 47

The local exemptions in favor of market hunters in Mississippi county should be repealed.

It appears that in Arkansas the laws for the protection and increase of wild life are by no means up to the mark. At this moment, Arkansas is next to Florida, the rearmost of all our states in wild-life protection.

Awake, Arkansas! Consider the peril that threatens your fauna. The Sunk Lands, in your northeastern corner along the St. Francis River, are the greatest wild-fowl refuge anywhere in the Mississippi Valley between the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the breeding-grounds of Minnesota. A duty to the nation devolves upon you, to protect the migratory waterfowl that visit your great bird refuge from the automatic and pump guns of the pothunters who shoot for northern markets, and kill all that they can kill. _Protect those Sunken Lands_! Confer a boon on all the people of the Mississippi Valley by making that region a bird refuge in fact as well as in name.

Heretofore, you have permitted hired market gunners from outside your borders to slaughter the wild-fowl of your Sunk Lands literally by millions, and s.h.i.+p them to northern markets, with very little benefit to your people. It is time for that slaughter to cease. Don't maintain a duck and goose shambles in Mississippi County, year after year, as North Carolina does! Do unto other states as you would have other states do unto you. _Do not_ be afraid to pa.s.s nine good laws in one act. Clear your record in the Family of States, and save your fauna before it is too late. It is not fair for you to permit the slaughter of the insectivorous birds that are like the blood of life to the farmer and fruit grower.

CALIFORNIA:

The sale of all wild game should be forever prohibited.

The use of automatic and pump shotguns, in hunting, should be prohibited.

The killing of pigeons and doves as "game" and "food" should be stopped.

The sage grouse and every other species of bird threatened with extinction should be given ten year close seasons.

The mule deer (if any remain) and the Columbian black-tailed deer in the southern counties should be accorded a ten-year close season.

A large state game preserve should be created immediately, on or near Mount Shasta and abundantly stocked with nucleus herds of antelope, black-tailed deer, bison and elk.

A suitable preserve in the southern part of the state should be set aside for the dwarf elk.

As game laws are generally regarded, California has on her books a series that look rather good to the eye, but which are capable of considerable improvement. All along the line, the birds and quadrupeds of the Golden State are vanis.h.i.+ng! Under that heading, a vigorous chapter could be written; but s.p.a.ce forbids its development here. Just fancy laws that permit gunning and hunting with dogs, from August until January--one-half the entire year! Think of the nesting birds that are disturbed or killed by dogs and gunners after other birds!

California's wild ducks and geese have been slaughtered to an extent almost beyond belief. The splendid sage grouse and the sharp-tailed grouse are greatly reduced in numbers. Of her hundreds of thousands of antelope, once the cheapest game in the market, scarcely "a trace"

remains. Her mountain sheep and mule deer are almost extinct. Her grizzly bears are gone!

The most terrible slaughter ever recorded for automatic guns occurred in Glenn County, Cal., on Feb. 5, 1906, when two men (whose story was published in _Outdoor Life_, xvii, p. 371, April, 1906), killed 450 geese in one day, and actually bagged 218 of them in _one hour_!

Every person who has paid attention to game protection on the Pacific coast well knows that during the past eight years or more, the work of game protection in California has been in a state of frequent turmoil.

At times the lack of harmony between the State Fish and Game Commission and the sportsmen of the state has been damaging to the interests of wild life, and deplorable. In the case of Warden Welch, in Santa Cruz County, pernicious politics came near robbing the state of a splendid warden, but the courts finally overthrew the overthrowers of Mr. Welch, and reinstated him.

The fish and game commissioners of any state should be broad-minded, non-partisan, strictly honest and sincere. So long as they possess these qualities, they deserve and should have the earnest and aggressive support of all sportsmen and all lovers of wild life. The remnant of wild life is ent.i.tled to a square deal, and harmony in the camp of its friends. Fortunately California has an excellent force of salaried game wardens (82 in all) and 577 volunteer wardens serving without salary.

COLORADO:

The State of Colorado should instantly stop the sale of native wild game to be used as food.

It should stop all late winter and spring shooting of native wild birds.

It should give the sage grouse, pinnated grouse and all sh.o.r.e birds a ten year close season, remove the dove from the list of game birds, and give it a permanent close season.

It should remove the crane and the swan from the list of game birds.

In twenty-five short years we have seen in Colorado a waste of wild life and the destruction of a living inheritance that has few parallels in history. Possibly the people of Colorado are satisfied with the residuum; but some outsiders regard all Rocky Mountain shambles with a feeling of horror.

A brief quarter-century ago, Colorado was a zoological park of grand scenery and big game. The scenery remains, but of the great wild herds, only samples are left, and of some species not even that.

The last bison of Colorado were exterminated in Lost Park by scoundrels calling themselves "taxidermists," in 1897. Of the 200,000 mule deer that inhabited Routt County and other portions of Colorado, not enough now remain to make deer hunting interesting. A perpetual close season was put on mountain sheep just in time to save a dozen small flocks as seed stock. Those flocks have been permitted to live, and they have bred until now there are perhaps 3,500 sheep in the state. Of elk, only a remnant is left, now protected for fifteen years.

The grizzly bear is so thoroughly gone that one is seen only by a rare accident; but black bears and pumas are sufficiently numerous to afford fair sport, provided the hunter has a fine outfit of dogs, horses and guides. Of p.r.o.ng-horned antelope, several bands remain, but it is reported that they are steadily diminis.h.i.+ng. The herds and herders of domestic sheep are blamed for the decrease, and I have no doubt they deserve it. The sheep and their champions are the implacable enemies of all wild game, and before them the game vanishes, everywhere.

The lawmakers of Colorado have tried hard to provide adequate statutes for the protection of the wild life of the state. In fact, I think that no state has put forth greater or more elaborate efforts in that direction. For example, in 1899, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Judge D.C.

Beaman of Denver, Colorado initiated the "more game movement," by enacting a very elaborate law providing for the establishment of private game preserves and farms for the breeding of game under state license, and the tagging and sale of preserve-bred game under state supervision.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAND-TAILED PIGEON Often Mistaken for the Pa.s.senger Pigeon. The rapid Slaughter of this Species has Alarmed the Ornithologists of California, who now fear its Extinction]

The history of game destruction in Colorado is a repet.i.tion of the old, old story,--plenty of laws, but a hundred times too many hunters, killing the game both according to law and contrary to it, and doing it five times as fast as the game could breed. That combination can safely be warranted to wipe out the wild life of any country in the world, and accomplish it right swiftly.

As a big-game country, Colorado is distinctly out of the running. Her people are too lawless, and her frontiersmen are, in the main, far too selfish to look upon plenteous game without going after it. Some of these days, a new call of the wild will arise in Colorado, demanding an open season on mountain sheep. Those who demand it will say, "What harm will it do to kill a few surplus bucks? It will improve the breed, and make the herds increase faster!"

By all means, have an "open season" on the Colorado big-horn and the British Columbia elk. It will "do them good." The excitement of ram slaughter will be good for the females, will it not? Of course, they will breed faster after that,--with all the big rams dead. Any "surplus"

wild life is a public nuisance, and should promptly be shot to pieces.

In Colorado there is some desire that Estes Park should be acquired as a national park, and maintained by the government; but the strong reasons for this have not yet appeared. As yet we have not heard any reason why the State of Colorado should not herself take it and make of it a state park and game preserve. If done, it could be offered as a partial atonement for her wastefulness in throwing away her inheritance of grand game.

Colorado has work to do in the preservation of her remnant of bird life.

In several respects she is behind the times. The present is no time to hesitate, or to ask the gunners what _they_ wish to have done about new laws for the saving of the remnant of game. The dictates of common sense are plain, and inexorable. Let the lawmakers do their whole duty by the remnant of wild life, whether the game killers like it or not.

_The Curse of Domestic Sheep Upon Game and Cattle_.--Much has been said in print and out of print regarding the extent to which domestic sheep have destroyed the cattle ranges and incidentally many game ranges of the West; but the half hath not been told. The American people as a whole do not realize that the domestic sheep has driven the domestic steer from the free gra.s.s of the wild West, with the same speed and thoroughness with which the buffalo-hunters of the 70's and 80's swept away the bison. I have seen hundreds of thousands of acres of what once were beautiful and fertile cattle-grazing lands in Montana, that has been left by grazing sheep herds looking precisely as if the ground had been shaven with razors and then sandpapered. The sheep have driven out the cattle, and the price of beef has gone up accordingly. Neither cattle, horses nor wild game can find food on ground that has been grazed over by sheep.

The following is the testimony of a reliable eye witness, Mr. Dillon Wallace, and the full text appears in his book, "_Saddle and Camp in the Rockies_," (page 169):--

Domestic sheep and sheep herders are the greatest enemies of the antelope, as well as of other game animals and birds in the regions where herders take their flocks. The ranges over which domestic sheep pasture are denuded of forage and stripped of all growth, and antelope will not remain upon a range where sheep have been.

Thus the sheep, sweeping clean all before them and leaving the ranges over which they pa.s.s unproductive, for several succeeding seasons, of pasturage for either wild or domestic animals, together with the destructive shepherds, are the worst enemies at present of Utah's wild game, particularly of antelope, sage hens, and grouse.

In Iron county, which has already become an extensive sheep region, settlers tell us that before the advent of sheep, gra.s.s grew so luxuriously that a yearling calf lying in it could not be seen. Not only has the gra.s.s here been eaten, but the roots tramped out and killed by the hoofs of thousands upon thousands of sheep, and now wide areas, where not long since gra.s.s was so plentiful, are as bare and desolate as sand-piles.

CHAPTER XXIX

NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES (Continued)

CONNECTICUT:

The sale of all native wild game, regardless of its source, should be prohibited at all times. Enact at once a five-year close season law on the remnant of ruffed grouse, quail, woodc.o.c.k, snipe, and all sh.o.r.e birds.

Even in the home of the newest and deadliest "autoloading" shotgun, those guns and pump guns should be prohibited in hunting.

The enormous bag limits of 35 rail and 50 each per day of plover, snipe and sh.o.r.e birds is a crime! They should be replaced by a ten-year close season law for all of those species.

The terms of the game commissioners should be not less than four years.

Like so many other states, Connecticut has recklessly wasted her wild-life inheritance. During the fifteen years preceding the year 1898, the bird life of that state had decreased 75 per cent. On March 6, 1912, Senator Geo. P. McLean, of Connecticut stated at the hearing held by his Committee on Forest Reservations and the Protection of Game this fact: "We have more cover than there was thirty or forty years ago, more brush probably, but there is not one partridge [ruffed grouse] today where there were twenty ten years ago!"

First of all, Connecticut needs a ten-year close season law to save her remnant of sh.o.r.e birds before it is completely annihilated. Then she needs a Bayne law, and needs it badly. Under such a law, and the tagging system that it provides, the state game wardens would have so strong a grip on the situation that the present unlawful sale of game would be completely stopped. Half-way measures in preventing the sale of game will not answer. Already Connecticut has wasted thousands of dollars in fruitless efforts to restock her desolated woodlands and farms with quail, and to introduce the Hungarian partridge; but even yet she _will not_ protect her own native species!