Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 51

Only three or four suggestions are in order:

All spring shooting should be prohibited.

All sh.o.r.e birds should have a five-year close season.

The use of the machine shotguns in hunting should be stopped.

The laws should permit the sale, under tag, of all species of game that can successfully be reared in preserves on a commercial basis.

Two or three state game preserves, for deer, each at least four miles square, should be established without delay.

MINNESOTA:

This state should at once enact a bag-limit law that will do some good, instead of the statutory farce now on the books. Make it fifteen birds per day of waterfowl, all species combined, and no grouse or quail.

There should be five-year close seasons enacted for quail, grouse, plover, woodc.o.c.k, snipe, and all other sh.o.r.e birds.

A law should be enacted prohibiting the use of firearms by unnaturalized aliens, and a $20 license for all naturalized aliens.

Provision should be made for a large state game refuge in southern Minnesota.

The state should prohibit the use of machine guns in hunting.

To-day, direct and reliable advices show that the game situation in Minnesota is far from encouraging. Several species are threatened with extinction at an early date. In northern Minnesota it is reported that much game is surrept.i.tiously trapped and slaughtered. The bob white is reported as threatened with total extinction at an early date; but I think the prairie chicken will be the first bird species to go. Moose will soon be extinct everywhere in Minnesota except in the game preserves. Apparently there is now about one duck in Minnesota for every ten ducks that were there only ten years ago.

Now, what is Minnesota going to do about all this? Is she willing through Apathy to become a gameless state? Her people need to arouse themselves _now_, and pa.s.s several _strong_ laws. Her bag limit of forty-five birds _per day_ of quail, grouse, woodc.o.c.k and plover, and _fifty_ per day of the waterbirds, is a joke, and nothing more; but it is no laughing matter. It spells extermination.

MISSISSIPPI:

The legalized slaughter of robins, cedar birds, grosbeaks and doves should cease immediately, on the basis of economy of resources and a square deal to all the states lying northward of Mississippi.

The shooting of all water-fowl should cease on January 1.

A reasonable limit should be established on deer.

A hunting license law should be pa.s.sed at once, fixing the fee at $1 and devoting the revenue to the pay of a corps of non-political game wardens, selected on a basis of ability and fitness.

The administration of the game laws should be placed in charge of a salaried game commissioner.

It is seriously to the discredit of Mississippi that her laws actually cla.s.sify robins, cedar-birds, grosbeaks and doves as "game," and _make them killable as such from Sept. 1 to March 1!_ I should think that if no economic consideration carried weight in Mississippi, state pride alone would be sufficient to promote a correction of the evil. If we of the North were to slaughter mockingbirds for food, when they come North to visit us, the men of the South would call us greedy barbarians; and they would be quite right.

MISSOURI:

The Missouri bag limits that permit the killing or possession of fifty birds per day are absurd, and fatally liberal. The utmost should be twenty-five; and even that is too high.

Doves should be taken off the list of game birds, and protected throughout the year; and so should all tree squirrels.

Spring shooting of sh.o.r.e birds and waterfowl should be prohibited without delay.

A law against automatic and pump guns should be enacted at the next legislative session, as a public lesson on the raising of the standard of ethics in shooting.

The state of Missouri is really strong in her position as a game-protecting state. She perpetually protects such vanis.h.i.+ng species as the ruffed grouse, prairie chicken (pinnated grouse), woodc.o.c.k, and all her sh.o.r.e birds save snipe and plover. She prohibits the sale of native game and the killing of female deer; but she wisely permits the sale of preserve-bred elk and deer under the tags of the State Game Commission. For nearly all the wild game that is accessible, her markets are tightly closed.

We heartily congratulate Missouri on her advanced position on the sale of game, and we hope that the people of Iowa will even yet profit by her good example.

MONTANA:

Like Colorado and Wyoming, Montana is wasting a valuable heritage of wild game while she struggles to maintain the theory that she still is in the list of states that furnish big-game hunting. It is a fact that ten years ago most sportsmen began to regard Montana as a has-been for big game, and began to seek better hunting-grounds elsewhere. British Columbia, Alberta and Alaska have done much for the game of Montana by drawing sportsmen away from it. Mr. Henry Avare, the State Game Warden, is optimistic regarding even the big game, and believes that it is holding its own. This is partially true of white-tailed deer, or it was up to the time of great slaughter. It is said that in 1911, 11,000 deer were killed in Montana, all in the western part of the state, seventy per cent of which were white-tails. The deep snows and extreme cold of a long and unusually severe winter drove the hungry deer down out of the mountains into the settlements, where the ranchmen joyously slaughtered them. The destruction around Kalispell was described by Harry P.

Stanford as "sickening."

Mr. Avare estimates the p.r.o.ng-horned antelope in Montana at three thousand head, of which about six hundred are under the quasi-protection of four ranches.

The antelope need three or four small ranges, such as the Snow Creek Antelope Range, where the bad lands are too rough for ranchmen, but quite right for antelopes and other big game.

All the grouse and ptarmigan of Montana need a five-year close season. The splendid sage grouse is now extinct in many parts of its previous range. Fifty-eight thousand licensed gunners are too many for them!

The few mountain sheep and mountain goats that survive should have a five-year close season, at once.

The killing of female hoofed animals should be prohibited by law.

Montana has not yet adopted the model law for the protection of non-game birds. Only seven states have failed in that respect.

The use of automatic and pump shotguns, and silencers, should immediately be prohibited.

Montana's bag-limits are not wholly bad; but the grizzly bear has almost been exterminated, save in the Yellowstone Park. Some of these days, if things go on as they are now going, the people of Montana will be rudely awakened to the fact that they have 50,000 licensed hunters but no longer any killable game! And then we will hear enthusiastic talk about "restocking."

NEBRASKA:

No other state has bestowed close seasons upon as many extinct species of game as Nebraska. Behold how she has resolutely locked the doors of her empty cage after all these species have flown: Elk, antelope, wild turkey, pa.s.senger pigeon, whooping crane, sage grouse, ptarmigan and curlew. In a short time the pinnated grouse can be added to the list of has-beens.

There is little to say regarding the future of the game of Nebraska; for its "future" is now history.

Provision should be made for one or more state game preserves.

Spring shooting of sh.o.r.e birds and waterfowl should be prohibited.

A larger and more effective warden service should be provided.

Doves should be removed from the game list.

NEVADA:

The sage grouse should be given a ten-year close season, for recuperation.

All non-game birds should have perpetual protection.

The cranes, now verging on extinction, and the pigeons and doves should at once be taken out of the list of game birds, and forever protected.