Page 128 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
CRANES ARE SHOT AND EATEN IN THESE STATES:
North Dakota Nevada Oklahoma Nebraska
In Mississippi, the cedar bird is legally shot and eaten! In North Carolina, the meadow lark is shot and eaten.
Colorado
!!
IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, DOVES ARE CONSIDERED "GAME," AND ARE SHOT IN AN "OPEN SEASON:"
Alabama Arkansas California Connecticut Delaware
Dist. of Columiba
Utah
Georgia Minnesota Ohio Idaho Mississippi Oregon
IlHnois Kentucky Louisiana Maryland
Missouri Nebraska
New Mexico North Carolina
Pennsylvania South Carolina Tennessee Texas
The killing of doves represents a great and widespread decline in the ethicsofsportsmanship. Inthetwenty-sixStatesnamed,agreatmany men who call themselves sportsmen indulge in the cheap and ignoble pastime of potting weak and confiding doves. It is on a par with the
"sport" of hunting English sparrows in a city street. Of course this is, to a certain extent, a matter of taste; but there is at least one club of sportsmen into which no dove-killer can enter, provided his standard of ethics is known in advance.
With the killing of robins, larks, blackbirds and cedar birds for food, the case is quite different. No white man calling himself a sportsman ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food. That burden of disgrace rests upon the negroes and poor whites of the South; but at the same time, it is a shame that respectable white men sitting in state legislatures should deliberately enact laws permitting such disgraceful practices, or permit such disgraceful and ungentlemanly laws to remain in force
Here is a case by way of illustration, copied very recently from the Atlanta Journal:
Editor Journal:—I located a robin roost up the Trinity River, six miles from Dallas, and prevailed on six Dallas sportsmen to go with me on a torch-light bird hunt. This style of hunting was, of course, new to the Texans, but they finally consented to go, and I had the pleasure of showing them how it was done.
Equipped with torch lights and shot guns, we proceeded. After reaching the hunting grounds the sport began in reality, and continued for two hours and ten minutes, with a total slaughter of 10,157 birds, an average of 1,451 birds killed by each man.
But the Texans give me credit for killing at least 2,000 of the entire number. I was called 'the king of bird hunters' by the sportsmen of Dallas, Texas, and have been invited to command-in-chief the next party of hunters which go from Dallas to the Indian Territory in search of large game.—F. L. CROW, Dallas, Texas, former Atlantan.
Dallas, Texas, papers and Oklahoma papers, please copy
As a further illustration of the spirit manifested in the South toward
Virginia