Page 172 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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Winchester Arms Co
Union Metallic Cartridge Co Peters Cartridge Co Western Cartridge Co
300,000,000 250,000,000 150,000,000
75,000,000
775,000,000
We must stop all the holes in the barrel, or eventually lose all the
water. Nogroupofbird-slaughterersisentitledtoimmunity. Wewill
not "limit the bag, and enforce the laws," while we permit the makers
and users of autoloading and pump guns to kill at will, as they demand.
''';'
Yes ; we will ' limit the bag ' and ' enforce the laws ' but the machine
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150 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
as possible. Whenever there was a lull in the flight I went out in the boat and picked up the dead, leaving the wounded to take chances with anygunnerluckyenoughtocatchtheminopenandsmoothwater. A bird handy in the air is worth two wounded ones in the water. Twice I took six dead birds out of the water for seven shots, and both guns empty.
" The ball thus opened, the birds commenced to move in all directions. Until the morning's flight was over I was kept busy pumping lead, first with the 10, then with the automatic, reloading, picking up the dead, etc."
And the reader will observe that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive automatic shot gun, that "don't matter if you enforce the bag limit," figures prominently in both stories and both photographs.
A Story of Two Pump Guns and Geese:—It comes from Aberdeen,
S. D. (Sand Lake), in the spring of 1911. Mr. J. J. Humphrey tells it, in
Outdoor Life magazine for July, 1911. '
Smith and I were about a hundred yards from them [the flock of Canadageese], whenMurphyscaredthem. Theyroseinadensemass and came directly between Smith and me. We were about gunshot distance apart, and they were not over thirty feet in the air when we openeduponthemwithourpumpgunsandNo.5shot. Whenthesmoke cleared away and we had rounded up the cripples we found we had twenty- onegeese. Ihaveheardofbiggerkillingsoutinthiscountry,butnever positively knew of them."
So then: those two gunners averaged loYz wild geese per pump gun out of one flock! And yet there are wise and reflective sportsmen who say, "What difference does the kind of gun make so long as you live up to the law?"
I think that the pump and automatic guns make about yj per-cent of difference, against the game; that is all
The number of shot-guns now in use in the United States is almost beyond belief. About six years ago a gentleman interested in the manufacture of such weapons informed me, and his statement has never been disputed, that every year about 500,000 new shot-guns were sold in theUnitedStates. Thenumberofshotcartridgesannuallyproducedby our four great cartridge companies has been reliably estimated as follows