Page 267 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

LAW AND SENTIMENT IN PRESERVATION
people need none at all! But the game-hogs are different. For them, the strict letter of the law, backed up by a strong-arm squad, is the only-
controlling influence that they recognize.
To them it is necessary to
say
'
and
'
You shall not
' You shall :'
!''!'
Only yesterday the latest game-hog case was related to me by a game-protectorfromKansas. IntoacertaincountyofsouthernKansas, from which the prairie-chicken had been totally gone for a dozen years
ormore,apairofthosebirdsentered,settleddownandnested. Their comingwastomanyhabitantsajoyousevent. "Now,"saidthePeople, "we will care for these birds, and they will multiply, and presently the county will be restocked."
ButAhabcame! Twomenfromanothercounty,callingthemselves sportsmen but not entitled to that name, heard of those birds, and re- solved to "get them." They waited until the young were just leaving the nest: and they went down and camped near by. On the first day they killed the two parent birds and half the flock of young birds, and the next day they got all the rest.
Butthereisasequeltothisstory. Oneofthosemenwasadealerin guns and ammunition; and when his customers heard what he had done, "they simply put him out of business, by refusing to trade with him any more." He is now washing dirty dishes in a restaurant; but at heart he is a game-hog, just the same.
Near Bridgeport, Connecticut, a gentleman of my acquaintance owns a fine estate which is adorned with a trout stream and a superfine trout pond. Once he invited a business man of Bridgeport to be his
^uest, and fish for trout in his pond. On that guest, during a visit of three days all the finest forms of hospitality were bestowed.
Two weeks later, my friend's game-warden caught that guest, early •on a Sunday morning, poaching on the trout-pond, and spoiled his care-
fully arranged get-away.
In his book "Saddle and Camp in the Rockies," Mr. Dillon Wallace tells a story of a man from New York who in the mountains of Colorado •deliberately corrupted his guides with money or other influences, shot mountain sheep in midsummer, and "got away with it."
In northern Minnesota, George E. Wood has been having a hand-to- Tiand fight . with the worst community of game-hogs and alien-born poachersofwhichIhaveheard. Thereappearstobenogamelawthat they do not systematically violate. The killers seem determined to annihilate the last head of game, in spite of fines and imprisonments. Theforeignersareabsolutelyuncontrollable. Thelatestfeatureofthe war is the discovery of a tannery in the woods, where the hides of illegally- slaughtereddeerandmoosearedressed. Apparentlytheonlykindofa law that will save the game of northern Minnesota is one that will totally
•disarm the entire population.
In Pennsylvania, there exists an association which was formed for the express purpose of fighting the vState Game Commission, preventing
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