Page 319 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

NEW LAWS NEEDED IN THE STATES 297
great? Will not any self-respecting dog be proud to point or retrieve them? Andwhatfleshforthetable!
Fancy an able-bodied sportsman going out in a fifty-dollar hunting suit, carrying a fifteen-dollar gun behind a seven-dollar dog, and return- ing with a glorious bag of twenty-five blackbirds ! Or robins ! Or doves Proud indeed, would we be to belong (which we don't) to a club of '
men " who go out shooting blackbirds, and robins, and foolish little doves, as "game!" "Game" indeed, are those birds,—for little lads of seven who do not know better; but not for boys of twelve who have in their veins any inheritance of sporting blood. (I am proud of the fact that at twelve years of age,—and ever so keen to " go hunting,"—I knew with- out being told that squirrels and doves were not real "game" for real boys.)
The killers of doves, squirrels, blackbirds and robins belong in the same class as the sparrow-and-linnet-killing Italians of Venice, Milan and Turin, and in that company we will leave them.
Tennessee needs:
A resident license system to provide funds for game protection.
A salaried warden force.
A law prohibiting spring shooting of shore birds and waterfowl.
A law protecting robins, doves and other non-game birds not covered by the
present statute.
Texas:
I remember well when the great battle was fought in Texas by the
gallant men and women of the State Audubon Society, to compel the people of Texas to learn the economic value to agriculture and cotton of the insectivorous birds. The name of the splendid Brigadier-General wholedtheArmyoftheDefensewasCapt.M.B.Davis. Thatwasin 1903.
Since that great fight was won, Texas has been a partly reformed state,attimesquitejealousofherbirdlife; butstillshetoleratesspring shooting and has not made adequate close seasons for her waterfowl; whichiswrong. To-day,thepeopleofTexasdonotneedtobetoldthat forty-three species of birds feed on the cotton boll weevil ; for they know it.
On the whole, and for a southern state, the wild-life laws of Texas are in fairly good shape. On account of the absence of game-scourge markets, a Bayne law is not so imperatively necessary there as in certain other states. All the game of the state is protected from sale.
We do assert, however, that if robins are slaughtered as F. L. Crow, the former Atlantan asserts, all robin shooting should be forever stopped; that the pinnated grouse should be given a seven-year close season, and that doves should be taken off the list of game birds and perpetually pro- tected, both for economic and sentimental reasons, and also because the too weak and confiding dove is not a "game" bird for red-blooded men.
Texas should enact without delay a law providing close seasons for ducks, geese and other waterfowl;
A law prohibiting spring shooting, and
A provision reducing the limit on deer to two bucks a season.
sports-
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