Page 329 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

PREPAREP b^ L.S.B10LOGICA.L ScRiri'
MARCH. 1911. i&TtNDEp-TO Wov, (9U
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NEW GAME LAWS THAT ARE NEEDED 307
EIGHTEEN STATES ENTIRELY PROHIBIT THE SALE OP GAME WHY DO THE OTHERS LAG BEHIND?
the federal Lacey Act, and sold to the detriment of the states that pro- duced it. In other words, in the laws of each state that merely souo^ht to protect their own game, regardless of the game of neighboring slates, there was not merely a loop-hole, but there was a gap wide enough to drive through with a coach and four. The ruffed grouse of Massa- chusetts and Connecticut often were butchered to make Gotham holi- days in joyous contempt of the laws at both ends of the Hne. As a natural result the game of the Atlantic coast was disappearing at a frightful rate.
In 1911, the no-sale-of-game law of New York was born out of sheer desperation. TheArmyofDestructionwentuptoAlbanywell-organized, well provided with money and attorneys, with three senators in the Senate and two assemblymen in the lower house, to wage merciless war- fareonthewholewild-lifecause. Themarketgunnersandgamedealers not only proposed to repeal the law against spring shooting but also to
defeat all legislation that might be attempted to restrict the sale of game, or impose bag limits on wild fowl. The Milliners' Association proposed to wipe off the books the Butcher law against the use of the plumage of wild birds in millinery, and an assemblyman was committed to that cause as its special champion.
Then it was that all the friends of wild life in the Empire State re- solved upon a death grapple with the Destroyers, and a fight to an abso- ute finish. The Bayne bill, entirely prohibiting the sale of all native wild game throughout the state of New York, was drafted and thrown
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