Page 380 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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CHAPTER XXXVII PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES
Primarily, in the early days of the Man-on-Horseback, the self- elected and predatory lords of creation evolved the private game pre- serve as a scheme for preventing other fellows from shooting, and for keepingthegamesacredtoslaughterbythemselves. Theideaofcon- serving the game was a fourth-rate consideration, the first being the estoppel of the other man. The old-world owner of a game preserve delights in the annual killing of the surplus game, and we have even heard it whispered that in the Dark Ages there were kings who enjoyed the wholesale slaughter of deer, wild boar, pheasants and grouse. If we may accept as true the history of sport in Europe, there have been men who have loved slaughter with a genuine blood-lust that is quite
foreign to the real nature-loving sportsman.
In America, the impulse is different. Here, there is raging a genuine feverforprivategainepreserves. Someofthosealreadyexistingareof fineproportions,andcostfortunestocreate. Everytruesportsmanwho is rich enough to own a private game preserve, sooner or later acquires one. You will find them scattered throughout the temperate zone of NorthAmericafromtheBayofFund}^toSanDiego. Ihavehadin- vitations to visit preserves in an unbroken chain from the farthest corner of Quebec to the Pacific Coast, and from Grand Island, Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. It was not necessarily to hunt, and kill some- thing, but to see the game, and the beauties of nature.
The wealthy American and Canadian joyously buys a tract of wilder- ness, fences it, stocks it with game both great and small, and provides gamekeepersforalltheyearround. Atfirsthehasanideathathewill " hunt " therein, and that his guests will hunt also, and actually kill game. In a mild way, this fiction sometimes is maintained for years. The owner may each year shoot two or three head of his surplus big game, and his tenderfoot guests who don't know what real hunting is may also killsomething,eachyear. ButinmostoftheAmericanpreserveswith which I am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big game" is almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so attached to his big game, and admires it so sincerely, he has not the heart to kill it himself ; and he finds no joy whatever in seeing it shot down by others!
In this country the slaughter of game for the market is not con- sidered a gentlemanly pastime, even though there is a surplus of pre- serve-bredgamethatmustbereduced. TotheaverageAmerican,the