Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 12

Wood-duck, bob white, woodc.o.c.k, golden plover, Hudsonian curlew, knot and dowitcher [are threatened with extinction.]--(C.W. Nash, Toronto.)

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND:

The species threatened with extinction are the golden plover, American woodc.o.c.k, pied-billed grebe, red-throated loon, sooty shearwater, gadwall, ruddy duck, black-crowned night heron, Hudsonian G.o.dwit, kildeer, northern pileated woodp.e.c.k.e.r, chimney swift, yellow-bellied flycatcher, red-winged blackbird, pine finch, magnolia warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet.--(E.T. Carbonell, Charlottetown.)

In closing the notes of this survey, I repeat my a.s.surance that they are not offered on a basis of infallibility. It would require years of work to obtain answers from forty-eight states to the three questions that I have asked that could be offered as absolutely exact. All these reports are submitted on the well-recognized court-testimony basis,--"to the best of our knowledge and belief." Gathered as they have been from persons whose knowledge is good, these opinions are therefore valuable; and they furnish excellent indices of wild-life conditions as they exist in 1912 in the various states and provinces of North America north of Mexico.

CHAPTER VI

THE REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION

In order to cure any disease, the surgeon must make of it a correct diagnosis. It is useless to try to prescribe remedies without a thorough understanding of the trouble.

That the best and most interesting wild life of America is disappearing at a rapid rate, we all know only too well. That proposition is entirely beyond the domain of argument. The fact that a species or a group of species has made a little gain here and there, or is stationary, does not sensibly diminish the force of the descending blow. The wild-life situation is full of surprises. For example, in 1902 I was astounded by the extent to which bird life had decreased over the 130 miles between Miles City, Montana, and the Missouri River since 1886; for there was no reason to expect anything of the kind. Even the jack rabbits and coyotes had almost totally disappeared.

The duties of the present hour, that fairly thrust themselves into our faces and will not be put aside, are these:

_First_,--To save valuable species from extermination!

_Second_,--To preserve a satisfactory representation of our once rich fauna, to hand down to Posterity.

_Third_,--To protect the farmer and fruit grower from the enormous losses that the destruction of our insectivorous and rodent-eating birds is now inflicting upon both the producer and consumer.

_Fourth_,--To protect our forests, by protecting the birds that keep down the myriads of insects that are destructive to trees and shrubs.

_Fifth_,--To preserve to the future sportsmen of America enough game and fish that they may have at least a taste of the legitimate pursuit of game in the open that has made life so interesting to the sportsmen of to-day.

For any civilized nation to exterminate valuable and interesting species of wild mammals, birds or fishes is more than a disgrace. It is a crime!

We have no right, legal, moral or commercial, to exterminate any valuable or interesting species; because none of them belong to us, to exterminate or not, as we please.

For the people of any civilized nation to permit the slaughter of the wild birds that protect its crops, its fruits and its forests from the insect hordes, is worse than folly. It is sheer orneryness and idiocy.

People who are either so lazy or asinine as to permit the slaughter of their best friends deserve to have their crops destroyed and their forests ravaged. They deserve to pay twenty cents a pound for their cotton when the boll weevil has cut down the normal supply.

It is very desirable that we should now take an inventory of the forces that have been, and to-day are, active in the destruction of our wild birds, mammals, and game fishes. During the past ten years a sufficient quant.i.ty of facts and figures has become available to enable us to secure a reasonably full and accurate view of the whole situation. As we pause on our hill-top, and survey the field of carnage, we find that we are reviewing the _Army of Destruction_!

It is indeed a motley array. We see true sportsmen beside ordinary gunners, game-hogs and meat hunters; handsome setter dogs are mixed up with coyotes, cats, foxes and skunks; and well-gowned women and ladies'

maids are jostled by half-naked "poor-white" and black-negro "plume hunters."

Verily, the destruction of wild life makes strange companions.

Let us briefly review the several army corps that together make up the army of the destroyers. s.p.a.ce in this volume forbids an extended notice of each. Unfortunately it is impossible to segregate some of these cla.s.ses, and number each one, for they merge together too closely for that; but we can at least describe the several cla.s.ses that form the great ma.s.s of destroyers.

THE GENTLEMEN SPORTSMEN.--These men are the very bone and sinew of wild life preservation. These are the men who have red blood in their veins, who annually hear the red G.o.ds calling, who love the earth, the mountains, the woods, the waters and the sky. These are the men to whom "the bag" is a matter of small importance, and to whom "the bag-limit"

has only academic interest; because in nine cases out of ten they do not care to kill all that the law allows. The tenth and exceptional time is when the bag limit is "one." A gentleman sportsman is a man who protects game, stops shooting when he has "enough"--without reference to the legal bag-limit, and whenever a species is threatened with extinction, he conscientiously refrains from shooting it.

The true sportsmen of the world are the men who once were keen in the stubble or on the trail, but who have been halted by the general slaughter and the awful decrease of game. Many of them, long before a hair has turned gray, have hung up their guns forever, and turned to the camera. These are the men who are willing to hand out checks, or to leave their mirth and their employment and go to the firing line at their state capitols, to lock horns with the bull-headed killers of wild life who recognize no check or limit save the law.

These are the men who have done the most to put upon our statute books the laws that thus far have saved some of our American game from total annihilation, and who (so we firmly believe) will be chiefly instrumental in tightening the lines of protection around the remnant.

These are the men who are making and stocking game preserves, public and private, great and small.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION, WAITING FOR THE FIRST OF OCTOBER Each Year 2,642,274 Well-Armed Men Take the Field Against the Remnant of Wild Birds and Mammals In the United States.

Drawn by Dan Beard]

If you wish to know some of these men, I will tell you where to find a goodly number of them; and when you find them, you will also find that they are men you would enjoy camping with! Look in the membership lists of the Boone and Crockett Club, Camp-Fire Club of America, the Lewis and Clark Club of Pittsburgh, the New York State League, the Shikar Club of London, the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the British Empire, the Ma.s.sachusetts Fish and Game Protective a.s.sociation, the Springfield (Ma.s.s.) Sportsmen's a.s.sociation, the Camp-Fire Clubs of Detroit and Chicago, and the North American Fish and Game Protective a.s.sociation.

There are other bodies of sportsmen that I would like to name, were s.p.a.ce available, but to set down here a complete list is quite impossible.

The best and the most of the game-protective laws now in force in the United States and Canada were brought into existence through the initiative and efforts of the real sportsmen of those two nations. But for their activity, exerted on the right side, the settled portion of North America would to-day be an utterly gameless land! Even though the sportsmen have taken their toll of the wilds, they have made the laws that have saved a remnant of the game until 1912.

For all that, however, every man who still shoots game is a soldier in the Army of Destruction! There is no blinking that fact. Such men do not stand on the summit with the men who now protect the game _and do not shoot at all!_ The millions of men who do not shoot, and who also _do nothing to protect or preserve wild life_, do not count! In this warfare they are merely ciphers in front of the real figures.

THE GUNNERS, WHO KILL TO THE LIMIT.--Out of the enormous ma.s.s of men who annually take up arms against the remnant of wild life, _and are called "sportsmen_," I believe that only one out of every 500 _conscientiously_ stops shooting when game becomes scarce, and extinction is impending.

All of the others feel that it is right and proper to kill all the game that they can kill _up to the legal bag limit_. It is the reasoning of Shylock:

"Justice demands it, and _the law_ doth give it!"

Especially is this true of the men who pay their _one dollar_ per year for a resident hunting license, and feel that in doing so they have done a great Big Thing!

This is a very deadly frame of mind. Ethically it is _entirely wrong_; and at least two million men and boys who shoot American game must be shown that it is wrong! This is the spirit of Extermination, clothed in the robes of Law and Justice.

Whenever and wherever game birds are so scarce that a good shot who hunts hard during a day in the fields finds only three or four birds, he should _stop shooting at once, and devote his mind and energies to the problem of bringing back the game!_ It is strange that conditions do not make this duty clear to every conscientious citizen.

The Shylock spirit which prompts a man to kill all that "the law allows"

is a terrible scourge to the wild life of America, and to the world at large. It is the spirit of extermination according to law. Even the killing of game for the market is not so great a scourge as this; for this spirit searches out the game in every nook and cranny of the world, and spares not. In effect it says: "If the law is defective, it is right for me to take every advantage of it! I do not need to have any conscience in the matter outside _the letter of the law_."

The extent to which this amazing spirit prevails is positively awful.

You will find it among pseudo game-protectors to a paralyzing extent! It is the great gunner's paradox, and it pervades this country from corner to corner. No: there is no use in trying to "educate" the ma.s.s of the hunters of America out of it, as a means of saving the game; for positively it can not be done! Do not waste time in trying it. If you rely upon it, you will be doing a great wrong to wild life, and promoting extermination. The only remedy is _sweeping laws, for long close seasons, for a great many species_. Forget the paltry dollar-a-year license money. The license fees never represent more than a tenth part of the value of the game that is killed under licenses.

The savage desire to kill "all that the law allows" often is manifested in men in whom we naturally expect to find a very different spirit. By way of illumination, I offer three cases out of the many that I could state.

Case No. 1. _The Duck Breeder_.--A gentleman of my acquaintance has spent several years and much money in breeding wild ducks. From my relations with him, I had acquired the belief that he was a great lover of ducks, and at least wished all species well. One whizzing cold day in winter he called upon me, and stated that he had been duck-hunting; which surprised me. He added, "I have just spent two days on Great South Bay, and I made a great killing. _In the two days I got ninety-four ducks!"_

I said, "How _could_ you do it,--caring for wild ducks as you do?"

"Well, I had hunted ducks twice before on Great South Bay and didn't have very good luck; but this time the cold weather drove the ducks in, and I got square with them!"

Case No. 2. _The Ornithologist_.--A short time ago the news was published in _Forest and Stream_, that a well-known ornithologist had distinguished himself in one of the mid-western states by the skill he had displayed in bagging thirty-four ducks in one day, greatly to the envy of the natives; and if this shoe fits any American naturalist, he is welcome to put it on and wear it.

Case No. 3. _The Sportsman_.--A friend of mine in the South is the owner of a game preserve in which wild ducks are at times very numerous. Once upon a time he was visited by a northern sportsmen who takes a deep and abiding interest in the preservation of game. The sportsman was invited to go out duck-shooting; ducks being then in season there. He said:

"Yes, I will go; and I want you to put me in a place where I can kill a _hundred ducks in a day_! I never have done that yet, and I would like to do it, once!"