A gentleman is incapable of taking an unfair advantage of any wild creature; therefore a gentleman cannot use punt guns for ducks, dynamite for game fish, or automatic or pump guns in bird-shooting. The machine guns and "silencers" are grossly unfair, and like gang-hooks, nets and dynamite for trout and bass, their use in hunting must everywhere be prohibited by law. Times have changed, and the lines for protection must be more tightly drawn. [Illustration: THE CHAMPION GAME SLAUGHTER CASE One Hour's Slaughter (218 Geese) With Two Automatic Shot-Guns] The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Judge Orlady) has decided that the Pennsylvania law against the use of automatic guns in hunting is entirely constitutional, because every state has a right to say how its game may and may not be killed. It is up to the American People to say _now_ whether their wild life shall be slaughtered by machinery, or not. If they are willing that it should be, then let us be consistent and say--away with all "conservation!" The game conservators can endure a gameless and birdless continent quite as well as the average citizen can. HOW THEY WORK.--There are a few apologists for the automatic and pump guns who cheerfully say, "So long as the bag limit is observed what difference does it make how the birds are killed?" It is strange that a conscientious man should ask such a question, when the answer is apparent. We reply, "The difference is that an automatic or pump gun will kill fully twice as many waterfowl as a double-barrel, _if not more_; and _it is highly undesirable that every gunner should get the bag limit of birds, or any number near it_! The birds can not stand it. Moreover, _the best states for ducks and geese have no bag limits on those birds_!" To-day, on Currituck Sound, for example, the market hunters are killing all the waterfowl they can sell. On Marsh Island, Louisiana, one man has killed 369 ducks in one day, and another market gunner killed 430 in one day. The automatic and the "pump" shot-guns are the favorite weapons of the game-hog who makes a specialty of geese and ducks. It is no uncommon thing for a gunner who shoots a machine gun to get, with one gun, as high as _eight_ birds out of one flock. A man who has himself done this has told me so. _The Champion Game-Slaughter Case_.--Here is a story from California that is no fairy tale. It was published, most innocently, in a western magazine, with the illustration that appears herewith, and in which please notice the automatic shot-gun: