Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and PreservationHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
History
Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Game-laws -- United States; Wildlife conservation -- United States
Vermont's great success in introducing and colonizing deer is both
interesting and valuable. Fifty years ago, she had no wild deer, because
the species had been practically exterminated. In 1875, thirteen deer
were imported from the Adirondacks and set free in the mountains. The
increase has been enormous. In 1909 the number of deer killed for the
year was about 5,311, which was possible without adversely affecting the
herds. It is a striking object-lesson in restoring the white-tailed deer
to its own, and it will be found more fully described in chapter XXIV.
VIRGINIA:
Virginia is far below the position that she should occupy in wild-life
conservation. To set her house in order, and come up to the level of the
states that have been born during the past twenty years, she must bestir
herself in these ways:
She must provide for a resident hunting license, a State Game
Commissioner and a force of salaried wardens.
She must prohibit spring shooting.
She must impose small bag limits on game-slaughter.
She must resolutely stop the sale of all wild game.
She must stop the killing of female deer, and of bucks with horns
under three inches long.
She must stop killing gray squirrels and doves as "game."
She should not permit the beautiful wood-duck to be killed as
"game."
She should accord a five-year close season to grouse, and all shore
birds.
She should rule out the machine shot-guns which gentlemen can no
longer use in hunting.
She should adopt at once a comprehensive code of game laws, and clean
her house in one siege, instead of fiddling and fussing with all these
matters one by one, through a series of ten long, weary years. The time
for puttering with game protection has gone by. It is now time to make
short cuts to comprehensive results, and save the game before it is too
late.
WASHINGTON:
The state of Washington still flatters herself that she has all kinds of
big game to kill,--moose, antelope, goat, sheep, caribou and deer.
Evidently this is on the theory that so long as a species is not
extinct, it is "legal" and right to pursue it with rifles during a
specified "open season."
The people of Washington need to be told that conditions have greatly
changed, and it is now high time to put on the brakes. It is time for
them to realize that if they wait any longer for the sportsmen to take
the initiative in securing the enactment of really adequate preservation
laws, all their big game will be dead before those laws are born! Every
man shrinks from cutting off his own pet privilege.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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