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 mass 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_."