Probably to correct this ruling, the Statute of 1844 was passed, which provides that anyone who starts and pursues deer in the Counties of Suffolk and Queens shall be deemed in possession of the same.
A great responsibility is thrown upon the Government of the United States to protect the large game in the different national parks. In a few years they will contain the only remnants of the buffalo, elk, antelope and mountain sheep. Poachers, like wolves, surround these parks, killing only to sell the heads for trophies. Captain George S. Anderson and Scout F. Burgess have done a good work in the Yellowstone Park in capturing poachers, which efforts were recognized by the Boone and Crockett Club. If authority should be given to the army to try and punish these poachers by martial law, it would save many a herd elsewhere, and also relieve the Government from great expense for the transporting and trial of offenders.
When we reflect how many and valuable races of animals in North America have become extinct or nearly so, as the buffalo and the manatee; how many varieties of birds that afforded us food, or brightened the autumn sky with their migrations, have been annihilated, as have been the prairie fowl in the Eastern States and the passenger pigeon in all our States, the necessity of these laws appears urgent. A few suggestions that experience has taught us in regard to these matters are worthy of record.
We must remember that in a republic no law is effective without public opinion to back it. Therefore,
contemporaneously with making our laws, we should by writing and speaking educate the public mind to appreciate and sustain them. Experience has taught that in these prosecutions the public prosecutor is a laggard. He prefers noted criminal cases and neglects these, which he regards as trivial offenses. Therefore the law should authorize private prosecutors, on giving security for costs and damages, to make search and conduct prosecutions in their own names.
Next, it is to be remembered that a single private person will make himself odious in the community by bringing such prosecutions, and is often deterred by the fear of revenge. Therefore, societies should be formed, composed of many good citizens; they should employ their own counsel, and prosecute in the name of the society or its president.
Next, the law should definitely fix a penalty for having in possession, transporting or exposing for sale. This is more important than prohibiting the killing, as it is the marketing of dead game that incites the killing. It is the market hunter that has destroyed all feathered life on our prairies, and the cold storage process has enabled him to transport to other States or countries, and make his gains there. Close the market and the killing ceases.
Another step to success is the procuring of the conformity of the laws in neighboring States. The laws of New York may prohibit the sale of quail, ruffed grouse and prairie fowl, and the societies may enforce them in New York city, and day by day see the monstrous wrong of carloads of prairie fowl and other valuable game brought into Jersey City, and sold to the population of that town and to the ocean vessels sailing from its docks. Our Western prairies are denuded of their birds, that are frozen in the close season and are afterward shipped to Europe, and sold in the markets there at a price often less than they would bring in New York city.
Again, laws on these subjects should be as simple as possible, including in the one open and close season as many kinds of game as possible, and creating a general public understanding that the shooting season opens at a fixed date, say October 1st, and that no shooting or possession of game is to be allowed prior to that date, and that the close season for all game should commence on another certain date, say February 1st.
Lastly, a defective law, that is permanent and uniform throughout the State, is more effective than a better and more detailed law varying in different counties and towns, and frequently altered. In illustration of the vagaries of lawmakers in this respect, it is to be remembered that the law of 1879, passed by the Legislature of the State of New York, was a complete and well-studied statute, made after much consultation, and meeting the approval of all the societies of the State, as well as the market men, and operated in the main satisfactorily to all. Since that date members of the Legislature from the different localities introduced bills making some exception or addition to the act, to benefit their little town or locality, to prohibit fishing in certain waters, to protect certain other animals, to provide certain restrictions as to weapons of chase or means of fishing, or times and seasons; or giving powers to county supervisors to legislate in addition to the general legislation of the State. Two hundred and fourteen such acts and ordinances have been passed since 1879, until the general law has been obscured and brought into contempt. These acts and ordinances include, among other curiosities, the protection of muskrats and mink, the preservation of skunks and other vermin, the prohibition of residents of one county from fishing in another county, and protecting parts of certain lakes or rivers in a different manner or season from other parts. In some of the acts words are misspelled; in one it is enacted that "wild birds shall not be killed at any time." Another act was passed defining the word "angling," as used in the general statute, thus—"taking fish with hook and line and by rod held in hands," leaving the troller or the happy schoolboy, that drops his hand-line from the bridge, exposed to the dire penalties of the law. While writing in this year of grace, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, the Legislature has passed a law permitting the sale of game at any time in the year, providing it is shown to have been killed 300 miles from the State.