By John H. Wallace, Jr., of Huntsville, Ala.
The time has come when the people must call a halt on the reckless and wanton slaughter of the small remnant of the game birds and game mammals, or in a few years not a vestige will remain.
This can be done only by the enactment and enforcement of a law that will in reality protect the game.
We have game laws, but there is no popular demand, or public sentiment, that calls for their enforcement. All readily agree that infractors of the existing statutes should be prosecuted, yet no one seems to be called upon to instigate prosecutions.
The game law is violated, in most instances, because the offenders know that they will not be indicted.
We need a uniform law, a game warden who has the authority to appoint deputies in each county and precinct in the State, whose duty it is to enforce the game law and bring the breakers thereof to justice.
Let every sportsman and lover of bird life in the country take up the fight for such a law, and wage a vigorous and determined campaign for its speedy enactment.
Game birds, to some extent, by virtue of their already deplorable scarcity, have elicited protective legislation. The mind of man imperatively demands recreation. Unless diversion can be found in a legitimate vein he, in his great unrest, seeks that which is not wholesome.
Hunting has ever been the sport of kings, peasants and savages alike, and the chase will always hold for man an incomparable infatuation.