- The band-tailed pigeons and all non-game birds should immediately be given protection; and a salaried warden system should be established under a Commissioner whose term is not less than four years.
- The use of automatic and pump guns, in hunting, should be prohibited.
- Spring shooting should be prohibited.
Arizona has good reason to be proud of her up-to-date position in the ranks of the best game-protecting states. No other state or territory of her age ever has made so good a showing of protective laws. The enactment of laws to cover the points mentioned above would leave little to be desired in Arizona. That state has a bird fauna well worth protecting, and game wardens are extremely necessary.
- The enforcement of game laws should be placed in charge of a salaried commissioner.
- Spring shooting of wildfowl should be stopped at once.
- A reasonable close season should be provided for water fowl, and swans should be protected throughout the year.
- A bag-limit law should be enacted.
- A force of game wardens, salaried and unsalaried, should at once be created.
- The killing of female deer and the hounding of deer, should be stopped.
- No buck deer should be shot, unless horns three inches long are seen before firing.
- A hunter's license law is necessary; and the fees should go to the support of the game protection department.
- The local exemptions in favor of market hunters in Mississippi county should be repealed.
It appears that in Arkansas the laws for the protection and increase of wild life are by no means up to the mark. At this moment, Arkansas is next to Florida, the rearmost of all our states in wild-life protection. Awake, Arkansas! Consider the peril that threatens your fauna. The Sunk Lands, in your northeastern corner along the St. Francis River, are the greatest wild-fowl refuge anywhere in the Mississippi Valley between the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the breeding-grounds of Minnesota. A duty to the nation devolves upon you, to protect the migratory waterfowl that visit your great bird refuge from the automatic and pump guns of the pothunters who shoot for northern markets, and kill all that they can kill. Protect those Sunken Lands! Confer a boon on all the people of the Mississippi Valley by making that region a bird refuge in fact as well as in name.
Heretofore, you have permitted hired market gunners from outside your borders to slaughter the wild-fowl of your Sunk Lands literally by millions, and ship them to northern markets, with very little benefit to your people. It is time for that slaughter to cease. Don't maintain a duck and goose shambles in Mississippi County, year after year, as North Carolina does! Do unto other states as you would have other states do unto you. Do not be afraid to pass nine good laws in one act. Clear your record in the Family of States, and save your fauna before it is too late. It is not fair for you to permit the slaughter of the insectivorous birds that are like the blood of life to the farmer and fruit grower.
- The sale of all wild game should be forever prohibited.
- The use of automatic and pump shotguns, in hunting, should be prohibited.
- The killing of pigeons and doves as "game" and "food" should be stopped.
- The sage grouse and every other species of bird threatened with extinction should be given ten year close seasons.
- The mule deer (if any remain) and the Columbian black-tailed deer in the southern counties should be accorded a ten-year close season.
- A large state game preserve should be created immediately, on or near Mount Shasta and abundantly stocked with nucleus herds of antelope, black-tailed deer, bison and elk.
- A suitable preserve in the southern part of the state should be set aside for the dwarf elk.
As game laws are generally regarded, California has on her books a series that look rather good to the eye, but which are capable of considerable improvement. All along the line, the birds and quadrupeds of the Golden State are vanishing! Under that heading, a vigorous chapter could be written; but space forbids its development here. Just fancy laws that permit gunning and hunting with dogs, from August until January—one-half the entire year! Think of the nesting birds that are disturbed or killed by dogs and gunners after other birds!
California's wild ducks and geese have been slaughtered to an extent almost beyond belief. The splendid sage grouse and the sharp-tailed grouse are greatly reduced in numbers. Of her hundreds of thousands of antelope, once the cheapest game in the market, scarcely "a trace" remains. Her mountain sheep and mule deer are almost extinct. Her grizzly bears are gone!
The most terrible slaughter ever recorded for automatic guns occurred in Glenn County, Cal., on Feb. 5, 1906, when two men (whose story was published in Outdoor Life, xvii, p. 371, April, 1906), killed 450 geese in one day, and actually bagged 218 of them in one hour!
Every person who has paid attention to game protection on the Pacific coast well knows that during the past eight years or more, the work of game protection in California has been in a state of frequent turmoil. At times the lack of harmony between the State Fish and Game Commission and the sportsmen of the state has been damaging to the interests of wild life, and deplorable. In the case of Warden Welch, in Santa Cruz County, pernicious politics came near robbing the state of a splendid warden, but the courts finally overthrew the overthrowers of Mr. Welch, and reinstated him.