The fish and game commissioners of any state should be broad-minded, non-partisan, strictly honest and sincere. So long as they possess these qualities, they deserve and should have the earnest and aggressive support of all sportsmen and all lovers of wild life. The remnant of wild life is entitled to a square deal, and harmony in the camp of its friends. Fortunately California has an excellent force of salaried game wardens (82 in all) and 577 volunteer wardens serving without salary.
- The State of Colorado should instantly stop the sale of native wild game to be used as food.
- It should stop all late winter and spring shooting of native wild birds.
- It should give the sage grouse, pinnated grouse and all shore birds a ten year close season, remove the dove from the list of game birds, and give it a permanent close season.
- It should remove the crane and the swan from the list of game birds.
In twenty-five short years we have seen in Colorado a waste of wild life and the destruction of a living inheritance that has few parallels in history. Possibly the people of Colorado are satisfied with the residuum; but some outsiders regard all Rocky Mountain shambles with a feeling of horror.
A brief quarter-century ago, Colorado was a zoological park of grand scenery and big game. The scenery remains, but of the great wild herds, only samples are left, and of some species not even that.
The last bison of Colorado were exterminated in Lost Park by scoundrels calling themselves "taxidermists," in 1897. Of the 200,000 mule deer that inhabited Routt County and other portions of Colorado, not enough now remain to make deer hunting interesting. A perpetual close season was put on mountain sheep just in time to save a dozen small flocks as seed stock. Those flocks have been permitted to live, and they have bred until now there are perhaps 3,500 sheep in the state. Of elk, only a remnant is left, now protected for fifteen years.
| BAND-TAILED PIGEON Often Mistaken for the Passenger Pigeon. The rapid Slaughter of this Species has Alarmed the Ornithologists of California, who now fear its Extinction |
The grizzly bear is so thoroughly gone that one is seen only by a rare accident; but black bears and pumas are sufficiently numerous to afford fair sport, provided the hunter has a fine outfit of dogs, horses and guides. Of prong-horned antelope, several bands remain, but it is reported that they are steadily diminishing. The herds and herders of domestic sheep are blamed for the decrease, and I have no doubt they deserve it. The sheep and their champions are the implacable enemies of all wild game, and before them the game vanishes, everywhere.
The lawmakers of Colorado have tried hard to provide adequate statutes for the protection of the wild life of the state. In fact, I think that no state has put forth greater or more elaborate efforts in that direction. For example, in 1899, under the leadership of Judge D.C. Beaman of Denver, Colorado initiated the "more game movement," by enacting a very elaborate law providing for the establishment of private game preserves and farms for the breeding of game under state license, and the tagging and sale of preserve-bred game under state supervision.
The history of game destruction in Colorado is a repetition of the old, old story,—plenty of laws, but a hundred times too many hunters, killing the game both according to law and contrary to it, and doing it five times as fast as the game could breed. That combination can safely be warranted to wipe out the wild life of any country in the world, and accomplish it right swiftly.
As a big-game country, Colorado is distinctly out of the running. Her people are too lawless, and her frontiersmen are, in the main, far too selfish to look upon plenteous game without going after it. Some of these days, a new call of the wild will arise in Colorado, demanding an open season on mountain sheep. Those who demand it will say, "What harm will it do to kill a few surplus bucks? It will improve the breed, and make the herds increase faster!"