Incidentally, five bills for the repeal of the Massachusetts law against spring shooting were introduced, and each one went down to the defeat that it deserved. The repeal of a spring-shooting law, anywhere, is a step backward ten years!
Massachusetts needs a bag-limit law more in keeping with her small remnant of wild life; and that she will have ere long. Very soon, also, her sportsmen will raise the standard of ethics in shotgun shooting, by barring out the automatic and pump shotguns so much beloved by the market shooters. As matters stand at this date (1912) the Old Bay State needs the following new laws:
- Low bag limits on all game.
- Five-year close seasons on all shore birds, snipe and woodcock.
- Expulsion of the automatic and pump shotguns, in hunting.
On the whole, the game laws of Michigan are in excellent shape, and leave little to be desired in the line of betterment except to be simplified. All the game protected by the laws of the state is debarred from sale; squirrels, pinnated grouse, doves and wild turkeys enjoy long close seasons; the bag limits on deer and game birds are reasonably low; spring shooting still is possible on nine species of ducks; and this should be stopped without delay.
Only three or four suggestions are in order:
- All spring shooting should be prohibited.
- All shore birds should have a five-year close season.
- The use of the machine shotguns in hunting should be stopped.
- The laws should permit the sale, under tag, of all species of game that can successfully be reared in preserves on a commercial basis.
- Two or three state game preserves, for deer, each at least four miles square, should be established without delay.
- This state should at once enact a bag-limit law that will do some good, instead of the statutory farce now on the books. Make it fifteen birds per day of waterfowl, all species combined, and no grouse or quail.
- There should be five-year close seasons enacted for quail, grouse, plover, woodcock, snipe, and all other shore birds.
- A law should be enacted prohibiting the use of firearms by unnaturalized aliens, and a $20 license for all naturalized aliens.
- Provision should be made for a large state game refuge in southern Minnesota.
- The state should prohibit the use of machine guns in hunting.
To-day, direct and reliable advices show that the game situation in Minnesota is far from encouraging. Several species are threatened with extinction at an early date. In northern Minnesota it is reported that much game is surreptitiously trapped and slaughtered. The bob white is reported as threatened with total extinction at an early date; but I think the prairie chicken will be the first bird species to go. Moose will soon be extinct everywhere in Minnesota except in the game preserves. Apparently there is now about one duck in Minnesota for every ten ducks that were there only ten years ago.
Now, what is Minnesota going to do about all this? Is she willing through Apathy to become a gameless state? Her people need to arouse themselves now, and pass several strong laws. Her bag limit of forty-five birds per day of quail, grouse, woodcock and plover, and fifty per day of the waterbirds, is a joke, and nothing more; but it is no laughing matter. It spells extermination.
- The legalized slaughter of robins, cedar birds, grosbeaks and doves should cease immediately, on the basis of economy of resources and a square deal to all the states lying northward of Mississippi.
- The shooting of all water-fowl should cease on January 1.
- A reasonable limit should be established on deer.
- A hunting license law should be passed at once, fixing the fee at $1 and devoting the revenue to the pay of a corps of non-political game wardens, selected on a basis of ability and fitness.
- The administration of the game laws should be placed in charge of a salaried game commissioner.