- That the law against spring shooting be re-enacted.
- That the resident hunter's license law be re-enacted, and the proceeds specifically devoted to the preservation and increase of game.
- That a force of regular salaried wardens be provided to enforce the laws.
- That the bag limit on quail should be 10 per day or 40 per season, instead of 12 and 96; and on ruffed grouse it should be 3 per day (as in New York) or 12 per season. One wild turkey per day, or three per season is quite enough for one man. The visible supply will not justify the existing limit of two and six.
In spite of the fierce fight made in 1910-11 by the saloon-element game-shooters of Milwaukee for the control of the wild-life situation, and the repeal of the best protective laws of the state, the Army of Defense once more defeated the Allied Destroyers, and drove them off the field. Once more it was proven that when The People are aroused, they are abundantly able to send the steam roller over the enemies of wild life.
Alphabetically, Wisconsin may come near the end of the roll-call; but by downright merit in protection, she comes mighty close to the head of the list of states. Her slate of "Work to be done" is particularly clean; and she has our most distinguished admiration. Her force of game wardens is not a political-machine force. It amounts to something. The men who get within it undergo successfully a civil service examination that certainly separates the sheep from the goats. For particulars address Dr. T.S. Palmer, Department of Agriculture, Washington.
According to the standards that have been dragging along previous to this moment, Wisconsin has a good series of game laws. But the hour for a Reformation of ideas and principles has struck. We heard it first in April, 1911. The wild life of America must not be exterminated according to law, contrary to law, or in the absence of law! Wisconsin must take a fresh grip on her game situation, or it will get away from her, after all.
- Not another prairie chicken or woodcock should be killed in Wisconsin between 1912 and 1922. When any small bird becomes so scarce that the bag limit needs to be cut down to five, as it now is for the above in Wisconsin, it is time to stop for ten years, before it is too late.
- Wisconsin should immediately busy herself about the creation of bird and game preserves.
- For goodness sake, Wisconsin, stop killing squirrels as "game!" You ought to know better—and you do! Leave that form of barbarism for the Benighted States.
- And pass a law shutting out the machine guns. They are a disgrace to our country, and a scourge to our game. Continually are they leading good men astray.
- Extend the term of your State Warden to four years.
The State of Wyoming once had a magnificent heritage of game. It embraced the Rocky Mountain species, and also those of the great plains. First and last, the state has worked hard to protect her wild life, and hold the killing of it down to a decent basis.
As far back as 1889, I met on the Shoshone River a very wide-awake warden, actually "on his job," who was maintained by a body of private citizens headed by Col. Pickett and known as the Northern Wyoming Game Protective Association. And even then we saw that the laws were too liberal for the game. In one man's cold-storage dug-out we saw enough sheep, deer and elk meat to subsist a company of hungry dragoons, all killed and possessed according to law.
In the protection of her mountain game, Wyoming has had a hard task. In the Yellowstone Park between 1889 and 1894, the poachers for the taxidermists of Livingston and elsewhere slaughtered 270 bison out of 300; and Howell was the only man caught. England can protect game in far-distant mountains and wildernesses; but America can not,—or at least we don't! With us, men living in remote places who find wild game about them say "To h--- with the law!" They kill on the sly, in season and out of season, females and males; and the average local jury simply will not convict the average settler who is accused of such a trifling indiscretion as killing game out of season when he "needs the meat."
And so, with laws in full force protecting females, the volume of big game steadily disappears, everywhere west of the Alleghanies where the law permits big-game hunting! An interesting chapter might be written on game exterminated according to law.
The deadly defects in the protection of western big game are: