But I am not sorrowing over the woes of the unattached duck-hunter, or in the least inclined to champion his cause against the ducking-club member. As slaughterers and exterminators of wild-fowl, rarely exercising mercy under ridiculous bag-limits, they have both been too heedless of the future, and one is just as bad for the game as the other. If either of them favored the game, I would be on his side; but I see no difference between them. They both kill right up to the bag-limit, as often as they can; and that is what is sweeping away all our feathered game.
Curiously enough, the angry unattached duck-hunters of California are to-day proposing to have revenge on the duck-clubbers by removing all restrictions on the sale of game! This is on the theory that the duckless sportsmen of the State of California would like to buy dead ducks and geese for their tables! It is a novel and original theory, but the sane people of California never will enact it into law. It would be a step just twenty years backward!
The Public vs. The Private Game Preserve. —Both the executive and the judiciary branches of our state governments will in the future be called upon with increasing frequency to sit in judgment on this case. Conditions about us are rapidly changing. The precepts of yesterday may be out of date and worthless tomorrow. By way of introspection, let us see what principles of equity toward Man and Nature we would lay down as the basis of our action if we were called to the bench. Named in logical sequence they would be about as follows:
- Any private game "preserve" that is maintained chiefly as a slaughter-ground for wild game, either birds or mammals, may become detrimental to the interests of the people at large.
- It is not necessarily the duty of any state to provide for the maintenance of private death-traps for the wholesale slaughter of migratory game.
- An oppressive monopoly in the slaughter of migratory game is detrimental to the interests of the public at large, the same as any other monopoly.
- Every de facto game preserve, maintained for the preservation of wild life rather than for its slaughter, is an institution beneficial to the public at large, and therefore entitled to legal rights and privileges above and beyond all which may rightly be accorded to the so-called "preserves" that are maintained as killing-grounds.
- The law may justly discriminate between the actual game preserve and the mere killing-ground.
- Whenever a killing-ground becomes a public burden, it may be abated, the same as any other public infliction.
In private game preserves the time has arrived when lawmakers and judges must begin to apply the blood-test, and separate the true from the false. And at every step, the welfare of the wild life involved must be given full consideration. No men, nor body of men, should be permitted to practice methods that spell extermination.
EGRETS AND HERONS IN SANCTUARY ON MARSH ISLAND
CHAPTER XXXIX