Before the passage of the Bayne law, New York City was a "fence" for the sale of grouse illegally killed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and I know not how many other states. The Bayne law stopped all that business, abruptly and forever; and if the ruffed grouse, quail and ducks of the Eastern States are offered for sale in Chicago, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Washington, the people of New York and Massachusetts can at least be assured that they are not to blame. Those two states now maintain no "fences" for the sale of game that has been stolen from other states. They have both set their houses in order, and set two examples for forty other states to follow.
The remedy for all this miserable game-stealing, law-breaking business is simple and easily obtained. Let each state of the United States and each province and Canada enact a Bayne law, absolutely prohibiting the sale of all wild native game, and the thing is done! But nothing short of that will be really effective. It will not do at all to let state laws rest with merely forbidding the sale of game "protected by the State;" for that law is full of loop-holes. It does much good service, yes; but what earthly objection can there be in any state to the enactment of a law that is sweepingly effective, and which can not be evaded, save through the criminal connivance of officers of the law?
By way of illustration, to show what the sale of wild game means to the remnant of our game, and the wicked slaughter of non-game birds to which it leads, consider these figures:
| Dead Birds Found In One Cold Storage House In New York In 1902 | ||||
| Snow Buntings | 8,058 | Grouse | 7,560 | |
| Sandpipers | 7,607 | Quail | 4,385 | |
| Plover | 5,218 | Ducks | 1,756 | |
| Snipe | 7,003 | Bobolinks | 288 | |
| Yellow-legs | 788 | Woodcock | 96 | |
The fines for this lot, if imposed, would have amounted to $1,168,315.
Shortly after that seizure American quail became so scarce that in effect they totally disappeared from the banquet tables of New York. I can not recall having been served with one since 1903, but the little Egyptian quail can be legally imported and sold when officially tagged.
Few persons away from the firing line realize the far-reaching effects of the sale of wild game. Here are a few flashes from the searchlight:
At Hangkow, China, Mr. C. William Beebe found that during his visit in 1911, over 46,000 pheasants of various species were shipped from that port on one cold-storage steamer to the London market. And this when English pheasants were selling in the Covent Garden market at from two to three shillings each, for fresh birds!
In 1910, 1,200 ptarmigan from Norway, bound for the Chicago market, passed through the port of New York,—not by any means the first or the last shipment of the kind. The epicures of Chicago are being permitted to comb the game out of Norway.