On account of the now-accursed land-of-liberty idea, every foreigner who sails past the statue on Bedloe's Island and lands on our liberty-ridden shore, is firmly convinced that now, at last, he can do as he pleases! And as one of his first ways in which to show his newly-acquired personal liberty and independence in the Land of Easy Marks, he buys a gun and goes out to shoot "free game!"
If we, as a people, are so indolent and so somnolent that Antonio gets away with all our wild birds, then do we deserve to be robbed.
Italians are pouring into America in a steady stream. They are strong, prolific, persistent and of tireless energy. New York City now contains 340,000 of them. They work while the native Americans sleep. Wherever they settle, their tendency is to root out the native American and take his place and his income. Toward wild life the Italian laborer is a human mongoose. Give him power to act, and he will quickly exterminate every wild thing that wears feathers or hair. To our songbirds he is literally a "pestilence that walketh at noonday".
As we have shown, the Italian is a born pot-hunter, and he has grown up in the fixed belief that killing song-birds for food is right! To him all is game that goes into the bag. The moment he sets foot in the open, he provides himself with a shot-gun, and he looks about for things to kill. It is "a free country;" therefore, he may kill anything he can find, cook it and eat it. If anybody attempts to check him,—sapristi! beware his gun! He cheerfully invades your fields, and even your lawn; and he shoots robins, bluebirds, thrushes, catbirds, grosbeaks, tanagers, orioles, woodpeckers, quail, snipe, ducks, crows, and herons.
Down in Virginia, near Charlottesville, an Italian who was working on a new railroad once killed a turkey buzzard; and he selfishly cooked it and ate it, all alone. A pot-hunting compatriot of his heard of it, and reproached him for having-dined on game in camera. In the quarrel that ensued, one of the "sportsmen" stabbed the other to death.
When the New York Zoological Society began work on its Park in 1899, the northern half of the Borough of the Bronx was a regular daily hunting-ground for the slaughter of song-birds, and all other birds that could be found. Every Sunday it was "bangetty!" "bang!" from Pelham Bay to Van Cortlandt. The police force paid not the slightest attention to these open, flagrant, shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting and shooting in the Borough of the Bronx, and a reform is now on.
The war on the bird-killers in New York City began in 1900. It seemed that if the Zoological Society did not take up the matter, the slaughter would continue indefinitely. The white man's burden was taken up; and the story of the war is rather illuminating. Mr. G.O. Shields, President of the League of American Sportsmen, quickly became interested in the matter, and entered actively into the campaign. For months unnumbered, he spent every Sunday patroling the woods and thickets of northern New York and Westchester county, usually accompanied by John J. Rose and Rudolph Bell of the Zoological Park force, for whom appointments as deputy game wardens had been secured from the State.
The adventures of that redoubtable trio of man-hunters would make an interesting chapter. They were shot at by poachers, but more frequently they shot at the other fellows. Just why it was that no one was killed, no one seems to know. Many Italians and several Americans were arrested while hunting, haled to court, prosecuted and fined. Finally, a reign of terror set in; and that was the beginning of the end. It became known that those three men could not be stopped by threats, and that they always got their man—unless he got into a human rabbit-warren of the Italian boarding-house species. That was the only escape that was possible.
The largest haul of dead birds was 43 robins, orioles, thrushes and woodpeckers, captured along with the five Italians who committed the indiscretion of sitting down in the woods to divide their dead birds. We saved all the birds in alcohol, and showed them in court. The judge fined two of the Italians $50 each, and the other three were sent to the penitentiary for two months each.