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REASONS WHY THE SALE OF WILD GAME SHOULD CEASE EVERYWHERE
1.—Because fully 95 per cent
of our legitimate stock of feathered
game has already been destroyed.
2.—Because if market-gunning
and the sale of game continue ten
years longer, all our feathered game will
be swept away.
3.—Because when the sale of
game was permitted one dealer was able
to sell 1,000,000 game birds per year
in New York City, so he
himself said.
4.—Because it is a fixed fact that every wild species of mammal, bird or reptile that is pursued for money-making purposes eventually is wiped out of existence. Even the whales of the sea are no exception.
5.—Because at least 50 per cent of the decrease in our feathered game is due to market-gunning, and the sale of game. Look at the prairie chicken of the Mississippi Valley, and the ruffed grouse of New England.
6.—Because the laws that permit the commercial slaughter of wild birds for the benefit of less than five per cent of the inhabitants of any state are directly against the interest of the 95 per cent of other people, to whom that game partly belongs.
7.—Because game killed “for sale” is not intended to satisfy “hunger.” The people who eat game in large cities do not know what hunger is, save by hearsay. Purchased game is used chiefly in over-feeding; and as a rule it does far more harm than good.
8.—Because the greatest value to be derived from any game bird is in seeing it, and photographing it, and enjoying its living company in its native haunts. Who will love the forests when they become destitute of wild life, and desolate?
9.—Because stopping the sale
of game will help bring back the game
birds to us, in a few years.
10.—Because the pace that New
York and Massachusetts have set in
this matter will render it easier to procure
the passage of Bayne
laws in other states.
11.—Because those who legitimately
desire game for their tables can
be supplied from the game farms and preserves
that now are coming
into existence.
When New York’s far-reaching Bayne bill became a law, the following dead birds lay in cold storage in New York City:
Wild duck 98,156
Plover 48,780
Quail 14,227
Grouse 21,202
Snipe 7,825
Woodcock 767
Rail 419
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191,376
They represented the last slaughterings of American game for New York. To-day the remaining plague-spots are Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington and New Orleans; but in New Orleans the brakes have at last (1912) been applied, and the market slaughter that formerly prevailed in that state has at least been checked.