For all that, however, every man who still shoots game is a soldier in the Army of Destruction!  There is no blinking that fact.  Such men do not stand on the summit with the men who now protect the game and do not shoot at all! The millions of men who do not shoot, and who also do nothing to protect or preserve wild life, do not count!  In this warfare they are merely ciphers in front of the real figures.

THE GUNNERS, WHO KILL TO THE LIMIT.—­Out of the enormous mass of men who annually take up arms against the remnant of wild life, and are called “sportsmen,” I believe that only one out of every 500 conscientiously stops shooting when game becomes scarce, and extinction is impending.  All of the others feel that it is right and proper to kill all the game that they can kill up to the legal bag limit.  It is the reasoning of Shylock: 

“Justice demands it, and the law doth give it!”

Especially is this true of the men who pay their one dollar per year for a resident hunting license, and feel that in doing so they have done a great Big Thing!

This is a very deadly frame of mind.  Ethically it is entirely wrong; and at least two million men and boys who shoot American game must be shown that it is wrong!  This is the spirit of Extermination, clothed in the robes of Law and Justice.

Whenever and wherever game birds are so scarce that a good shot who hunts hard during a day in the fields finds only three or four birds, he should stop shooting at once, and devote his mind and energies to the problem of bringing back the game! It is strange that conditions do not make this duty clear to every conscientious citizen.

The Shylock spirit which prompts a man to kill all that “the law allows” is a terrible scourge to the wild life of America, and to the world at large.  It is the spirit of extermination according to law.  Even the killing of game for the market is not so great a scourge as this; for this spirit searches out the game in every nook and cranny of the world, and spares not.  In effect it says:  “If the law is defective, it is right for me to take every advantage of it!  I do not need to have any conscience in the matter outside the letter of the law.”

The extent to which this amazing spirit prevails is positively awful.  You will find it among pseudo game-protectors to a paralyzing extent!  It is the great gunner’s paradox, and it pervades this country from corner to corner.  No:  there is no use in trying to “educate” the mass of the hunters of America out of it, as a means of saving the game; for positively it can not be done!  Do not waste time in trying it.  If you rely upon it, you will be doing a great wrong to wild life, and promoting extermination.  The only remedy is sweeping laws, for long close seasons, for a great many species.  Forget the paltry dollar-a-year license money.  The license fees never represent more than a tenth part of the value of the game that is killed under licenses.