The output of this systematic bird slaughter has supplied the greedy game markets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.  The history of this industry, its methods, its carnage, its profits and its losses would make a volume, but we can not enter upon it here.  Beyond reasonable doubt, this awful traffic in dead game is responsible for at least three-fourths of the slaughter that has reduced our game birds to a mere remnant of their former abundance.  There is no influence so deadly to wild life as that of the market gunner who works six days a week, from sunrise until sunset, hunting down and killing every game bird that he can reach with a choke-bore gun.

During the past five years, several of the once-great killing grounds have been so thoroughly “shot out” that they have ceased to hold their former rank.  This is the case with the Minnesota Lakes, the Sunk Lands of Arkansas, the Klamath Lakes of Oregon, and I think it is also true of southern California.  The Klamath Lakes have been taken over by the Government as a bird refuge.  Currituck Sound, at the northeastern corner of North Carolina, has been so bottled up by the Bayne law of New York State that Currituck’s greatest market has been cut off.  Last year only one-half the usual number of ducks and geese were killed; and already many “professional” duck and brant shooters have abandoned the business because the commission merchants no longer will buy dead birds.

[Illustration:  RUFFED GROUSE A Common Victim of Illegal Slaughter]

Very many enormous bags of game have been made in a day by market gunners:  but rarely have they published any of their records.  The greatest kill of which I ever have heard occurred under the auspices of the Glenn County Club, in southern California, on February 5, 1906.  Two men, armed with automatic shot-guns, fired five shots apiece, and got ten geese out of one flock.  In one hour they killed two hundred and eighteen geese, and their bag for the day was four hundred and fifty geese! The shooter who wrote the story for publication (on February 12, at Willows, Glenn County, California) said:  “It being warm weather, the birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling.”  A photograph was made of the “one hour’s slaughter” of two hundred and eighteen geese, and it was published in a western magazine with “C.H.B.’s” story, nearly all of which will be found in Chapter XV.

The reasons why market shooting is so deadly destructive to wild life are not obscure.

The true sportsman hunts during a very few days only each year.  The market gunners shoot early and late, six days a week, month after month.  When game is abundant, the price is low, and a great quantity must be killed in order to make it pay well.  When game is scarce, the market prices are high, and the shooter makes the utmost exertions to find the last of the game in order to secure the “big money.”