In the winter and spring of 1912 the State Game Commission of Pennsylvania found that quail and ruffed grouse were being sold in Pittsburgh, in large quantities.  The state laws were well enforced, and it was believed that the birds were not being killed in Pennsylvania.  Some other state was being robbed!

The Game Commission went to work, and in a very short time certain game-dealers of Pittsburgh were arrested.  At first they tried to bluff their way out of their difficulty, and even went as far as to bring charges against the game-warden whom the Commission had instructed to buy some of their illegal game, and pay for it.  But the net of the law tightened upon them so quickly and so tightly that they threw up their hands and begged for mercy.

It was found that those Pittsburgh game-dealers were selling quail and grouse that had been stolen in thousands, from the state of Kentucky!  Between the state game laws, working in lovely harmony with the Lacey federal law that prohibits the shipment of game illegally killed or sold, the whole bad business was laid bare, and signed confessions were promptly obtained from the shippers in Kentucky.

At that very time, a good bill for the better protection of her game was before the Kentucky legislature; and a certain member was vigorously opposing it, as he had successfully done in previous years.  He was told that the state was being robbed, but refused to believe it.  Then a signed confession was laid before him, bearing the name of the man who was instigating his opposition,—­his friend,—­who confessed that he had illegally bought and shipped to Pittsburgh over 5,000 birds.  The objector literally threw up his hands, and said, “I have been wrong! Let the bill go through!” And it went.

[Illustration:  SNOW BUNTING A Great “Game Bird”!  Of These, 8,058 Were Found in 1902 in one New York Cold-Storage Warehouse]

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?