It is said that the Indian word “Iowa” means “the drowsy, or sleepy ones.”  Politically, and educationally, Iowa is all right, but in the protection of wild life she is ten years behind the times, in almost everything save the prohibition of the sale of game. Iowa knows better than to pursue the course that she does!  She boasts about her corn and hogs, but she is deaf to the appeals of the states surrounding her on the subject of spring shooting.  For years Minnesota has set her a good example; but nothing moves her to step up where she belongs in the phalanx of intelligent game-protecting states.

The foregoing may sound harsh, but in view of what other states have endured from Iowa’s stubbornness regarding migratory game, the time for silent treatment of her case has gone by.  She is to-day in the same class as North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland,—­at the tail end of the procession of states.  She cares everything for corn and hogs, but little for wild life.

KANSAS: 

  Spring shooting should be stopped, at once:  with apologies for not
  having done so long ago.

  The continued shooting of prairie chickens when the species is near
  extermination is outrageous, and should be prohibited for ten years.

  Doves should be removed permanently from the game list, partly as a
  measure of self respect.

  Kansas should treat herself to a force of salaried game wardens
  rendering real service.

  She should bar out the machine guns as unfit for use in a
  well-regulated State.

Kansas has calmly witnessed the extermination of her bison, elk, deer, antelope, wild turkeys, sage grouse, whooping cranes, and the beginning of the end of her pinnated grouse, without a pang.  What is wild game in comparison with fat hogs, and seventy-bushels-to-the-acre!

Draw a line around the hog-and-corn area of the United States, and within it you will find more spring shooting, more sale of game and more extermination of species than in any other area in the United States.  I refer to Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.  In not one of these states except Missouri is there any big game hunting, and in the majority of them spring shooting is lawful!

In the Island of Mauritius, it was swine that exterminated the dodo.  In the United States, hogs and game extermination still go hand in hand.  Since the days of the dodo, however, a new species of swine has been developed.  It is now widely known as the “game-hog,” and it has been officially recognized by both bench and bar.

KENTUCKY: 

Nearly everything that a state should maintain in the line of wild life protection Kentucky lacks!  It is easier to tell what she has than to recite what she should have.  Kentucky permits spring shooting; she has no bag limits, and she has long open seasons on everything save introduced pheasants; She protects from sale only quail, grouse and wild turkey killed within her own borders.  This means that her markets are practically wide open.