And pass a law shutting out the machine guns.  They are a disgrace to
  our country, and a scourge to our game.  Continually are they leading
  good men astray.

  Extend the term of your State Warden to four years.

WYOMING: 

The State of Wyoming once had a magnificent heritage of game.  It embraced the Rocky Mountain species, and also those of the great plains.  First and last, the state has worked hard to protect her wild life, and hold the killing of it down to a decent basis.

As far back as 1889, I met on the Shoshone River a very wide-awake warden, actually “on his job,” who was maintained by a body of private citizens headed by Col.  Pickett and known as the Northern Wyoming Game Protective Association.  And even then we saw that the laws were too liberal for the game.  In one man’s cold-storage dug-out we saw enough sheep, deer and elk meat to subsist a company of hungry dragoons, all killed and possessed according to law.

In the protection of her mountain game, Wyoming has had a hard task.  In the Yellowstone Park between 1889 and 1894, the poachers for the taxidermists of Livingston and elsewhere slaughtered 270 bison out of 300; and Howell was the only man caught.  England can protect game in far-distant mountains and wildernesses; but America can not,—­or at least we don’t! With us, men living in remote places who find wild game about them say “To h—–­ with the law!” They kill on the sly, in season and out of season, females and males; and the average local jury simply will not convict the average settler who is accused of such a trifling indiscretion as killing game out of season when he “needs the meat.”

And so, with laws in full force protecting females, the volume of big game steadily disappears, everywhere west of the Alleghanies where the law permits big-game hunting! An interesting chapter might be written on game exterminated according to law.

The deadly defects in the protection of western big game are: 

  Structural weakness in the enforcement of the laws;

  Collusion between offenders for the suppression of evidence;

  Perjury on the witness stand;

  Dishonesty and disloyalty on the part of local jurors when friends,
  are on trial;

  Sympathy of judges for “the poor man” who wants to eat the game to
  save his cattle and sheep.

[Illustration:  (Map of) STATES AND PROVINCES WHICH REQUIRE RESIDENTS TO OBTAIN HUNTING LICENSES, 1912

  In Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Rhode Island an
  additional fee of 10 to 20 cents is charged for issuing the license.

  Inclosed names indicate States which permit residents to hunt on
  their own land without license.  Nova Scotia has a $5 resident
  license and exempts landowners.

  Note that many of the States adopt the French method of exempting
  landowners, while some, particularly in the West follow the English
  method of requiring everyone who hunts to obtain a license.