THE LOUISIANA STATE WILD FOWL REFUGE on Vermillion Bay, has an area of 13,000 acres.  It was presented to the state by Messrs. Ward and McIlhenny, and formally accepted and protected.  It contains a great area of fresh-water ponds and marshy meadows, wherein grows an abundant supply of food for wild fowl.  It contains several miles of gravel beach, which during the winter season is visited by thousands of wild geese in quest of their indispensable supply of gravel.  The ponds within its borders furnish feeding-grounds for canvasback ducks, redhead, mallard, blackhead and various species of wild geese.

OTHER STATE GAME PRESERVES Acres

IDAHO.—­Payette River Game Preserve 230,000
CALIFORNIA.—­Pinnacles Game Preserve 2,080
WYOMING.—­Big Horn Mountains Game Preserve. 
MONTANA.—­Yellowstone Game Preserve. 
          Pryor Mountain Game Preserve.

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CHAPTER XXXVII

GAME PRESERVES AND GAME LAWS IN CANADA

As now set forth on the map of North America, Canada is a vast country.  We must no longer think of Ontario and Quebec as “Canada West” and “Canada East,” because the new assistant-nation owns and rules everything from Labrador to British Columbia, and all the northern mainland save Alaska.

Although the fauna of Canada is strictly boreal, it is sufficiently dispersed and diversified to demand wise legislation, and plenty of it.  For a nation with an outfit of provinces so new, Canada already is well advanced in the matter of game laws and game preserves, and in some respects she has set the pace for her southern neighbors.  For example, in New Brunswick we see the lordly moose successfully hunted for sport, not only without being exterminated but actually on a basis that permits it to increase in number.  In Nova Scotia we see a law in force which successfully prohibits the waste of moose meat, a loss that characterizes moose hunting everywhere else throughout the range of that animal.  All over southern Canada the use of automatic shotguns in hunting is strictly prohibited.

On the other hand, the laws of the Canadians are weak in not preventing the sale of all wild game and the killing of antelope.  In the matter of game-selling, there are far too many open doors, and a sweeping reform is very necessary.

Speaking generally, and with application from Labrador to British Columbia, the American process of game extermination according to law is vigorously and successfully being pursued by the people of Canada.  The open seasons are too long, and the bag limits are too generous to the gunners.  As it is elsewhere, the bag-limit laws on birds are a farce, because it is impossible to enforce them, save on every tenth man.  For example, in his admirable “Final Report of the Ontario Game and Fisheries Commission” (1912), Commissioner Kelly Evans says: