In view of the great scarcity of feathered game, and the number of deadly machine guns already on the market, the production of the last and deadliest automatic gun (by the Winchester Arms Company), already in great demand, is a crime against wild life, no less.

Every human action is a matter of taste and individual honor.

It is natural for the duck-butchers of Currituck to love the automatic shot-guns as they do, because they kill the most ducks per flock.  With two of them in his boat, holding ten shots, one expert duck-killer can,—­and sometimes actually does, so it is said,—­get every duck out of a flock, up to seven or eight.

It is natural for an awkward and blundering wing-shot to love the deadliest gun, in order that he may make as good a bag as an expert shot can make with a double-barreled gun.  It is natural for the hunter who does not care a rap about the extermination of species to love the gun that will enable him to kill up to the bag limit, every time he takes the field.  It is natural for men who don’t think, or who think in circles, to say “so long as I observe the lawful bag limit, what difference does it make what kind of a gun I use?”

It is natural for the Remington, and Winchester, and Marlin gun-makers to say, as they do, “Enforce the laws!  Shorten the open seasons!  Reduce the bag limit, and then it won’t matter what guns are used!  But,—­DON’T touch autoloading guns!  Don’t hamper Inventive Genius!”

Is it not high time for American sportsmen to cease taking their moral principles and their codes of ethics from the gun-makers?

Here is a question that I would like to put before every hunter of game in America: 

In view of the alarming scarcity of game, in view of the impending extermination of species by legal hunting, can any high-minded sportsman, can any good citizen either sell a machine shot-gun or use one in hunting?

A gentleman is incapable of taking an unfair advantage of any wild creature; therefore a gentleman cannot use punt guns for ducks, dynamite for game fish, or automatic or pump guns in bird-shooting.  The machine guns and “silencers” are grossly unfair, and like gang-hooks, nets and dynamite for trout and bass, their use in hunting must everywhere be prohibited by law.  Times have changed, and the lines for protection must be more tightly drawn.

[Illustration:  THE CHAMPION GAME SLAUGHTER CASE One Hour’s Slaughter (218 Geese) With Two Automatic Shot-Guns]

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Judge Orlady) has decided that the Pennsylvania law against the use of automatic guns in hunting is entirely constitutional, because every state has a right to say how its game may and may not be killed.

It is up to the American People to say now whether their wild life shall be slaughtered by machinery, or not.

If they are willing that it should be, then let us be consistent and say—­away with all “conservation!” The game conservators can endure a gameless and birdless continent quite as well as the average citizen can.