In working with large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have steadily—­and also painfully—­been impressed by their intentness on. killing, and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it! Who ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic interest alive? I never did; and I have sat in many conventions of sportsmen.  All the talk is of open seasons, bag limits and killing rights.  The man who has the hardihood to stand up and propose a five-year close season has “a hard row to hoe.”  Men rise and say:  “It’s all nonsense!  There’s plenty of quail shooting on Long Island yet.”

Throughout the length and breadth of America, the ruling passion is to kill as long as anything killable remains.  The man who will openly advocate the stopping of quail-shooting because the quails are of such great value to the farmers, or because they are so beautiful and companionable to man, receives no sympathy from ninety per cent of the bird-killing sportsmen.  The remaining ten per cent think seriously about the matter, and favor long close seasons.  It is my impression that of the men who shoot, it is only among the big-game hunters that we find much genuine admiration for game animals, or any feeling remotely resembling regard for it.

The moment that a majority of American gunners concede the fact that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving of the Remnant.  That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life.  It will then be easy to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of species.  Think what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted for all the grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the United States, or the wild turkey wherever found!

To-day, the great—­indeed, the only—­opponents of long close seasons on game birds are the gunners.  Whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true.  The gun clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters’ and Anglers’ Protective Associations will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill.  And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of the opposition of “a large body of sportsmen,”—­men who have votes, and who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive them of their “right” to kill.  The greatest speech ever made in the Mexican Congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said:  “I rise to sacrifice ambition to honor!”

Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that they have certain inherent, God-given “rights” to kill game!  Now, as a matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar bills in his pocket has no more “right” to kill a covey of quail on Long Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the pleasure of his children!  The time has come when the people who don’t shoot must do one of two things: