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  EMERSON HOUGH’S VIEW OF THE SITUATION

The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face.  There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in America.  Our old ways have failed, all of them have failed.  The declining fortunes of the best sportsman’s journals of America would prove that, if proof were asked.  Our sportsmanship has failed.  Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed.  Our game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone.  America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not changed with it.  The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that to be the truth.  The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.

There are many reasons for this fact, these facts.  Perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game.  All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow.

Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world.  Take the late influx of East African literature.  If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country.  And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible North American continent?

It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter.  At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone.  We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion.  This has been our policy as a nation.  If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that—­to follow their plans with deeds.

I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called.  It has been class legislation and organized selfishness—­that is what it has been, and nothing else.  I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the sportsmen of America selfish and thoughtless.  I do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and looking to destruction rather than to protection.  At