The killers of doves, squirrels, blackbirds and robins belong in the same class as the sparrow-and-linnet-killing Italians of Venice, Milan and Turin, and in that company we will leave them.

Tennessee needs: 

  A resident license system to provide funds for game protection.

  A salaried warden force.

  A law prohibiting spring shooting of shore birds and waterfowl.

  A law protecting robins, doves and other non-game birds not covered
  by the present statute.

TEXAS: 

I remember well when the great battle was fought in Texas by the gallant men and women of the State Audubon Society, to compel the people of Texas to learn the economic value to agriculture and cotton of the insectivorous birds.  The name of the splendid Brigadier-General who led the Army of the Defense was Capt.  M.B.  Davis.  That was in 1903.

Since that great fight was won, Texas has been a partly reformed state, at times quite jealous of her bird life; but still she tolerates spring shooting and has not made adequate close seasons for her waterfowl; which is wrong.  To-day, the people of Texas do not need to be told that forty-three species of birds feed on the cotton boll weevil; for they know it.

On the whole, and for a southern state, the wild-life laws of Texas are in fairly good shape.  On account of the absence of game-scourge markets, a Bayne law is not so imperatively necessary there as in certain other states.  All the game of the state is protected from sale.

We do assert, however, that if robins are slaughtered as F.L.  Crow, the former Atlantan asserts, all robin shooting should be forever stopped; that the pinnated grouse should be given a seven-year close season, and that doves should be taken off the list of game birds and perpetually protected, both for economic and sentimental reasons, and also because the too weak and confiding dove is not a “game” bird for red-blooded men.

  Texas should enact without delay a law providing close seasons for
  ducks, geese and other waterfowl;

  A law prohibiting spring shooting, and

  A provision reducing the limit on deer to two bucks a season.

UTAH: 

The laws of Utah are far from being up to the requirements of the present hour.  One strange thing has happened in Utah.

When I spent a week in Salt Lake City in 1888, and devoted some time to inquiring into game conditions, the laws of the state were very bad.  At the mouth of Bear River, ducks were being slaughtered for the markets by the tens of thousands.  The cold-blooded, wide open and utterly shameless way in which it was being done, right at the doors of Salt Lake City, was appalling.

At the same time, the law permitted the slaughter of spotted fawns.  I saw a huge drygoods box filled to the top with the flat skins of slaughtered innocents, 260 in number, that a rascal had collected and was offering at fifty cents each.  In reply to a question as to their use, he said:  “I tink de sportsmen like ’em for to make vests oud of.”  He lived at Rawlins, Wyo.