DUCK-SHOOTING “PRESERVES.”—­A ducking “preserve” is a large tract of land and water owned by a few individuals, or a club, for the purpose of preserving exclusively for themselves and their friends the best possible opportunities for killing large numbers of ducks and geese without interference.  In no sense whatever are they intended to preserve or increase the supply of wild fowl.  The real object of their existence is duck and goose slaughter.  For example, the worst goose-slaughter story on record comes to us from the grounds of the Glenn County Club in California, whereon, as stated elsewhere, two men armed with automatic shotguns killed 218 geese in one hour, and bagged a total of 452 in one day.

I shall not attempt to give any list of the so-called ducking “preserves.”  The word “preserve,” when applied to them, is a misnomer.  Thirteen states have these incorporated slaughtering-grounds for ducks and geese, the greatest number being in California, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia.  California has carried the ducking-club idea to the limit where it is claimed that it constitutes an abuse.  Dr. Palmer says that one or two of the club preserves on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley contain upward of 40 square miles, or 25,000 acres each!  With considerable asperity it is now publicly charged (in the columns of The Examiner of San Francisco) that for the unattached sportsmen there is no longer any duck-shooting to be had in California, because all the good ducking-grounds are owned and exclusively controlled by clubs.  In many states the private game preserves are a source of great irritation, and many have been attacked in courts of law.[N]

[Footnote N:  “Private Game Preserves and their Future in the United States,” by T.S.  Palmer, United States Department of Agriculture, 1910.]

But I am not sorrowing over the woes of the unattached duck-hunter, or in the least inclined to champion his cause against the ducking-club member.  As slaughterers and exterminators of wild-fowl, rarely exercising mercy under ridiculous bag-limits, they have both been too heedless of the future, and one is just as bad for the game as the other.  If either of them favored the game, I would be on his side; but I see no difference between them.  They both kill right up to the bag-limit, as often as they can; and that is what is sweeping away all our feathered game.

Curiously enough, the angry unattached duck-hunters of California are to-day proposing to have revenge on the duck-clubbers by removing all restrictions on the sale of game!  This is on the theory that the duckless sportsmen of the State of California would like to buy dead ducks and geese for their tables!  It is a novel and original theory, but the sane people of California never will enact it into law.  It would be a step just twenty years backward!