PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES
Primarily, in the early days of the Man-on-Horseback, the self-elected
and predatory lords of creation evolved the private game preserve as a
scheme for preventing other fellows from shooting, and for keeping the
game sacred to slaughter by themselves. The idea of conserving the game
was a fourth-rate consideration, the first being the estoppel of the
other man. The old-world owner of a game preserve delights in the annual
killing of the surplus game, and we have even heard it whispered that in
the Dark Ages there were kings who enjoyed the wholesale slaughter of
deer, wild boar, pheasants and grouse. If we may accept as true the
history of sport in Europe, there have been men who have loved slaughter
with a genuine blood-lust that is quite foreign to the real
nature-loving sportsman.
In America, the impulse is different. Here, there is raging a genuine
fever for private game preserves. Some of those already existing are of
fine proportions, and cost fortunes to create. Every true sportsman who
is rich enough to own a private game preserve, sooner or later acquires
one. You will find them scattered throughout the temperate zone of North
America from the Bay of Fundy to San Diego. I have had invitations to
visit preserves in an unbroken chain from the farthest corner of Quebec
to the Pacific Coast, and from Grand Island, Lake Superior to the Gulf
of Mexico. It was not necessarily to hunt, and kill something, but to
_see_ the game, and the beauties of nature.
The wealthy American and Canadian joyously buys a tract of wilderness,
fences it, stocks it with game both great and small, and provides game
keepers for all the year round. At first he has an idea that he will
"hunt" therein, and that his guests will hunt also, and actually kill
game. In a mild way, this fiction sometimes is maintained for years. The
owner may each year shoot two or three head of his surplus big game, and
his tenderfoot guests who don't know what real hunting is may also kill
something, each year. But in most of the American preserves with which I
am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big game" is
almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so attached to
his big game, and admires it so sincerely, he has not the heart to kill
it himself; and he finds no joy whatever in seeing it shot down by
others!
In this country the slaughter of game for the market is not considered a
gentlemanly pastime, even though there is a surplus of preserve-bred
game that must be reduced. To the average American, the slaughter of
half-tame elk, deer and birds that have been bred in a preserve does not
appeal in the least. He knows that in the protection of a preserve, the
wild creatures lose much of their fear of man, and become easy marks;
and shall a real sportsman go out with a gun and a bushel of cartridges,
on a pony, and without warning betray the confidence of the wild in
terms of fire and blood? Others may do it if they like; but as a rule
that is not what an American calls "sport." One wide-awake and
well-armed grizzly bear or mountain sheep outwitted on a mountain-side
is worth more as a sporting proposition than a quarter of a mile of deer
carcasses laid out side by side on a nice park lawn to be photographed
as "one day's kill."
In America, the shooting of driven game is something of which we know
little save by hearsay. In Europe, it is practiced on everything from
Scotch grouse to Italian ibex. The German Crown Prince, in his
fascinating little volume "From My Hunting Day-Book," very neatly fixes
the value of such shooting, as a real sportsman's proposition, in the
following sentence:
"The shooting of driven game is merely a question of marksmanship, and
is after all more in the nature of a shooting exercise than sport."
I have seen some shooting in preserves that was too tame to be called
sport; but on the other hand I can testify that in grouse shooting as it
is done behind the dogs on Mr. Carnegie's moor at Skibo, it is sport in
which the hunter earns every grouse that falls to his gun. At the same
time, also, I believe that the shooting of madly running ibex, as it is
done by the King of Italy in his three mountain preserves, is
sufficiently difficult to put the best big-game hunter to the test.
There are times when shooting driven game calls for far more dexterity
with the rifle than is ordinarily demanded in the still-hunt.
In America, as in England and on the Continent of Europe, private game
preserves are so numerous it is impossible to mention more than a very
few of them, unless one devotes a volume to the subject. Probably there
are more than five hundred, and no list of them is "up to date" for more
than one day, because the number is constantly increasing. I make no
pretense even of possessing a list of those in America, and I mention
only a few of those with which I am best acquainted, by way of
illustration.
One of the earliest and the most celebrated deer parks of the United
States was that of Hon. John Dean Caton, of two hundred acres, located
near Ottawa, Ill., established about 1859. It was the experiments and
observations made in that park that yielded Judge Caton's justly famous
book on "The Antelope and Deer of America."
The first game preserve established by an incorporated club was
"Blooming Grove Park," of one thousand acres, in Pennsylvania, where
great success has been attained in the breeding and rearing of
white-tailed deer.
In the eastern United States the most widely-known game preserve is Blue
Mountain Forest Park, near Newport, New Hampshire. It was founded in
1885, by the late Austin Corbin, and has been loyally and diligently
maintained by Austin Corbin, Jr., George S. Edgell and the other members
of the Corbin family. Ownership is vested in the Blue Mountain Forest
Association. The area of the preserve is 27,000 acres, and besides
embracing much fine forest on Croydon Mountain, it also contains many
converted farms whose meadow lands afford good grazing.
This preserve contains a large herd of bison (86 head), elk,
white-tailed deer, wild boar and much smaller game. The annual surplus
of bison and other large game is regularly sold and distributed
throughout the world for the stocking of other parks and zoological
gardens. Each year a few surplus deer are quietly killed for the Boston
market, but a far greater number are sold alive, at from $25 to $30 each
in carload lots.
In the Adirondacks of northern New York, there are a great many private
game preserves. Dr. T.S. Palmer, in his pamphlet on "Private Game
Preserves" (Department of Agriculture) places the number at 60, and
their total area at 791,208 acres. Some of them have caused much
irritation among some of the hunting, fishing and trapping residents of
the Adirondack region. They seem to resent the idea of the exclusive
ownership of lands that are good hunting-grounds. This view of property
rights has caused much trouble and some bloodshed, two persons having
been killed for presuming to assert exclusive rights in large tracts of
wilderness property.
"In the upland preserve under private ownership." says Dr. Palmer, "may
be found one of the most important factors in the maintenance of the
future supply of game and game birds. Nearly all such preserves are
maintained for the propagation of deer, quail, grouse, or pheasants.
They vary widely in area, character, and purpose, and embrace some of
the largest game refuges in the country. Some of the preserves in North
Carolina cover from 15,000 to 30,000 acres; several in South Carolina
exceed 60,000 acres in extent." The Megantic Club's northern preserve,
on the boundary between Quebec and Maine, embraces nearly 200 square
miles, or upward of 125,000 acres.
Comparatively few of the larger preserves are enclosed, and on such
grounds, hunting becomes sport quite as genuine as it is in regions open
to free hunting. In some instances part of the tract is fenced, while
large unenclosed areas are protected by being posted. The character of
their tenure varies also. Some are owned in fee simple; others,
particularly the larger ones, are leased, or else comprise merely the
shooting rights on the land. In both size and tenure, the upland
preserves of the United States are comparable with the grouse moors and
large deer forests of Scotland.
Of the game preserves in the South, I know one that is quite ideal. It
is St. Vincent Island, near Apalachicola, Florida, in the northern edge
of the Gulf of Mexico. It was purchased in 1909 by Dr. Ray V. Pierce,
and his guests kill perhaps one hundred ducks each year out of the
thousands that flock to the ten big ponds that occupy the eastern third
of the island. Into those ponds much good duck food has been
introduced,--_Potamogeton pectinatus_ and _perfoliatus_. The area of
the island is twenty square miles. Besides being a great winter resort
for ducks, its sandy, pine-covered ridges and jungles of palms to and
live oak afford fine haunts and feeding grounds for deer. Those jungles
contain two species of white-tailed deer (_Odocoileus louisiana_ and
_osceola_), and Dr. Pierce has introduced the Indian sambar deer and
Japanese sika deer _(Cervus sika_), both of which are doing well. We are
watching the progress of those big sambar deer with very keen interest,
and it is to be recorded that already that species has crossed with the
Louisiana white-tailed deer.
[Illustration: MAP OF MARSH ISLAND AND ADJACENT WILD-FOWL PRESERVES]
During the autumn of 1912, public attention in the United States was for
a time focused on the purchase of Marsh Island, Louisiana, by Mrs.
Russell Sage, and its permanent dedication to the cause of wild-life
protection. This delightful event has brought into notice the Louisiana
State Game Preserve of 13,000 acres near Marsh Island, and its
hinterland (and water) of 11,000 acres adjoining, which constitutes the
Ward-McIlhenny Wild Fowl Preserve. These three great preserves taken
together as they lie form a wild-fowl sanctuary of great size, and of
great value to the whole Mississippi Valley. Now that all duck-shooting
therein has been stopped, it is safe to predict that they shortly will
be inhabited by a wild-fowl population that will really stagger the
imagination.
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_!
THE PUBLIC vs. THE PRIVATE GAME PRESERVE.--Both the executive and the
judiciary branches of our state governments will in the future be called
upon with increasing frequency to sit in judgment on this case.
Conditions about us are rapidly changing. The precepts of yesterday may
be out of date and worthless tomorrow. By way of introspection, let us
see what principles of equity toward Man and Nature we would lay down as
the basis of our action if we were called to the bench. Named in logical
sequence they would be about as follows:
1. Any private game "preserve" that is maintained chiefly as a
slaughter-ground for wild game, either birds or mammals, may become
detrimental to the interests of the people at large.
[Illustration: EGRETS AND HERONS IN SANCTUARY ON MARSH ISLAND]
2. It is not necessarily the duty of any state to provide for the
maintenance of private death-traps for the wholesale slaughter of
_migratory_ game.
3. An oppressive monopoly in the slaughter of migratory game is
detrimental to the interests of the public at large, the same as any
other monopoly.
4. Every de facto game preserve, maintained for the preservation of wild
life rather than for its slaughter, is an institution beneficial to the
public at large, and therefore entitled to legal rights and privileges
above and beyond all which may rightly be accorded to the so-called
"preserves" that are maintained as killing-grounds.
5. The law may justly discriminate between the actual game preserve and
the mere killing-ground.
6. Whenever a killing-ground becomes a public burden, it may be abated,
the same as any other public infliction.
In private game preserves the time has arrived when lawmakers and judges
must begin to apply the blood-test, and separate the true from the
false. And at every step, _the welfare of the wild life involved_ must
be given full consideration. No men, nor body of men, should be
permitted to practice methods that spell extermination.
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