Why kill, for the mere sake of killing or the exhibition of one's skill,
any wild thing that when alive harms no one and when killed is of no
worth? The more happy wild life there is in the world, the pleasanter it
is for all of us.
When one is duck-shooting on inland waters, sitting alert in the bow of
the skiff with his gun ready for the expected gaudy wood duck, or plump
mallard, or loud quacking dusky duck, or swift-winged teal, to rise with
a splashing flutter out of the wild rice, and there is a sudden beating
of broad wings among the sedges with a startled guttural quack, and
one's heart leaps to his throat and his gun to his shoulder, and
then--only an awkward bittern climbs the September breeze with a slow
incline, there is a vengeful temptation to let drive at the
disappointing good-for-nothing. But why not let the poor fellow go? If
you dropped him back into the marsh to rot unprofitably there, disdained
even by the mink, unattainable to the scavenger skunk, what good would
it do you? If he disappointed you, you disturbed him in his meditations,
or in the pursuit of a poor but honest living. Perhaps a great heron too
intent on his fishing or frogging, or dozing in the fancied seclusion of
his reedy bower, springs up within short range and goes lagging away on
his broad vans. He may be taken home to show, for he is worth showing
even when killed. But if you wish your friends to see him at his best,
bring them to him and let them see how well he befits these sedgy
levels--a goodly sight, whether he makes his lazy flight above them or
stands a motionless sentinel in the oozy shallows. The marshes would be
desolate without him, or if one desires the charm of loneliness, his
silent presence adds to it.
A kingfisher comes clattering along the channel. As he jerks his swift
way over the sluggish water he may test your marksmanship, but as he
hangs with rapid wing-beats over a school of minnows, as steadfast for
a minute as a star forever, needing no skill to launch him to his final
unrewarded plunge, do not kill him! In such waters he takes no fish that
you would, and he enlivens the scene more than almost any other
frequenter of it, never skulking and hiding, but with metallic,
vociferous clatter heralding his coming. One never tires of watching his
still mid-air poise, the same in calm or wind, and his unerring headlong
plunge.
When one wanders along a willowy stream with his gun, cautiously
approaching every lily-padded pool and shadowed bend likely to harbor
wood duck or teal, and finds neither, and his ears begin to ache for the
sound of his gun--if a green heron flaps off a branch before him he is
sorely tempted to shoot the ungainly bird, but if the gun must be heard,
let it speak to a stump or a tossed chip, either as difficult a target
as he, and let the poor harmless little heron live. Uncouth as he is, he
comes in well in the picture of such a watercourse, which has done with
the worry of turning mills, left far behind with their noise and bustle
on foaming rapids among the hills, and crawls now in lazy ease through
wide intervales, under elms and water maples and thickets of willows.
On the uplands, where the meadow lark starts out of the grass with a
sharp, defiant "zeet!" and speeds away on his steady game-like flight,
remember before you stop it, or try to, of how little account he is when
brought to bag; and how when the weary days of winter had passed, his
cheery voice welcomed the coming spring, a little later than the
robin's, a little earlier than the flicker's cackle; and what an
enlivening dot of color his yellow breast made where he strutted in the
dun, bare meadows.
In some States the woodpeckers are unprotected and are a mark for every
gunner. Their galloping flight tempts the ambitious young shooter to try
his skill, but they are among the best friends of the arboriculturist
and the fruit-grower, for though some of them steal cherries and peck
early apples, and one species sucks the sap of trees, they are the only
birds that search out and kill the insidious, destructive borer.
In some States, too, the hare is unprotected by any law, and it is
common custom to hunt it, even so late as April, for the mere sake of
killing, apparently; or perhaps the charm of the hound's music, which
makes the butchery of Adirondack deer so delightful a sport to some,
adds a zest to the slaughter of these innocents--though, be it said,
there is no comparison in the marksmanship required. Alive, the northern
hare is one of the most harmless of animals; dead, he is, in the opinion
of most people, one of the most worthless; so worthless that hunters
frequently leave the result of all their day's "sport" in the woods
where they were killed. Yet the hare is legitimate game, and should be
hunted as such, and only in proper seasons, and not be ruthlessly
exterminated. A woodland stroll is the pleasanter if one sees a hare
there in his brown summer suit, or white as the snow about him in his
winter furs.
Where there are no statute laws for the protection of game and harmless
creatures not so classed, an unwritten law of common sense, common
decency, and common humanity should be powerful enough to protect all
these. The fox is an outlaw; it is every one's legal right to kill him
whenever and however he may, and yet wherever the fox is hunted with any
semblance of fair play, whether in New England with gun and hound, or
elsewhere with horse and hound, the man who traps a fox, or kills one
unseasonably, or destroys a vixen and her cubs, bears an evil
reputation. A sentiment as popular and as potent ought to prevail to
protect those that, though harmless, are as unshielded by legislative
enactments as the fox, and much less guarded by natural laws and inborn
cunning.