Oldster v. Gunners

Since 1924 Field & Stream has published every year's migratory game bird hunting laws in its September issue, which goes to press July 20. This year as usual Editor Ray P. Holland was preparing to put an announcement streamer on his September cover, when the U.S. Biological Survey informed him that the laws would be delayed. The Advisory Board established under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act had met in Washington July 10, recommended a 60-day season, same as last year's. But for some reason the President's approval (by his Secretary of Agriculture) was not forthcoming. Confident that the announcement could not be more than a month late, Editor Holland had his October covers printed with a streamer announcing inclusion of the laws. Last week the October Field & Stream went to press with the streamer still on its cover, no laws inside. Field & Stream's indignation was echoed by sportsmen throughout the land. The air was thick with questions, rumors. What was holding things up? How was a man to know what shooting leases to make? How did they expect him to plan his vacation? Were they going to wait until the ducks actually started flying?

Alert observers had a clue to the trouble. Dr. William Temple Hornaday, 78, longtime (1896-1926) director of New York's Bronx Zoo, is a potent game protectionist and foe of hunters. Last week he wrote a letter to the New York Times supplementing a manifesto he had issued as "Director of Campaign Activities of the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund," which he organized in 1913. Excerpts :

''In the U.S. the baiting of waterfowl to kill it, the treacherous and shameful use of live decoys and the sale of game on the wing in the money-making 'clubs' of California and Illinois are three unfair methods which are very destructive to our waterfowl. Many organizations and individual defenders of game have pro tested against those three methods and appealed to President Roosevelt and Secretary Wallace to stop them at once, by the Federal hunting regulations now being formulated and soon to be proclaimed by the President. . . .

''So far as has been reported, or surmised, not one action was taken [by the Advisory Board] to reduce any killing of migratory game. ... We know for a fact that Dr. Thomas Gilbert Pearson's [president of the Audubon Society] resolution to stop baiting game to kill it was voted down twice, the first time 11 to 9 and on the 'reconsideration' 10 to 9. . .

"Knowing the President and the Secretary as we do, we utterly disbelieve the American Game Association's forecast [of no major changes in hunting laws]. We do not believe that the two men who hold an important game-protective man date from Congress will put the seal of Federal approval, to stay for four years, on the three worst killing practices in the

''Our studies have convinced us that State by State our upland game birds are reaching the vanishing point; that the often claimed 'abundance' of killable game is usually false; that all North American game birds are being killed much faster than they are breeding; that 'the sportsmen' are NOT 'saving the game,' and never have done so. . .

". . . The day has come wherein it is the duty of the Federal Government to again intervene, firmly and boldly, and put more checks upon game shooting 1) by the total stoppage of baiting game to entice it up to the guns, and 2) by the total stoppage of the use of live decoys, unfairly to lure geese and ducks down to the very muzzles of hidden batteries of guns--'so close that it is impossible to miss.' "

Presenting their side of an old debate, sportsmen last week declared that: 1) Recent surveys in the U.S. and Canada indicate no alarming shortage of waterfowl, except brant, on which, because they have been so hard hit by the disappearance of eel grass (TIME, Aug. 21), the Advisory Board recommended a closed season; 2) on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, where most natural duck food has disappeared, and in the built-up Illinois valley, wintering waterfowl depend on sportsmen's grain for their food supply; 3) stoppage of baiting would close many a shooting club, throw many a bayman and other attendant out of work, stifle a market for millions of bushels of U.S. farmers' corn.

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