Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation by William Temple Hornaday
page 120 of 733 (16%)
page 120 of 733 (16%)
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enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on
which they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands. Does anyone question this statement? If so let him turn backward and look at the lists of dead and dying species. THE DIVISION OF MEAT-SHOOTERS contains all men who sordidly shoot for the frying-pan,--to save bacon and beef at the expense of the public, or for the markets. There are a few wilderness regions so remote and so difficult of access that the transportation of meat into them is a matter of much difficulty and expense. There are a very few men in North America who are justified in "living off the country," _for short periods_. The genuine prospectors always have been counted in this class; but all miners who are fully located, all lumbermen and railway-builders certainly are not in the prospector's class. They are abundantly able to maintain continuous lines of communication for the transit of beef and mutton. Of all the meat-shooters, the market-gunners who prey on wild fowl and ground game birds for the big-city markets are the most deadly to wild life. Enough geese, ducks, brant, quail, ruffed grouse, prairie chickens, heath hens and wild pigeons have been butchered by gunners and netters for "the market" to have stocked the whole world. No section containing a good supply of game has escaped. In the United States the great slaughtering-grounds have been Cape Cod; Great South Bay, New York; Currituck Sound, North Carolina; Marsh Island, Louisiana; the southwest corner of Louisiana; the Sunk Lands of Arkansas; the lake regions of Minnesota; the prairies of the whole middle West; Great Salt Lake; the Klamath Lake region (Oregon) and southern California. |
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