s systematic bird slaughter has supplied the greedy
game markets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore,
Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco,
Portland, and Seattle. The history of this industry, its methods, its
carnage, its profits and its losses would make a volume, but we can not
enter upon it here. Beyond reasonable doubt, this awful traffic in dead
game is responsible for at least three-fourths of the slaughter that has
reduced our game birds to a mere remnant of their former abundance.
There is no influence so deadly to wild life as that of the market
gunner who works six days a week, from sunrise until sunset, hunting
down and killing every game bird that he can reach with a choke-bore
gun.

During the past five years, several of the once-great killing grounds
have been so thoroughly "shot out" that they have ceased to hold their
former rank. This is the case with the Minnesota Lakes, the Sunk Lands
of Arkansas, the Klamath Lakes of Oregon, and I think it is also true of
southern California. The Klamath Lakes have been taken over by the
Government as a bird refuge. Currituck Sound, at the northeastern corner
of North Carolina, has been so bottled up by the Bayne law of New York
State that Currituck's greatest market has been cut off. Last year only
one-half the usual number of ducks and geese were killed; and already
many "professional" duck and brant shooters have abandoned the business
because the commission merchants no longer will buy dead birds.

[Illustration: RUFFED GROUSE
A Common Victim of Illegal Slaughter]

Very many enormous bags of game have been made in a day by market
gunners: but rarely have they published any of their records. The
greatest kill of which I ever have heard occurred under the auspices of
the Glenn County Club, in southern California, on February 5, 1906. Two
men, armed with automatic shot-guns, fired five shots apiece, and got
ten geese out of one flock. In one hour they killed _two hundred and
eighteen geese_, and their bag for the day was _four hundred and fifty
geese!_ The shooter who wrote the story for publication (on February 12,
at Willows, Glenn County, California) said: "It being warm weather, the
birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling." A
photograph was made of the "one hour's slaughter" of two hundred and
eighteen geese, and it was published in a western magazine with
"C.H.B.'s" story, nearly all