r seven shots, and both guns empty_.

"The ball thus opened, the birds commenced to move in all directions.
Until the morning's flight was over I was kept busy pumping lead, _first
with the 10, then with the automatic_, reloading, picking up the dead,
etc."

And the reader will observe that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive
automatic shot gun, that "don't matter if you enforce the bag limit,"
figures prominently in both stories and both photographs.

_A Story of Two Pump Guns and Geese_:--It comes from Aberdeen, S.D.
(Sand Lake), in the spring of 1911. Mr. J.J. Humphrey tells it, in
_Outdoor Life_ magazine for July, 1911.

"Smith and I were about a hundred yards from them [the flock of Canada
geese], when Murphy scared them. They rose in a dense mass and came
directly between Smith and me. We were about gunshot distance apart, and
they were not over thirty feet in the air when we opened up on them with
our pump guns and No. 5 shot. When the smoke cleared away and we had
rounded up the cripples we found we had twenty-one geese. I have heard
of bigger killings out in this country, but never positively knew of
them."

So then: _those two gunners averaged 10-1/2 wild geese per pump gun out
of one flock_! And yet there are wise and reflective sportsmen who say,
"What difference does the kind of gun make so long as you live up to the
law?"

I think that the pump and automatic guns make about 75 _per-cent of
difference, against the game_; that is all!

The number of shot-guns now in use in the United States is almost beyond
belief. About six years ago a gentleman interested in the manufacture of
such weapons informed me, and his statement has never been disputed,
that _every year_ about 500,000 new shot-guns were sold in the United
States. The number of shot cartridges annually produced by our four
great cartridge companies has been reliably estimated as follows:

Winchester Arms Co 300,000,000
Union Metallic Cartridge Co 250,000,000
Peters Cartridge Co 150,000,000
Western Cartridge Co 75,000,000
-----------
775,000,000

We must stop all the holes in the barrel, or eventually lose all the
water. No group of bird-slaughterers is entitled to immunity. We will
not "limit the bag, and enforce the laws," while we permit the makers
and users of autoloading and pump guns to kill at will, as they demand.

*