Acre:"

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EMERSON HOUGH'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION

The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to
face. There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer
of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor
matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of
open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them have
failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of
America would prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has
failed. Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed. Our
game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone. America has
changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not
changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know
that to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the
new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild
game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.

There are many reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the
greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the
wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of
many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game.
All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that
one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward
furrow.

Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all
over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If
there really were not access to that country we would not have this
literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And
if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be
shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible
North American continent?

It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all
too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the
hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game
has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it
in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been
our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to
remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think
and plan, and able to do more than that--to follow their plans with