s
needed in the English language, and it has come to stay. It is a
disagreeable term, but it was brought into use to apply to a class of
very disagreeable persons.

A "game-hog" is a hunter of game who knows no such thing as sentiment or
conscience in the killing of game, so long as he keeps within the limit
of the law. Regardless of the scarcity of game, or of its hard struggle
for existence, he will kill right up to the bag limit every day that he
goes out, provided it is possible to do so. He uses the "law" as a salve
for the spot where his conscience should be. He will shoot with any
machine gun, or gun of big calibre, in every way that the law allows,
and he knows no such thing as giving the game a square deal. He brags of
his big bags of game, and he loves to be photographed with a wagon-load
of dead birds as a background. He believes in automatic and pump guns,
spring shooting, longer open seasons and "more game." He is quite
content to shoot half tame ducks in a club preserve as they fly between
coop and pond, whenever he secures an opportunity. He will gladly sell
his game whenever he can do so without being found out, and sometimes
when he is.

Often a true sportsman drifts without realizing it into some one way of
the confirmed game-hog; but the moment he is made to realize his
position, he changes his course and his standing. The game-hog is
impervious to argument. You can shame a horse away from his oats more
easily than you can shame him from doing "what the Law allows."

There are hundreds of thousands of gentlemen and gentlewomen who never
once have come in touch with real cloven-footed game-hogs, who do not
understand the species at all, and do not recognize its ear-marks.
Thousands of such persons will tell you: "In my opinion, the best way to
save the wild life is to _educate the people_!" I have heard that, many,
many times.

For right-hearted people, a little law is quite sufficient; and the best
people need none at all! But the game-hogs are different. For them, the
strict letter of the law, backed up by a strong-arm squad, is the only
controlling influence that they recognize. To them it is necessary to
say: "You shall!" and "You shall not!"

Only yesterday the latest game-hog case was related to me by a
game-protector from Kansas. Into a certain county of southern Kansas,
from which the prairie-chicken had been totally gone for a dozen years
or more, a pair of those birds entered, settled d