Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 15

Maybe this is all right. Maybe the government can't stop the elk from crossing the line. Maybe the elk were helped over; but it strikes me there is something wrong somewhere.

THE DIVISION OF HIRED LABORERS.--The scourge of lumber-camps in big-game territory, the mining camps and the railroad-builders is a long story, and if told in detail it would make several chapters. Their awful destructiveness is well known. It is a common thing for "the boss" to hire a hunter to kill big game to supply the hungry outfit, and save beef and pork.

The abuses arising from this source easily could be checked, and finally suppressed. A ten-line law would do the business,--forbidding any person employed in any camp of sheep men, cattle men, lumbermen, miners, railway laborers or excavators to own or use a rifle in hunting wild game; and forbidding any employer of labor to feed those laborers, or permit them to be fed, on the flesh of wild game mammals or birds.

"Camp" laborers are not "pioneers;" not by a long shot! They are soldiers of Commerce, and makers of money.

A MOUNTAIN SHEEP CASE IN COLORADO.--The state of Colorado sincerely desires to protect and perpetuate its slender remnant of mountain sheep, but as usual the Lawless Miscreant is abroad to thwart the efforts of the guardians of the game. Every state that strives to protect its big game has such doings as this to contend with:

In the winter of 1911-12, a resident poacher brought into Grant, Colorado, a lot of mountain sheep meat _for sale_; and he actually sold it to residents of that town! The price was _six cents per pound_. A lot of it was purchased by the railway station-agent. I have no doubt that the same man who did that job, which was made possible only by the co-operation of the citizens of Grant, will try the same poaching-and-selling game next winter, unless the State Game Commissioner is able to bring him to book.

A WYOMING CASE IN POINT.--As a fair sample of what game wardens, and the general public, are sometimes compelled to endure through the improper decisions of judges, I will cite this case:

In the Shoshone Mountains of northern Wyoming, about fifty miles or so from the town of Cody, in the winter of 1911-12 a man was engaged in trapping coyotes. It was currently reported that he had been "driven out of Montana and Idaho." He had scores of traps. He baited his traps with the flesh of deer, elk calves and grouse, all illegally killed and illegally used for that purpose. A man of my acquaintance saw some of this game meat actually used as described.

The man was a notorious character, and cruel in the extreme. Finally a game warden caught him red-handed, arrested him, and took him to Cody for trial. It happened that the judge on the bench had once trapped with him, and therefore "he set the game-killer free, while the game-warden was roasted."

That wolf-trapper once took into the mountains a horse, to kill and use as bear-bait. The animal was blind in one eye, and because it would not graze precisely where the wolfer desired it to remain, he deliberately destroyed the sight of its good eye, and left it for days, without the ability to find water.

Think of the fate of any wild animal that unkind Fate places at the mercy of such a man!

CHAPTER VIII

UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE

Quite unintentionally on his part, Man, the arch destroyer and the most predatory and merciless of all animal species except the wolves, has rendered a great service to all the birds that live or nest upon the ground. His relentless pursuit and destruction of the savage-tempered, strong-jawed fur-bearing animals is in part the salvation of the ground birds of to-day and yesterday. If the teeth and claws had been permitted to multiply unchecked down to the present time, with man's warfare on the upland game proceeding as it has done, scores upon scores of species long ere this would have been exterminated.

But the slaughter of the millions of North American foxes, wolves, weasels, skunks, and mink has so overwhelmingly reduced the four-footed enemies of the birds that the balance of wild Nature has been preserved.

As a rule, the few predatory wild animals that remain are not slaughtering the birds to a serious extent; and for this we may well be thankful.

THE DOMESTIC CAT.--In such thickly settled communities as our northern states, from the Atlantic coast to the sandhills of Kansas and Nebraska, the domestic cat is probably the greatest four-footed scourge of bird life. Thousands of persons who never have seen a hunting cat in action will doubt this statement, but the proof of its truthfulness is only too painfully abundant.

Unhappily it is the way of the hunting cat to stalk unseen, and to kill the very birds that are most friendly with man, and most helpful to him in his farming and fruit-growing business. The quail is about the only game bird that the cat affects seriously, and to it the cat is very destructive. It is the robin, catbird, thrush, bluebird, dove, woodp.e.c.k.e.r, chickadee, phoebe, tanager and other birds of the lawn, the garden and orchard that afford good hunting for sly and savage old Thomas.

When I was a boy in my 'teens, I had a lasting series of object lessons on the cat as a predatory animal. Our "Betty" was the most ambitious and successful domestic-cat hunter of wild mammals of which I ever have heard. To her, rats and mice were mere child's-play, and after a time their pursuit offered such tame sport that she sought fresh fields for her prowess. Then she brought in young rabbits, chipmunks and thirteen-lined spermophiles, and once she came in, quite exhausted, half dragging and half carrying a big, fat pocket gopher. With her it seemed to be a point of honor that she should bring in her game and display it.

Little did we realize then that in course of time the wild birds would become so scarce that their slaughter by house cats would demand legislative action in the states.

In considering the hunting cat, let us call in a credible witness of the effects of domestic cats on the bob white. The following is an eye-witness report, by Ernest B. Beardsley, in _Outdoor Life_ for April, 1912. The locality was Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas.

In the meantime, old Queen was having a high old time up ahead, some hundred feet by then, running up the bank and back down in the draw.

We had hardly caught up when up goes Mr. Savage's gun and he gives both barrels. I had seen nothing up to date, but I didn't have long to wait, for by the time I got up to him and the dog, they were both in the high gra.s.s and had a great, big, common gray maltese house-cat; and Queen had a half-eaten quail that Mr. Cat was busy with when disturbed.

Well, we followed the draw across the field and got nine of a covey of sixteen that had been ahead of Mr. Cat; and about four o'clock that evening we killed another white-and-gray cat. While driving home that night, Mr. Savage told me that he had killed fifty or more in three or four years. They will get in a draw full of tumble-gra.s.s, on a cold day when quail don't like to fly, and stay right with them; and even after feeding on two or three, they will lie and watch, and when the covey moves, they move. When eating time comes around they are at it again, and to a covey of young birds they are sure death to the whole covey.

Well, Will told me never to overlook a house-cat that I found as far as a quarter of a mile from a farm or ranch, for if they have not already turned wild, they are learning how easy it is to hunt and live on game, and are almost as bad. We found Mr. Black-and-White Hunter had eaten two quail just before we killed him that evening. I would rather not write what Mr. Savage said when we found the remains of a partly-eaten bird.

My advice is, don't let tame cats get away when found out hunting; for the chances are they have not seen a home in months, and maybe years,--and say! but they do get big and bad. When you meet one, give it to him good, and don't let your dog run up to him until he is out for keeps. I learned afterwards that was how Will knew it was a cat. Queen had learned to back off and call for help on cats some years before.

In the New York Zoological Park, we have had troubles of our own with marauding cats. They establish themselves in a day, and quickly learn where to seek easy game and good cover. In the daytime they lie close in the thick brush, exactly as tigers do in India, but if not molested for a period of days, they become bold and attack game in open view. One bird-killing cat was so shy of man that it was only after two weeks of hard hunting (mornings and evenings) that it was killed.

We have seen cats catch and kill gray squirrels, chipmunks, robins and thrushes, and have found the feathers of slaughtered quail. Once we had gray rabbits breeding in the park, and their number reached between eighty and ninety. For a time they fearlessly hopped about in sight from our windows, and they were of great interest to visitors and to all of us. Then the cats began upon them; and in one year there was not a rabbit to be seen, save at rare intervals. At the same time the chipmunks of the park were almost exterminated.

That was the last straw, and we began a vigorous war upon those wild and predatory cats. The cats came off second best. We killed every cat that was found hunting in the park, and we certainly got some that were big and bad. We eliminated that pest, and we are keeping it eliminated. And with what result?

In 1911 a covey of eleven quail came and settled in our grounds, and have remained there. Twenty times at least during the past eight months (winter and spring) I have seen the flock on the granite ledge not more than forty feet from the rear window of my office. Last spring when I left the Administration Building at six o'clock, after the visitors had gone, I found two half-grown rabbits calmly roosting on the door-mat.

The rabbits are slowly coming back, and the chipmunks are visibly increasing in number. The gray squirrels now chase over the walks without fear of any living thing, and our ducklings and young guineas and peac.o.c.ks are safe once more.

That cats destroy annually in the United States several _millions_ of very valuable birds, seems fairly beyond question. I believe that in settled regions they are worse than weasels, foxes, skunks and mink _combined_; because there are about one hundred times as many of them, and those that hunt are not afraid to hunt in the daytime. Of course I am not saying that _all_ cats hunt wild game; but in the country I believe that fully one-half of them do.

I am personally acquainted with a cat in Indiana, on the farm of relatives, which is notorious for its hunting propensities, and its remarkable ability in capturing game. Even the lady who is joint owner of the cat feels very badly about its destructiveness, and has said, over and over again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a family pet that no one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as yet no stranger has come forward to play the part of executioner. The lady in question a.s.sured me that to her certain knowledge that particular cat would watch a nestful of young robins week after week until they had grown up to such a size that they were almost ready to fly; then he would kill them and devour them. Old "Tommy" was too wise to kill the robins when they were unduly small.

In a great book ent.i.tled _Useful Birds and Their Protection_, by E.H.

Forbush, State Ornithologist of Ma.s.sachusetts, and published by the Ma.s.sachusetts State Board of Agriculture in 1905, there appears, on page 362, many interesting facts on this subject. For example:

Mr. William Brewster tells of an acquaintance in Maine, who said that his cat killed about fifty birds a year. Mr. A.C. Dike wrote [to Mr. Forbush] of a cat owned by a family, and well cared for.

They watched it through one season, and found that it killed fifty-eight birds, including the young in five nests.

Nearly a hundred correspondents, scattered through all the counties of the state, report the cat as one of the greatest enemies of birds. The reports that have come in of the torturing and killing of birds by cats are absolutely sickening. The number of birds killed by them in this state is appalling.

Some cat lovers believe that each cat kills on the average not more than ten birds a year; but I have learned of two instances where more than that number were killed in a single day, and another where seven were killed. If we a.s.sume, however, that the average cat on the farm kills but ten birds per year, and that there is one cat to each farm in Ma.s.sachusetts, we have, in round numbers, seventy thousand cats, killing seven hundred thousand birds annually.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HUNTING CAT AND ITS VICTIM This Cat had fed so bountifully on the Rabbits and Squirrels of the Zoological Park, that it ate only the Brain of this Gray Rabbit]

In Mr. Forbush's book there is an ill.u.s.tration of the cat which killed fifty-eight birds in one year, and the animal was photographed with a dead robin in its mouth. The portrait is reproduced in this chapter.

Last year, a strong effort was made in Ma.s.sachusetts to enact a law requiring cats to be licensed. On account of the amount of work necessary in pa.s.sing the no-sale-of-game bill, that measure was not pressed, and so it did not become a law; but another year it will undoubtedly be pa.s.sed, for it is a good bill, and extremely necessary at this time. _Such a law is needed in every state_!

There is a mark by which you may instantly and infallibly know the worst of the wild cats--by their presence _away from home, hunting in the open_. Kill all such, wherever found. The harmless cats are domestic in their tastes, and stay close to the family fireside and the kitchen.

Being properly fed, they have no temptation to become hunters. There are cats and cats, just as there are men and men: some tolerable, many utterly intolerable. No sweeping sentiment for _all_ cats should be allowed to stand in the way of the abatement of the hunting-cat nuisances.

_Of all men, the farmer cannot afford the luxury of their existence_! It is too expensive. With him it is a matter of dollars, and cash out of pocket for every hunting cat that he tolerates in his neighborhood.

There are two places in which to strike the hunting cats: in the open, and in the state legislature.

While this chapter was in the hands of the compositors, the hunting cat and gray rabbit shown in the accompanying ill.u.s.tration were brought in by a keeper.

DOGS AS DESTROYERS OF BIRDS.--I have received many letters from protectors of wild life informing me that the destruction of ground-nesting birds, and especially of upland game birds, by roaming dogs, has in some localities become a great curse to bird life.

Complaints of this kind have come from New York, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Usually the culprits are _hunting dogs_--setters, pointers and hounds.

Now, surely it is not necessary to set forth here any argument on this subject. It is not open to argument, or academic treatment of any kind.

The cold fact is:

In the breeding season of birds, and while the young birds are incapable of quick and strong flight, all dogs, of every description, should be restrained from free hunting; and all dogs found hunting in the woods during the season referred to should be arrested, and their owners should be fined twenty dollars for each offense. Incidentally, one-half the fine should go to the citizen who arrests the dog. The method of restraining hunting dogs should devolve upon dog owners; and the law need only prohibit or punish the act.

Beyond a doubt, in states that still possess quail and ruffed grouse, free hunting by hunting dogs leads to great destruction of nests and broods during the breeding season.

TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE WIRES.--Mr. Daniel C. Beard has strongly called my attention to the slaughter of birds by telegraph wires that has come under his personal observation. His country home, at Redding, Connecticut, is near the main line of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway, along which a line of very large poles carries a great number of wires. The wires are so numerous that they form a barrier through which it is difficult for any bird to fly and come out alive and unhurt.