HUNTING, the pursuing of wild animals as a sport. Hunting for the market is termed pot-hunting. Among sportsmen certain con ventionalities obtain, and the hunter who does not observe these unwritten rules is stigma tized as unsportsmanlike.
Within comparatively recent years the in discriminate slaughter of wild game has moved the devotees of the sport of hunting to insist such regulations, statutory or self-im posed, as shall protect game birds and animals from extinction, and afford them a 'sporting chance* to escape an unskilful hunter. In the extension of this idea many sportsmen of the higher type deliberately reduce their chances of killing the game by substituting the rifle with its one missile for the shotgun with its widely scattering scores of deadly pellets. What may be called the 'new thought* among American sportsmen is well expressed in the 'Sports man's Platform,* adopted by 'The Camp-Fire Club of America* in 1909 as an official code of hunting ethics. It may be epitomized by "planks* 12 and 13, which declare: 'The kill ing of an animal means the end of its most interesting period. When the country is fine, pursuit is more interesting than possession. The best hunter is the man who finds the most game, kills the least, and leaves behind him no wounded animals.* The complete disappearance from the United States of several kinds of game birds and ani mals which formerly were abundant and the depletion of other species to almost the point of extinction has united the sportsmen of the country in an effort to check the further rav ages of the pot-hunter and those who find their pleasure in wholesale slaughter. As one in stance of the danger of unrestrained ((gun nine in areas where game is plentiful the fol lowing figures taken from a report of the State Game Commission of Louisiana for the season 1909-10 are enlightening. While it is stated that the record can be regarded as only ap proximate, it shows the killing of 3,176,000 wild ducks, 1,140,750 quail and 1,402,474 other game birds; 5,470 deer, 690,270 squirrels and rabbits and 1,971,922 other fur-bearing animals—a total for one season for that State alone of 8,386,876 game birds and animals. Most of the thunterso who bagged this game were hired men sent into the State by wholesale dealers in game in distant markets.
With such incentives to action to prevent the total destruction of the wild life of the country sportsmen have worked actively to have suitable game laws passed in the several States, urging especially the protection of dosed sea sons for appropriate terms of years, in order to give vanishing species a chance to multiply again to such numbers that a surplus could be spared without danger of extinction. A lack
of uniformity in the State laws, however, has been a serious obstacle to the success of a country-wide plan. Within recent years the Department of Agriculture in the exercise of its authority over migratory birds has aided to a considerable degree the preservation of sev eral species which were subjected to indis criminate slaughter both while going north to their nesting places and on the return trip to their winter habitat. There have been estab lished also by Presidential executive orders a number of bird refuges which have served to stem the tide of unreasoning destruction. But much remains to be accomplished, and the struggle is still on between those who would save the game, and with it the sport of hunt ing, and those who would heedlessly and sel fishly destroy both the game and the sport. .
Dr. William T. Hornaday, the well-known hunter-naturalist, designates as the principal re maining game areas in North America: the Arctic prairies north of the tree limits; the Alaska-Yukon region; the northern extensions of the Canadian provinces, Ontario and 9ue bec; Labrador and Newfoundland; British Columbia, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico. In 1912 the hunting grounds in and near the United States and southern Canada where big game may still be found in numbers which permitted hunting without danger of extermina tion were: The Maine Woods — for white-tailed deer. New Brunswick — for moose, caribou, deer and black bear.
The Adirondacks — for white-tailed deer. The Pennsylvania Mountains— for deer and black bear.
Northern Minnesota — for deer and moose. Northern Michigan and Wisconsin — for white-tailed deer.
Northwestern Wyoming— for elk, deer, grizzly bear and black bear.
Western and Southwestern Montana for elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer.
Northwestern Montana — for mule deer and white-tailed deer.
Wyoming east of the Yellowstone Park for elk, deer and two species of bear.
Woods of Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec — for moose and deer.
Southern British Columbia — for mountain goat, mountain sheep, deer and grizzly bear.
Northern British Columbia — for moose, elk, bighorn sheep, grizzly bear and black bear, mule deer and white-tailed deer.
Northwestern Alberta — for grizzly bear, bighorn sheep and mountain goat.
The hunting of large game, as bear, deer, tigers, lions, leopards, etc., will be found treated under the titles by which they are described. In Europe the various modes of shooting game are known as open shooting, covert shooting, river and pond shootingand salt-water wild D fowl shooting. See STALKING; Fox