The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-10-08
The Hunting Season.


the blood of the primitive man who had a
hairy coat and dwelt in the woods, strug-
Cling for existence with the other snarling
carnivora, stirs under the velvet skin of the
civilized man and entices him back to the
old homestead in the forest. And perhaps
it is some dim "reminiscences of the antag-
onisms of the prehistoric life that makes it
so pleasant for the man of 1874 to take his
gun or rifle with him in his rambles and re-
new the contest with his old neighbors or
their representatives or assigns. 1t must be
some such reversionary trick Of the blood
that wreaks such bloody vengeance on the
cheerful squirrel, the timid rabbit and the
harmless birds. Ifevery innocent thing that
is slaughtered,n mere wantonness during the
present month were to bring on its destroyer
the woes that vexed the murderer of the
abatross, as described in the Rhyme of the
Ancient Mariner, the ensuing November
would be season of general dependency.
There are good reasons enough for the. ex-
ercise of the sportsman's skill in the useful
ness of many kinds of game for food or cloth
ing and the mischevous destructiveness of
other kinds. But the indiscriminate slaugh-
ter of the small game of our woods on such
occasions as the barbarous Shooting
matches"-a slaughter which has no better
excuse than the momentary and inexplica-
BILE pleasure of seeing an inferior animal sue.
cumb before the machine-aided proves of
imperial man-is sorry exhibition of human
frailty. The enjoyment of seeing anything
capable of pain and pleasure doomed by our
own needless acts to the last extremity of suf-
fering is, let us hope, one of the blemishes on
mans nature which will at length disappear
In the course of his future development. Al
ready the exhibitions ofths malevolence seem
to be due rather to thoughtlessness and the
blind observance of immemorial usage than
to actual cruelty. 1t is said that the buffalo
of the western prairies, which are so inds-
pensable TO the Indians for food, are likely to
be extcrminated by 'hunteIs' whose indus
try has no higher incentive than the pleasure
of seeing the creatures die. Thousands of
these animals ale every year left to corrupt
the air of the praires, not even their hides
being removed by their destroyers as trib-
ute to decency and to commerce. Much of
the game of our Maine woods has been des-
troyed with like wantonness, and unless some
check is interposed the time will soon come
when the hunters avocation must be aban-
doned or pursued elsewhere. In season or
out, with or without necessity, the work of
determination continues. There is no more
disheartening sight than the return of the
hunters from one of those competitive trials
of skill in destruction which every year defle
the purity and impair the serenity of autumn.
Such fostering mass of bloody fur and feath-
ers as they produce from their bags, to he af-
terward consigned to the compost heap,
would sicken of the brutal sport any soul that
was not Injured to it by custom.
We are glad to see that the subject of the
needless destruction of small game is not
wholly neglected. The Maine Sporting Asso-
citation, incorporated last winter, whose ORR
gin and nucleus lis in this city, devotes eff
Gent attention to the correction of some of
these abuses, by the enforcement of the strin-
gent and humane law enacted by the last
legislature. Some of the most substantial
citizens of Fryeburg have recently formed
h'hoooihS LloPPihS IAoooSi1tioi lol tuc
purpose of preventing the destruction of
game out of season and otherwise projecting
wild animals from the undiscriminating rage
of the false sportsman. 1t is time some such
steps were taken. Few people realize what
magnificent hunting ground Maine was in the
old times. 1t was for the fiirs obtained of the
Indians that the Puri.ans first explored the
Kennebec, soon after settling on Cape Cod.
Beaver were especially plenty, and it was
while engaged in controversy with mali
who was infringing the coded right of the
Puritans to monopoly of beaver skins on
the Kennebec that Longfellow's pet John
Alden, modest but plucky and resolute, spilled
perhaps the first white mans blood that tie
soil of Maine ever received from a white
mans blow. And in the northern parts of
the state there are still in existence more of
the larger fur-bearing animals than is COM
monty supposed. Wolves are practically ex-
tinct, but the statement of a prominent fur
trader, published a few years ago, shows that
the moose, caribou, deer, some fifteen or
twenty varieties of the fox, loup-cervier, wild
cat, bear, raccooD, beaver, muskrat, otter,
black cat, sable and mink are still to be found
in greater or less abundance. With proper
enforcement of the game laws, these need
not for many years become extinct.