The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1896-10-13
no ONE LIKES THEM
Sportsmen IN New Jersey
Criticize the Present
Game a W
REPUBLICAN, SPITEFUL MEASURES
Misguided Legislators Make Ridic-
ulous Distinctions in Regard
to Quail Shooting.

iengIn n breadth of New jersey a sin
gle sportsman who owns a shotgun and
approves of the present game laws
South Jersey gunners do not like the laws
as they were passed last winter, and ii
was supposed to be for their benefit tina,
they were changed. That North Jersey
sportsimen are not pleased with the law Is
apparent to anybody who listens to the
growing which can be heard in every
place where gunners congregate.
The general impression is that the
changes in the game laws were made
with the deliberate purpose of splitting the
Fish and Game Commissioners, who
were engaged in an intelligent effort to
frawe and lave passed a few sensible
provisions for the better protection OF
| game and fish and had secured in the
previous year the passage OF the best
set of enactments which the State of
New Jersey has had in all it's history.
Sportsmen found nc fault with the law
as 1t stood In 1895, unless it might be that
a few were annoyed because summer
woodcock shooting was not permitted. In
that respect the law was for the best
interest of everybody. The effort was to
make it i~nexcusable to go afeld with a
gun until such a time as all kinds Of
game could be killed. There was no
chance for a man to go partridge shoot
Ing in September under the pretence that
he was after woodcock or squirrels. 1t
made an opening day for everything from
a squirrel up to a deer, and when the
wardens In this end of the State heard
the report of a gun before October rs they
had reason to believe that somebody was
breaking the law, unless the shooting
was being dom upon the meadows, and
the game was rails. reed birds or mud
hens.
This law did a great lea of good, and
had it been allowed to stand for three
years its effects would a been plainly
apparent. Gunners noted the difference
everywhere last fall, and farmers said
that there was little or no shooting before
the law was up.
their chief warden did their utmost last
winter to prevent the passage of a num-
Der of spiteful measures introduced by
Senator Stokes, of Cumberland, and at
the same time to get some of their own
measures passed. They had to fight SO
hard to save their own bacon that they
could not make a decent effort against
the ridiculous gane law which upset all
the good they had accomplished in codi-
flying and distributing game law matter
In 1896.
The present law. about which there is
so much complaint, permits the killing of
ruffed grouse, commonly called cartridges
and pheasanta, from October / to Deem
Der 10, while it prohibits the killing of
quails and rabbits until November TO-
When the honest gunner goes out on Mo-
yember 10 to unit for rabbits and quail it
is probable that he will find thai the par
fridge hunters did not discriminate. That
is the trouble with a law which gives OPP
~portunities for going into the woods or
fields with a gun before a day when all
kinds of shooting is permissible. If ruffed
grouse are ripe for killing october l,
why are not quail ready for slaughter
then? That is a question which all gun
ners ask. Most shooting nlen have a pre-
JUDGE against killing rabbits until after
a frost, believing that the frost kills the
grubs which burrow under the skin upon
the necks Of the cotton tails.
They do not have any compunction
about shooting gray squirrel at any time,
however, and they made such a time
guided Legislators listened to them and
changed the law in a manner to disgust
every decent and sehf-respecting sports
man.. No owner of a dog and gun has
much sympathy for the potter of squir-
rels. 1t undoubtedly requires care and
skin to get at and kill a gray squirrel
with g rifle, but what respect can be
shown for a man who hunts squirrels
squirrels in September and again between
November 10 and December 10. A man
who would go out into the woods to kill
squirrels with a shotgun is not to be
trusted. He would shoot into a bunch Of
Quail busting in the road or knock over
d partridge sitting If he was lucky enough
to see one.
Woodcock were not injured much this
year by the reopening of summer shoot
ing IN july. The unusually wet season
gave the birds enormous range, and It
took lots of hunting to find half a dozen
birds. The fall season for these birds
opened on Thursday with the partridge
season.
It Is inevitable that the law of 1895 will
he changed. II it was the best game law
ever devised It would have to be changed
There has never been a session of the
Legislature since New Jersey had such a
representative body, but that some tinker
ing has been done with the game laws,
and the tinkering will probably go on to
the end of time.