The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1897-12-14
While the Sections Of the
State Are squabbling,
Game Yearly Di-
minisheS.
NECESSITY OF AMENDMENT
Short Season for Shooting
Recommended for all
Counties.

several IDEAS and the desires of special
lists One form of specialist in every
State Is the man who has ideas about
twists, c~alibers, explosives and sights, all
of which relate to rifles. He wants some
thing to shoot at with his small bore.
Rats answer the purpose out of season,
but he desires the earliest possible chance
to so into the woods and kill gray SOUR
rels, and his pet grievance is that SPUR
rels are classed with other game in the
protective laws of the State. He cares
nothing for the shotgun, and regards a
man who uses a scatter-gun as little less
than a vandal, says the Newark Sun
day Call"
At the same time there are hundreds of
others who annot understand why any
body should desire to kill the graceful
squirrels, but at the same time desire to
have the laws amended to meet their
views and permit them to kill woodeock
in July. They have strong arguments in
favor of summer woodcock shooting, and
probably just as convincing proofs that
it is wrong to kill squirrels, and that no.
body should be permitted to shoot a bull
let in a State SO built up and populated
as New Jersey is. They all want one
law for themselves and a more stringent
one for the other fellow. This is the
cause of all the confusion year after year
in the Legislature when game law meas
ures come up.
A writer in the Morris County Chron-
icle.' last week. expressed the views of a
large class, but the ''other fellow will
say that those views are narrow and tend
toward class legislation, because he ar
CUES for summer woodcock, and calls
rabbit 'vermin,' while ridiculing the
farmer who owns the land. Him, the
writer a%ntagonizes unnecessarily as fol-
lows
w have shot in the northern part Of
this State for a great many years and
we have found that the number of game
birds killed out of season by both sports
men and market hunters is infinitesimal-
~ small, and exists largely in the imagi-s
nation of the gentlemen composing the
corps of Fish and tame Wardens, and
of the farmer who once a year sallles
forth with a truSty musket and haif-
starved hound to shoot rabbits for the
pot. We are sick and tired of hearing
what the farmer wants in the matter OF
game protection. He generally knows ut
tic or nothing about game or us HABITS,
and still less about killing 1t on the wing
TIE men who shoot-who shoot for pleas
ure, the men like Governor GrlSgs ana
u u LII - N--AD
titled to some consideration. 10 Jnelf
views must be given some weight. Iney,
are more anxious for the protection or
the birds, than people who do not shoot,
thar people whose knowledge Is connned
to the appearance of the bird served on
the table, and the idea that the House
OF Assembly and that the Senate OF TINS
State should, on the game question, De
turned into a branch grange, is 10 us
prepostefous, and we trust ana nope that
the coming Legislature Will leave the
nresent Woodcock law unchanged and UNI
altered. But if they do not, back OF II
all we look to our Governor 70 plock
their efforts"
woodcock law is one which has repeatedly
been urged, but usually with less vlgof-
He says this
woodcock question in a calm, impartial
spirit. with a knowledge born OF years q
and while having in view. the legislatloh
applying to it in surrounding States,
"Our State is one of the great nesting
and hatching grounds OF TINS, me III no pbs
game had not as yet felt the 1nroads OF
the breech loader and of the greatly in
creased population OF an me sur 1ara bre55
here, they lived here, not by the tens or
by the hundreds, but by. the thousands,
and in our own county, bags of thirty.
nor did it require any great eXsrtlon 70
make them even with the old muzzle-
lOaGef. In an Ordinary season lHS ypuAS
birds are we'll developed by the first day
of July. In some seasons When the nrst
nests have been destroyed the general
Matching is later, but this is of rare occur
birds are fit to shoot about July l.
Pennsylvania, Delaware and Ohio take
this view of the matter and allow shoot
ing to begin on this day. New York, more
conservative, opens its season on the Ioln
of August, but in all these surrounding
States the principal Of summer shooting is
yrolI 1afirad and NOT 0nlV defined but
permitted. We will be frank to admit
that the heat in July and thecfies and
while arguing about this question we have
often been met with the objection that the
obiector was against July shooting, be.
stand the discomforts.
w will admit, for sake of argument,
that the birds are too young in July, but
before all young birds will have reached
maturity, and not only will the local
birds be strong of wing and plump, but
also. in many years. birds raised TO the
Journey. One of the biggest lights that
ever took place in this country occurred
in the early seventies, on the 18th day OF
September, on on the 31st day of August,
1880. woodcock were all over the ground
where the day before there had not been
a bird. The biggest flight of woodcock
tina we found in 1885 was on the 4th
day of October, and every year our ex-
perience has been that, given favorable
weather conditions. our flight begins
early in October. And yet the gentlemen
who are in authority, constituting the
Fish and Game Commission, and who had
their representative, paid by the State, to
urge their views before the members of
the Legislature who never hunt wood
cock. calmly go before the people of the
State with a bill to prevent all woodcock
shooting until after the 10th of November,
ON the plea that men pretending to hunt
woodcock kill rabbits or other vernin out
of s%easonl"
The SUNDAY Calr' has had only one
view in regard to the game laws, and its
efforts nave been directed to ecu ging
a general law, making one short season
for shooting all game which is to be found
in the upland fields and woods of this
State, and making it measurable to be
abroad with a gun at any other
in the haunts of the rabbits, quail
pheasant, grouse or woodcock. This
would require that the man with the
small bore rifle finds in killing gray squir-
rels and chipmunks in September, and
NAV disturb the views of the other fellow
who goes out after young woodcock in
.July. carrying a trout-creel full of ice to
keep the birds from spelling.