SPRING SHOOTING

The Ram makes way for the Bull; March goes out and April comes in with sunshine and showers, smiles and tears. The sportsman has his gun in hand again with deadly purpose, as the angler his rod and tackle with another intention than mere overhauling and putting to rights. The smiles of April are for them.

The geese come wedging their way northward; the ducks awaken the silent marshes with the whistle of their pinions; the snipe come in pairs and wisps to the thawing bogs—all on their way to breeding grounds and summer homes. The tears of April are for them. Wherever they stop for a day's or an hour's rest, and a little food to strengthen and hearten them for their long journey, the deadly, frightful gun awaits to kill, maim, or terrify, more merciless than all the ills that nature inflicts in her unkindest moods.

Year after year men go on making laws and crying for more, to protect these fowl in summer, but in spring, when as much as ever they need protection, the hand of man is ruthlessly against them.

When you made that splendid shot last night in the latest gloaming that would show you the sight of your gun, and cut down that ancient goose, tougher than the leather of your gun-case, and almost as edible, of how many well-grown young geese of next November did you cheat yourself, or some one else of the brotherhood?

When from the puddle, where they were bathing their tired wings, sipping the nectar of muddy water, and nibbling the budding leaves of water weeds, you started that pair of ducks yesterday, and were so proud of tumbling them down right and left, you killed many more than you saw then; many that you might have seen next fall.

When the sun was shining down so warm upon the steaming earth that the robins and bluebirds sang May songs, those were very good shots you made, killing ten snipe straight and clean, and—they were very bad shots. For in November the ten might have been four times ten fat and lusty, lazy fellows, boring the oozy margins of these same pools where the frogs are croaking and the toads are singing to-day.

"Well, it's a long time to wait from November till the earth ripens and browns to autumn again. Life is short and shooting days are few at most. Let us shoot our goose while we may, though she would lay a golden egg by and by."

Farmers do not kill their breeding ewes in March, nor butcher cows that are to calve in a month; it does not pay. Why should sportsmen be less provident of the stock they prize so dearly; stock that has so few care-takers, so many enemies? Certainly, it does not pay in the long run.

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