Forest and Stream, January 17, 1903

A VIRGINIA NON-EXPORT LAW.

Natural resources -- Conservation - GameSea -- Market hunting

AMONG the game protective bills in the Virginia Legislature is a measure to prohibit the exportation of game, except that the non-resident sportsman may carry with him a reasonable amount, to be accompanied by him in transport. The anti-export law as here outlined would be most admirable, and in adopting the system Virginia would be following the examples of numerous other States, in all of which the limitation of the export privilege to the owner of the game has been of very great benefit. To cut off the marketing of game, as experience has proved wherever the plan has been tried, is the most effective expedient of game protection. Stop the sale of game, prevent its shipment to market, and on the instant the problem of protection is so simplified that the solution is easy. The killing for market consumption is a factor so considerable that to suppress it is to accomplish nine-tenths of the work of protection. This is not theory; it is a simple statement of what has been demonstrated in the actual experience of more than one State. If Virginia shall adopt the plan, and make necessary provision for enforcing the law, the same beneficent results will follow there.

We learn that an effort has been made to have wildfowl exempted from the application of the non-export law. To do this would be to commit a great mistake. Virginia wildfowl demand protection quite as much as any of the other species and should be given full benefit of the anti-export law. The ducks are in a peculiar degree the prey of the market-hunter. The destructive devices of big-gun and night-light are employed by the gunners who slaughter fowl for export to the game dealer. The enforcement of the non-exportation law as applied to wildfowl would go very far to suppress the use of big-guns and the night-shooting which are among the chief abuses with which the authorities have to cope; it would accomplish this end because when the marketing is done away with the chief incentive to these modes of slaughter is removed.

We trust that Virginia may adopt the proposed non-export game law, and that its provisions may be extended to wildfowl.