The Passion for Game Preserving.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 61

The Passion for Game Preserving.

None too soon protests are being raised against the way in which the army manoeuvres are being hampered, year after year in England, by the refusal of land owners to allow the troops to pass through their game preserves. That a farmer should be anxious about hits fences, and about any crops still unharvested, is quite intelligible, says the “ Daily Graphic,” though the military authorities do their best to make good any damage done. But pheasant-shoot-ing is not a serious industry; it is a pastime, and the people who indulge in it usually have a good many other opportunities of amusing themselves. They might surely risk for one autumn the success of their shooting in order to add to the success of the army manoeuvres. The preservation of the country is somewhat more important than the preservation of game. Unfortunately, of recent years the passion for game-preserving has grown—especially among the newer type of landowner—fill it has become almost a mania. Men who have made money in business and bought “ a little place in the country ” at once set up as sportsmen, and in order to have a large stock of tame birds to shoot for a week or two in the autumn shut up for the whole year woodlands previously open to the public. One wrong is no excuse for another, but in wrong is no excuse for another, but in practice when landowners abuse their privileges they run the risk of losing their rights. Very short work would, one imagines, be made of this class of landowner in New- Zealand.