FISH AND GAME

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 36, 4 June 1947, Page 5

FISH AND GAME

RANGER’S ADDRESS ROD AND GUN CLUB SMOKO In reply to a toast to the Department of Internal Affairs at the Whakatane Rod and Gun Club Smoko, Mr K. Francis, Government ranger, made the following remarks regarding the conserving of fish and game birds for future generations:—

“Mr MacNamara, the Conservator of Fish and Game has asked me to apologise for his absence as he is away on a tour of duty. I much regret his absence myself as it leaves me to reply to the toast of the Department of Internal Affairs and with pleasure thank you for your kind remarks and excellent hospitality.

I want to speak to you of conservation in this district. This is a plea —a plea for your help, for without you we alone cannot hope to keep the standard of sport up to requirements. If fish and game are to survive, you must help us. Each year shows an increase in the number of licenses sold, and a corresponding demand for fish and game. Returned men after their life in the Armed Forces are anxious to keep up their association with openair life and feel the lure of rod and gun. There are the youngsters coming on, and last but not least the old shooters who despite their moans that every season is the worst they have experienced, still take out a license next year.

The swamp lands, haunts of the grey duck are shrinking before the onslaughts of powerful modern machinery and the lagoons are drying up. Where are the grey duck to breed and find food and shelter ? The time has come, gentlemen, for you to speed up your plans for the building of artificial lagoons if the grey duck are to survive. Pheasants will become scarcer unless you jealously guard your sanctuaries and little Excepted Areas, which now are the; only places where pheasants can find shelter from'our high power ammunition and hardhitting guns.

I am speaking now not as a ranger, but as a fair-minded person trying to tell you of things as I see them. The day of the pot hunter-is over. He can no longer be regarded with amused tolerance as a hardshot but has become a menace and a man who is taking for himself the things that belong to us all. Sportsmanship does not mean how many you got—but the manner in which you got them. Those men shooting out .of season—shooting over their limit and beating the game code in other ways, are taking the birds which belonged to the man who got litle or nothing during the open season.

Many of you have young sons 'rising all too swiftly to manhood. Anything you can do now to help conservation is an insurance policy for them. These youngsters are watching what you are doing arid how you do it. They are listening to your yarns. You are the men on whom they pattern themselves. You are the men who hand down the tradition. It lies in your hands what manner of sportsmen they All of us are slightly sickened with the rackets springing up in so many walks of life. We know it’s not good enough and would like something better. This field of sport you can still keep clean and its traditions untarnished.

I would like you to picture the youngster gazing eagerly at his father’s gun hanging on the wall. The day will come when he too will buckle on his cartridge belt and walk out into the autumn days with a dog at his heels and the gun under his arm. It is for you to see, that there is something left for him to shoot.

Your club above all others I know, is foremost in realisation of the acute problems lying before us and to be congratulated on its rising spirit of unselfish sportsmanship.

May you maintain this spirit in perpetuity.