In 1908, Jack Milner (1865-1944) succeeded in attracting wild Canada geese to his farm in Kingsville, Ontario. It was an event which changed Jack's life, dramatically leading him to world prominence as a pioneering conservationist.

Milner became the first person to trace the migratory routes of water-fowl, and he created the first sanctuary where birds could be safe from the hunter's gun. Following his example, governments around the world put land aside to be used as preserves for wildlife.

The Migratory Bird Treaty was amended, and tougher game laws were more strictly enforced. Full credit went to Jack Milner for bringing about these changes. All this from a man who was, in his youth, a proud, professional hunter.

"In my days as a hunter," wrote Milner, "I observed how the geese flew in terror from me but showed less fear of unarmed men.

"The fall of a bird from a hunter's gun gives pleasure to him only, while hundreds are deprived of the thrill of seeing that bird alive.

"Yes, a man may be a good businessman but, when he gets a gun in his hands, he seems to lose all self-control and doesn't expose enough brain to give himself a headache."

In his book The Encyclopedia of Vanished Species, David Day writes of his experience in dealing with hunters and trappers. "In virtually every professional hunter and trapper I have known, I have encountered extraordinary sentiments and a process of transformation.

"In the older men, especially, a strange kind of identification comes about. Visions of animals now vanished but once numerous are recalled again and again by those who destroyed them.

"Their stories finally betray a sentiment the men have unknowingly harboured all along: an admiration and a kind of love for the animals they hunted. Too late, they find in the beasts qualities which they value far more than those of their fellow men."

In her book Paris was yesterday, Janet Flanner, Paris correspondent for an American magazine, wrote about her friend Ernest Hemingway: "Later on in Africa, he took to big-game hunting, for which he had a bloody passion. In a letter he wrote to me, he said he liked to hunt because he liked to kill... he finally killed himself with a gun."

 

John Guillaumier

 

St Julian's