Charlotte, July 27—Tar Heel sportsmen are out to explode the whole structure of North Carolina game laws and let the fragments fall where they will, preferably on the sounds and marshes of Currituck county.
Exasperated to the point of desperation at the swiftly diminishing game supply in the state and Currituck county’s 12-year success in allegedly blocking efforts to same the state’s game, sportsmen Friday fired their first charge of explosives under the game law foundations.
A suit filed in Mecklenburg superior court Friday against the game commissioners of Currituck county charges that the game laws of that county are unconstitutional and discriminatory.
Should it prove that the plaintiffs are right, it would then follow that numerous other county game laws would be in the same class and would likewise fall.
The result would be, the plaintiff sportsmen feel, that the long sought-for state-wide law would at last have half a chance to replenish itself.
Currituck county, duck shooters charge, is dominated by the will of northern millionaires who have erected immense shooting lodges on the expansive sweeps of Currituck county marshes. The wealthy one, they say, have imposed their own regulations on the shooting grounds and the Currituck citizens who are solicitous that o disturbance comes to them. Every effort of the North Carolina sportsmen for a state-wide game law has for 12 years fallen monotonously to defeat, and the sportsmen charge that the Currituck lobby at the legislature has been reliable.
The Currituckians say their county is very poor and would be unable to raise its share of taxes for schools and roads without burdening its citizens, except that it happens to contain a duck shooting ground not excelled in America. The fees they receive from visiting sportsmen, it is claimed for them, enables them to keep up their schools and build roads.
The outside sportsmen say they have no objection to that and would willingly exempt Currituck from the operation of a state law. They complain, however, that Currituck lobbies in the legislature and upsets all plans which the other counties desire.
Tired of continuous defeats, the sportsmen are approaching their problem from a new angle and are willing to reduce the already bewildering complicated mass of county game laws to a mass of junked statutes in order to gain their point.
On one count they charge that the Currituck game revenue laws were passed in the legislature in one day and are not valid because it is required that revenue laws be passed on separate days.
The next count charges that the Currituck laws are unconstitutional by reason of being discriminatory n that they name a nominal fee for Currituck citizens, a season fee of $5 for other residents of North Carolina, and a fee of $77.50 for citizens from other states. The plaintiff are of the opinion that a favorable decision in the courts would force Currituck county to come into line with the other counties of the state and that the state game law would follow.
Dr. A. Wylie Moore is the Charlotte sportsman named as a plaintiff. The other of J.B. Cheshire Jr., Theo G Empire, S.H. Jordan, R.T. Stedman, E.G. Thompson, J.J. Lawson, and W.L. Rankin, each from a different section of state and each representing a strong coterie of supporters of the suit. Cansler and Cansler and Claude A. Cochran of Charlotte represent the sportsmen.
The suit is against B.B. Bell, R.P. Midgett, R.L. Griggs, Pierce Hampton and W.S. Newbern, game commissioners of Currituck county. Ehringhaus and Hall of Elizabeth City represent the defendants. The suit was filed here with the expectation that the defendants will seek to have the case moved into their court district.
From the front page of The Daily Advance, Elizabeth City, N.C., Monday evening, July 27, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074042/1925-07-27/ed-2/seq-1/
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