Wild game within a State is not, until reduced to possession, private property, but belongs to the State, which is conceded to have a police .power to regulate the times and methods by which it may be captured and killed, or when taken, may be sold. In their efforts to protect their game supplies the States have at times enacted game laws the validity of which has been contested as being regulations of interstate commerce. An examination of the case of Geer v. Connecticut3 will sufficiently illustrate the points involved.

1 186 U. S. 380; 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 811: 46 L. ed. 1209.

2 See American Law Review, XLIII, 3S2. article " Federal Quarantine Laws," for an account of this legislation.

3 161 U. S. 519; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep 600; 40 L. ed. 793.

In this case the law in question declared it unlawful to have in possession game for transportation beyond the State, even though such game had been lawfully killed during the "open" season. Thus the question was whether the State could permit such game to be killed and used within the State, and vet forbid its trans-portation to another State. After a careful examination of the nature of the State's ownership and control of wild game, the court say:

"The foregoing analysis of the principles upon which alone rests the right of an individual to acquire a qualified ownership in game, and the power of the State, deduced therefrom, to control such ownership for the common benefit, clearly demonstrates the validity of the statute of the State of Connecticut here in controversy. The sole consequence of the provision forbidding the transportation of game killed within the State, beyond the State, is to confine the use of such game to those who own it, the people of that State. The proposition that the State may not forbid carrying it beyond her limits involves, therefore, the contention that a State cannot allow its own people the enjoyment of the benefits of the property belonging to them in common, without at the same time permitting the citizens of other States to participate in that which they do not own. It was said in the discussion at bar, although it be conceded that the State has an absolute right to control and regulate the killing of game as its judgment deems best in the interest of its people, inasmuch as the State has here chosen to allow the people within her borders to take game, to dispose of it, and thus cause it to become an object of state commerce, as a resulting necessity such property has become the subject of interstate commerce, hence controlled by the provisions of U. S. Const. art. 1, § 8. But the errors which this argument involves are manifest. It presupposes that where the killing of game and its sale within the State are allowed, it thereby becomes commerce within the legal meaning of that word. In view of the authority of the State to affix conditions to the killing and sale of game, predicated as is this power on the peculiar nature of such property and its common ownership by all the citizens of the State, it may well be doubted whether commerce is created by an authority given by a State to reduce game within its borders to possession, provided such game be not taken, when killed, without the jurisdiction of the State. The common ownership imports the right to keep the property, if the sovereign so chooses, always within its jurisdiction for every purpose. The qualification which forbids its removal from the State necessarily entered into and formed part of every transaction on the subject, and deprived the mere sale or exchange of these articles of that element of freedom of contract and of full ownership which is an essential attribute of commerce. Passing, however, as we do, the decision of this question, and granting that the dealing in game killed within the State, under the provision in question, created internal state commerce, it does not follow that such internal commerce becomes necessarily the subject matter of interstate commerce, and therefore under the control of the Constitution of the United States."

And in conclusion the court say: "The power of a State to protect by adequate police regulation its people against the adulteration of articles of food . . . although in doing so commerce might be remotely affected, necessarily carries with it the existence of a like power to preserve a food supply which belongs in common to all the people of the State, which can only become the subject of ownership in a qualified way, and which can never be the object of commerce except with the consent of the State and subject to the conditions which it may deem best to impose for the public good."