State Game Departments were started late in the last century and early in this century by groups of concerned sportsmen. They wanted to do something to stop market hunting and the excesses of game hogs. They wanted to do something to check the startling decline in wild game. By the 1890s the bison were almost gone, the passenger pigeon was near extinction, and the prong-horn antelope appeared on the way out. In all the better streams, particularly in the East, fishing was not like in the "good old days".

So hunters and fishermen banded in clubs and associations and got state legislatures to pass laws setting closed seasons and bag limits and to establish hunting and fishing licenses to raise money to hire game wardens to enforce the laws. Those pioneering steps occurred in an era when most American families counted on game on the table as a nearly regular part of the family diet. The American people were not yet far from the Frontier.

Q. Underline the sentence which supports the conclusion arrived at in question No. 2.