BROKEN TRADITIONS 



with shot and gun, so different from the adult that some local gunners 

 contend that they are of a separate species. Others believe that the light 

 little birds are sickly, and for this reason do not keep them. In early season 

 shooting, when birds are abundant and bag-limits small, it is a common prac- 

 tice, during the course of a day's shoot, to discard the smaller ducks, like 

 Blue-winged Teal, or less desirable kinds, like Shoveller, replacing these 

 with larger Mallards and Canvasbacks. Ducks scattered and lost in the 

 reeds by novice hunters, or ducks thrown away by city shooters as spoiled 

 or too small to take home, are just as dead as those the market hunter packed 

 in ice. 



Of course, one cannot wholly blame the hunter if his seasons are set so 

 that he is likely to shoot birds so immature that they are all but worth- 

 less as food. To most hunters the young Redhead just on the wing is not 

 readily distinguished from an adult until it is dead. I am sure that as we 

 find out more about the life histories of waterfowl, there must stem from 

 this understanding a new pattern of gunning regulations. At present all 

 ducks are shot under a common plan. Even though many Canvasback and 

 Redhead are not strongly on the wing until late September, their shooting 

 season opens at the same time as it does for young Mallard and Pintail, 

 which are flying by midsummer. Even though many adult females are still 

 flightless on the breeding marsh at the start of autumn, gunning on the 

 marsh starts on the same day as it does on upland fields or open lakes, 

 where drakes and strongly-flying young have been feeding for many weeks. 

 It is unreasonable to set laws which require the hunter to recognize the 

 legality of killing one species but not another in the same environment. But 

 by certain zoning regulations, hardly more complicated than now exist for 

 upland game, the season might open early on grain fields for strong-winged 

 Mallard and Pintail; shooting could be delayed on the breeding marshes, 

 and the pressure there thus relieved, until after the young diving ducks and 

 adult females had had a chance to become strong of wing and had dis- 

 persed from the home range. 



This, of course, is no place to discuss the modern pattern of wildfowl- 

 ing, for it is a subject yet unstudied. We know almost nothing of the cus- 

 toms of hunters or of the impact of their practices on native populations of 

 northern marshes. The throwing away of spoiled birds or the waste of young 

 Redheads in September shooting may be of little consequence. The whole 

 subject of the influence of the hunter on the waterfowl population awaits 

 careful study and analysis. But it is the hunters themselves who say that 



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