MAN AS AN ENEMY OF BIRDS 167 



as the robins remained in the locahty. An officer 

 of the Louisiana Audubon Society estimates that 

 one quarter-million robins are killed annually in 

 that State for food purposes. 



In 1911 there were eight Southern States in which 

 robins were legally shot and eaten : Louisiana, Mis- 

 sissippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, 

 Maryland, Texas, and Florida. 



Shooting for market. Regarding the hunters who 

 shoot to supply the markets. Dr. Hornaday writes, 

 in "Our Vanishing Wild Life": — 



Beyond reasonable doubt, this awful traffic in dead 

 game is responsible for at least three fourths of the 

 slaughter that has reduced our game birds to a mere 

 remnant of their former abundance. There is no influ- 

 ence so deadly to wild life as that of the market gunner 

 who works six days a week, from sunrise till sunset, 

 hunting and killing every game bird that he can reach 

 with a choke-bore gun. 



It has been estimated by careful observers that 

 on the coast of North Carolina and in southern 

 Louisiana, at least fifty per cent of the ducks that 

 wintered there were formerly killed each year. 



The following records of a professional market 

 hunter have been published in a sportsman's maga- 

 zine. During a three months' shoot in Iowa and 

 Minnesota he shot 6250 game-birds. During a win- 

 ter's hunting in the South he killed 4450 ducks. Dur- 

 ing his forty years' experience as a market hunter 



