EKO PHEASANT FARMING rea 
The prowling, semi-domesticated cat is the greatest destroyer of 
game birds among our four-footed animals. In this, perhaps the 
greatest Chinese pheasant country in the United 
States, the marauding cat kills more pheasants than 
all the illegal hunters. He is afield three hundred 
and sixty-five days in the year. Having been raised in domestica- 
tion, perhaps on your own premises, he knows your habits and takes 
advantage of you only under cover of darkness. He takes not only 
Kill the 
Stray Cat 
young birds during the breeding ‘season but full-grown Chinese 
pheasant hens as well. Only in one instance have I known a cat to 
attack a full-grown pheasant cock. Aside from the loss of a handful 
of feathers, the cock was unharmed. The next night this same cat 
caught a full-grown Chinese pheasant hen and carried her over a 
six-foot wire netting fence before a load of number four shot stopped 
her. Oceasionally a cat will take strychnine when placed on fresh 
meat, but in doing so may carry the poison where it may do great 
harm. We have caught several exceedingly wild and vicious tomcats 
by baiting with a piece of fresh meat a trap similar in construction 
to an early day grizzly bear trap, but of course on a much smaller 
scale. The trap is made of a coal-oil case, one end of which is a 
trap door which drops behind the cat after it has gone in and 
sprung the trigger, arranged on top, by pulling the bait from the 
end of a nail in the rear end of the trap. I have found no better 
means of ridding my premises of cats than the presence of one or 
more good Airedale dogs, with which a cat has no chance whatever. 
Airedales at State Game Farm After Rats 
43 
