SPRING SHOOTING. 589 



along the Platte. Nevertheless, the use of batteries, or 

 sink-boats, on the feeding grounds, the employment of 

 big guns at night, and night shooting generally, with 

 or without lights, have had a tendency to break up the 

 birds on Chesapeake Bay and on the Susquehanna 

 Flats, and to drive them to other grounds. 



SPRING SHOOTING. 



sportsmen, generally, are agreed that most of our 

 upland game should be protected during the early 

 months of the year, when they are preparing to mate 

 and to build their nests. It is commonly averred by 

 the advocates of spring shooting, that, as the wildfowl 

 and the snipe are migratory birds, which do not nest 

 with us, there is no reason why they should not be shot 

 in the spring, during their passage from South to 

 North. Such reasoning is based on false premises. 



The assumption that the migratory wildfowl do not 

 breed with us is false. They do not now breed com- 

 monly, because they are not allowed to do so, and those 

 which might remain with us and rear their young with- 

 in our borders, are destroyed before they have an op- 

 portunity to prepare their nests and lay their eggs. In 

 years gone by, however, the English snipe, and many 

 species of our waterfowl, commonly bred in all the 

 northern tier of States, and did so in great numbers. 

 Even to-day, in States where spring shooting is for- 

 bidden, they breed to a limited extent, and would do so 



