intensive study and banding program has been carried out at 
the important wintering area centering on Horseshoe Lake, Alex- 
ander County, in southern Illinois, where the Illinois State 
Department of Conservation maintains a game refuge. 
Because printing difficulties and a shortage of suit- 
a 
able paper give promise of further delays in publishing the 
final report on the study, the present preliminary report is 
issued at this time. Issuance of this report now will make 
possible the inclusion in the final report of data and infor- 
mation derived from an additional year of study. . 
Status of Mississippi Flyway Geese 
ee ee 
In 1946, 14 states of the Mississippi Flyway (Michigan, 
Wisconsin, “innesota, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Xentucky, 
Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiell 
ana) rere closed to the hunting of Canada geese. The closed 
Season of an entire figway was the firat of its iid his 
tory of this species of waterfowl. The only similar actions 
woe those eecene the shooting seasons on snow geese and brant — 
in the Atlantic Coast states. Snow goose hunting has been pro- 
hibited there since 1931, and brant hunting for 9 of the 15 years 
since 1933. | 
Closing the season on Canada geese in the Mississippi 
i 
Flyway was necessary for a number of reasons; a pee ce decrease j 
in the number of these geese in tor flyway from 144, 843 in 1940 ; 
wot vis? 
