Bob white 



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Many hedges were unpruned. These became better and better quail coverts 

 with each year of growth. Many a prairie "section" (one square mile) carried 

 from two to four linear miles of excellent hedge covert, frequented alike by quail 

 and insectivorous birds. About 1910, however, soaring land prices called attention 

 to the fact that the spreading hedge roots reduced the yield of corn on a con- 

 sfderable strip of soil. Land having become scarce and high and wire having be- 

 come abundant and cheap, farmers began to grub out their hedges. 



This tendency was accelerated by the development of power tractors with 

 which hedges could be pulled out without heavy hand labor, and also by the 

 discovery that osage is a host for the San Jose scale, an insect pest of orchards. 

 The agricultural extension service urged farmers to pull their hedges; highway 

 departments insisted on it in widening roads; telephone companies objected to 

 hedges because of interference with construction and maintenance of telephone 

 lines. Within a single decade the osage hedge virtually disappared. It is not 

 altogether an accident that this same decade saw the enactment of many "song- 

 bird" laws and severely restricted open seasons on quail. 



PHOTO 2: Hedge in process of being pulled by tractor power. Note scarcity of game 

 cover. (Photo by Courtesy International Harvester Co.) 



In 1874 Bogardus wrote with pride, "Mr. Gillot . . . being a man of 

 great enterprise . . . planted hedges all over his estate." In 1930 it is a 

 sign of no enterprise at all if there remain even a single hedge on even the "back 

 forty." Thus do fashions change. Thus also is game and wild life ever left out 

 of account until after the change has been accomplished. 



