72 Game Survey of the North Central States 



Some State foresters are now trying, with some success, to revive interest in 

 shelterbelt plantings. In some States planting stock is furnished at cost. Sports- 

 men would do well to encourage appropriations for this work, especially where 

 the State stipulates that the plantings must be fenced against grazing. There is 

 also an excellent chance for commercial nurserymen to capitalize the game value 

 of evergreens, provided their salesmen learn to properly advise their customers 

 where and how to plant trees for game purposes. 



A summary of the history of shelterbelts, as reported by the State foresters, 

 is given in Table 15. 



Winter Feeding Methods. The most important device for winter feed- 

 ing is the food-patch. The survey encountered no systematic provision of food 

 patches for quail except on the Missouri State refuges and part of the Missouri 

 quail preserves. On the Lyter Preserve in Phelps County a strip of kaffir 

 corn is planted on the edge of fields and left uncut. Dr. Lyter says the grain 

 keeps all winter without molding. 



On the Missouri refuges, one-acre patches of mixed kaffir, milo, cane, milfet, 

 and sunflower are sown at intervals of one-half mile if possible. The millet ap- 

 peared to be easily covered by snow. The sunflowers had been picked clean by 

 small birds before snow came. 



The next most important is the self -feeding station. None of these were 

 heard of, except the experimental ones installed on the Wisconsin University 

 Farm under the institute fellowship. These consisted of wheat bundles, inverted 

 and suspended about 2 feet above the ground. Quail readily threshed out these 

 bundles by jumping, and rodent wastage was effectively prevented. Rodent 

 wastage was high, however, in the stack of reserve bundles which necessarily ac- 

 companies this method. Furthermore a bundle became exhausted in two days. 

 The method, in short, seems to have no labor-cost advantage over ordinary feeding 

 of shelled grain. 



Another self-feeding method tried by Errington (1930) at the University 

 of Wisconsin Farm was to simply leave an ordinary loosely-stacked corn-shock near 

 cover. This revealed the astonishing fact that quail readily clipped away the 

 husks and silk from even the most tightly-husked ears, and thus had ready access 

 to nearly all the corn in the shock. If this ability to clip corn husks is a uni- 

 versal character of bobwhite, winter self-feeding resolves itself into the extremely 

 simple formula: "Leave some shocks of corn." 



It is believed that ordinary feeding stations (as distinguished from self- 

 feeding) are becoming sufficiently prevalent to begin to have a measurable in- 

 fluence on- winter survival of quail, especially in the northern States. No way of 

 measuring the increase in feeding stations was found, because of the difficulty of 

 differentiating accidental from deliberate, and effective from ineffective stations. 

 The technique varies from elaborate "towers," with a roofed-over and tin-floored 

 platform, to simply impalling some corn-ears on brush or hanging them in the 

 crotches of bushes. 



