Bobwhite 73 



Lean-to roofs 6 by 6 feet, built of lumber and camouflaged with brush were 

 tried in 1929-30 by the University of Wisconsin to keep feed from being covered 

 by snow. The findings were not very favorable. 



Emergency- feeding (no pre-organized station) is highly developed in Mis- 

 souri, and seems to be effective and satisfactory for Missouri conditions. It is 

 practiced not only by sportsmen, farmers, and game wardens, but by rural mail 

 carriers, through a co-operative agreement with the postal authorities. All are 

 furnished grain by the game department. 



The field work on the Missouri game survey was under way during the hard 

 winter of 1929-30, and gave an excellent chance to see the Missouri method in 

 operation. The department, through its field wardens, distributes grain in unit 

 10-pound packages to all who are willing to put it out. This sounds as if it 

 would be open to many abuses in actual practice, but in the course of several 

 trips with game wardens and many conversations with sportsmen and farmers, 

 no instance of the .use of such grain for other than game-feeding purposes was 

 encountered. On the contrary, I found several places where the department's 

 volunteer co-operators had visited quail ground before I did, and put out the 

 grain in an intelligent and effective manner. 



The procedure used by the Missouri wardens for emergency feeding was as 

 follows: The probable location of a covey, if not already known, was determined 

 by looking at the cover. If the terrain included an osage hedge with drooping 

 branches, or escaped osage bushes with drooping branches, it was almost a 

 foregone conclusion that the covey would be there. Having found the tracks of 

 the covey in the snow, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the covey itself 

 would be within 50 yards or at most 100 yards of the tracks, the radius of 

 mobility during snowstorms being exceedingly short. Some wardens used steady 

 bird dogs to locate the covey, but it was my observation that it was just as easy 

 to accomplish this by sighting them, and the danger of flushing was less. 



Once the covey was located, the tracks would indicate their radius of action, 

 and within this area three or four double handsful of grain were dumped in each 

 of three or four places least subject to coverage by snow, such as shelves on 

 gully banks, the base of an osage tree, packed snow under a log or a grape tangle, 

 or the like. Experience had taught the wardens that such a feeding would last for 

 two days, and would not need to be repeated until three or four days after. 

 Food spots were preferably placed all around the covey. There was no difficulty 

 in getting the covey to find the food. Rabbits of course get more of the grain 

 than quail, and leave no visible grain after the first night, but they tramp grain 

 into the snow which quail can later scratch up. 



The weakness of this system is of course the amount of labor which it en- 

 tails, that is, the short period for which each feeding is effective. In the northern 

 States, where feeding weather may last for a month at a stretch or even longer, I 

 consider it a very poor method. In Missouri, however, where blizzards are only 

 occasional, or where they may not occur at all during a whole winter, and where, 



