Game Administration 243 



Missouri has the usual system of leased refuges, some of which are operated 

 as game farms. The State also is acquiring a valuable system of State Parks, 

 part of which have positive value for game purposes. These are being planted 

 with deer and turkey and subjected to management, and are in fact serving as 

 workable big game refuges. 



Classification of Refuges. The Michigan Game Division has evolved a 

 classification of big-game refuges, with respect to kind and function, which may 

 be of value to other States. The principles apply to all kinds of game. The 

 classification is not officially approved or adopted, and should not be construed as 

 committing the commission. Five kinds of refuges are proposed: 



1. Incidental. In this class the refuge area is originally and dominantly a 

 military reservation, State park or the like. The refuge function in such cases 

 may or may not be important. 



2. Standard. The official specifications as to size call for 4-10 sections in- 

 side the refuge. It is to be more or less surrounded with state-owned public hunt- 

 ing grounds, so located and blocked as to insure that private parties will be un- 

 able to acquire lands on or near the boundaries so as to exclude the public from 

 free access to the first fruits of the refuge. 



These "standard" units are being located in districts where there are really 

 large areas of wild land, so that there can and will be a ready and steady spread of 

 game in all directions; also an opposite concentration during the hunting season, 

 and, often, for wintering. 



Such "standard" units are being located within 20 miles of each other, or 

 less, and in a geographic pattern carefully worked out in accordance with the 

 pattern of the cover types, and "breaks" such as settlements, bare plains, large 

 water bodies, and the like. 



It will often be found practicable and desirable to combine standard units 

 with State and National Forests, large State Park units, etc. 



3. Local. These are to function in the same manner as the "standard" units, 

 but will, as a rule, be smaller, and will be fitted into relatively small areas of wild 

 land which tend to be over-hunted. It will be realized from the first that there 

 can be no general or long distance radial shifting o big game. 



4. "Dodge-ins" or "Hide-outs." These will correspond to the "safety- 

 zones" put in for humans where street traffic is heavy and dangerous. 



It will be realized, in advance, that during the bulk of the year the unit 

 cannot carry much wild life. It may have no wintering facilities whatever. Dur- 

 ing the summer season it may carry very few deer. But it will contain heavy 

 cover of some sort, water, and some feed. In many cases such units will be located 

 so as to utilize pine plantations 10 to 25 years old. 



Such units may well be a square mile or less in area, and may well be spat- 

 tered about between the "standard" units at intervals of a few miles, and the 

 heavier the concentration of hunters, the more numerous the "hide-outs" should 

 be. Their function is to insure enough unhuntable and non-drivable territory to 

 prevent the essential breeding stocks of deer from being depleted below a safe 

 level. 



In general such "hide-outs" would hardly tempt private parties to acquire and 

 post adjacent lands, but where practicable they may best be located within large 

 tracts of State-owned lands or in State or National Forests. 



