74 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



tion everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains, 

 should it not be perfectly clear to every logical mind 

 that the only rational course to pursue is to give the 

 bob-white quail, everywhere, close seasons of five 

 or ten years, or until they become so numerous as 

 to be destructive to valuable crops? The quail 

 needs a million champions; but instead of having 

 them, it is annually beset by more than a million 

 gunners. 



Instead of universal protection, to-day we find 

 only three states maintaining a five-year close sea- 

 son on their quail. Those states are New York, 

 Oklahoma and Kansas. If there are others doing 

 likewise, I have overlooked them. Throughout 

 fully nine-tenths of the range of the quail, it is 

 harassed and persecuted by men, dogs, automatic 

 and pump guns, automobiles and public sentiment. 

 In Iowa an unwise state game warden blocked the 

 passage of a five-year protection law for quail on 

 the fantastic ground that if the bill should become 

 a law, the sportsmen of the state of Iowa would be 

 so furiously angry that they would exterminate all 

 the remaining quail in revenge! That idea may 

 fairly be regarded as the greatest invention of the 

 age in the line of conservation. 



As yet, the average American farmer is sound 

 asleep on the quail question. Whether it will be 

 possible to arouse him, and induce him to rise in 

 his might and demand long protection for his best 

 feathered friend, is now a question before the house. 



