UPLAND SHOOTING. 



199 



young, if unmolested. If persecuted and sliot off, year after 

 year, on liis very breeding ground, and while he was in the 

 very act of breeding, he will desert that ground altogelher. 

 Of this, I have seen proof positive. In the immediate vicinity ol 

 Warwick, in Orange county, within two miles of the village, 

 there are twenty little woods and swamps, each of which used ten 

 or twe'.ve years ago to be a certain find in July for two, three or 

 more broods of birds. It was easy shooting and easy marking 

 ground, and year after year I and my party — at that time no 

 one else shot in that region — killed off" the whole summer stock, 

 clean. The consequence was, that long before the general 

 shooting of the district was affected by the march of intellect 

 and the growth of railroads, and while birds yet abounded a 

 mile or two farther off, those swamps ceased even to hold a 

 summer brood. Twenty birds killed in a wood, twenty days 

 in succession, injure that wood less as a home for Woodcock 

 than ten killed once in July. Hence, as for fifty other reasons, 

 I say, if we would have Woodcock shooting at all, away with 

 summer shooting — away with all upland shooting, antecedent 

 to the first of October, unless you choose to except Snipe, 

 although for the exception I can see no reason, unless it is that 

 the evil produced by killing them in spring is as yet something 

 less crying, and the diminution of their numbers less palpable, 



I had the honor to lay a diaft of a petition to the New- York 

 legislature on this subject, before the New-York Sportsman's 

 Club in the course of last winter — 1846-7 — which was taken 

 up, and the draft printed. I regret to say that, from prudential 

 motives, as it was thought by many good sportsmen, and appre- 

 hension of difficulty in getting a sufficiency of signatures, action 

 on it has been pos poned for the present. 



I am still myself satisfied, that the measure therein proposed, 

 or some other nearly akin to it, is the last and only hope lefl to 

 sportsmen of preserving any kind of game, but especially 

 Woodcock, among us. 



The domestic habits of the Quail, his haunting homesteads, 

 and becoming to some degree a pet of the farmer, and yet 



