great abundance of our true game birds of the upland and our 

 wild fowl and waders. The writer was present one day, in 

 Ohio, when the bag contained over a hundred and fifty quail 

 besides ruffed grouse and wood-cock, and a few wood-duck and 

 miscellaneous birds and rabbits for good measure. The bags 

 always were large although we shot day after day over a com- 

 paratively small area. 



Our ornithologists and sporting writers deplore the rapid 

 disappearance of this wonderful food supply and often they 

 predict the extermination of game in America. Some recom- 

 mend, continually, more stringent game laws, limiting or 

 prohibiting sport, but, since the game has continued to vanish 

 notwithstanding such enactments, many have doubted the 

 possibility of saving the more valuable upland species if any 

 shooting be permitted. There is good reason for the doubt. 

 A large and ever increasing number of guns, each taking only 

 a tew birds during a short open season, undoubtedly produces 

 the same result which was produced by a smaller number of 

 guns, each taking a larger number of birds during a long open 

 season. All naturalists agree that the absolute prohibition of 

 field sports does some good only when the species has not been 

 too much decimated to survive its natural enemies. All agree 

 that even a little shooting is too much, unless the game enemies 

 be controlled, because any slight additional check to the in- 

 crease of a species must cause it rapidly to decrease in numbers. 

 The prohibition of sport, which we have been facing, is highly 

 undesirable. Fortunately we now know that it is unnecessary. 

 Field sports need no defence or apology in so far as the 

 readers of this little book are concerned. Their enemies do 

 not realize the importance of the health-giving exercise which 

 they denounce, or the economic value of the food which field 

 sports can be made to produce. The distinguished orni- 

 thologist, Elliot, in his book on our gallinaceous game birds, 

 refers to the pleasure they yield and the incentive they provide 

 for action and effort, "when in the leafy aisles of whispering 

 forests, or in the thickets and along the banks of the leaping 

 stream, or in the open sky-encircled prairie, man in his quest 

 for these game-like creatures, aided by his faithful dog, finds 



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