AMERICA'S GREATEST PLAYGROUND 



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W. P. Mathewson, Mr. and Mrs. A. P. Topperwein, State Shoot, Lewistown 



following morning there could be found the mother grouse and as many 

 as a dozen small grouse dead in the last furrow turned by the man 

 behind the plow the previous day. 



Dozens of instances of this character may be found, and many cases 

 where coyotes had carried the poisoned birds to their dens and fed 

 the young, a family or five or six youngsters would be found dead 

 about the home. This was common throughout this section of the state. 



Come with me, if you please, to the Gallatin valley and inquire of 

 our dear old friend, Karst, who has been engaged in the mercantile 

 business and caring for the traveler along the West Gallatin for many 

 years, how many domestic fowl he lost (by accident purely) when 

 filling receptacles with this carefully prepared poisoned grain, plainly 

 marked "for rodents only." A small quantity of the poisoned grain 

 was scattered upon the ground and later cared for by Mrs. Karst's 

 carefully raised domestic fowls, and only 25 or 30 were killed at one 

 time, yet we are informed that the poisoned grain will not do harm to 

 the feathered family. 



My own personal observations have been, when driving through the 

 country, where the use of poisoned grain had been indulged in, that 

 in a distance of 100 miles where ordinarily robins and meadow larks 

 could be found abundantly, I was not able to find a half dozen birds 

 all told. 



Permit me to ask you to come with me to Northern Montana, 

 where the propaganda of rodent poisoning has been peddled day in and 

 day out for the past three years, and witness the condition of the dam- 

 aged grain crops destroyed by insects, resulting, no doubt, from the 

 use of poisoned grain taken up by the singing and insectivorous birds, 

 as well as many of the game bird family. 



Upon a recent visit to Northern Montana I took up with the man- 

 ager of the largest irrigation project in Montana the question of gopher 

 poisoning and what effect the use of poisoned grain had had upon the 

 bird family. The gentleman informed me that in sections where the 

 cruel and inhumane practice had been put into practice he had found 

 hundreds and hundreds of dead birds, singing and insectivorous, strewn 

 upon the prairie. Today in this wonderfully productive agricultural 



