; MONTANA FISH AND GAME COMMISSION 29 : 



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Falls. These, in my opinion, are sufficient to hatch all the trout and 

 greyling we will ever require. We must do something, however, to pro- 

 duce warm water fishes to stock the waters in Eastern Montana. Your 

 fish and game officials are doing everything possible to find and 

 build up additional spawn taking fields, and are making progress along 

 this line. In two or threv years, we hope to be taking twice as many 

 eggs as Ave are now taking. 



We think we now have two or possibly three, workable fish wheels, 

 which can be installed at a reasonable sum. Arrangements have 

 already been made to try out a number of them the coming season. 

 If they are found to be what we think they are, it will be one of the 

 greatest things that ever happened for the propagation of game fish, 

 for it is my opinion that more game fish are destroyed in irrigation 

 ditches than are taken by the anglers. 



All our fish should be kept in rearing ponds until they have 

 reached the fingerling stage and no fry should be planted at all. 

 More attention will have to be given to the manner in which our fish 

 are planted and the places where they are planted. Every trout stream 

 in the state should be surveyed, and all the good places to plant fish 

 marked by a permanent marker of some kind. When the fish 

 are planted, they should be taken there, and planted by experienced 

 fish men who know how to plant fish, and who will take the time to 

 do it in the right way. Many of the fish liberated in the past have been 

 dumped instead of planted. The department should plant all the fish 

 distributed so that the best results may be obtained. 



More attention will have to be paid to game propagation than haS 

 been done in the past. A system of small game preserves should be 

 established. The work of importing game girds should be kept up 

 until they are so plentiful we can have an open season on them. Those 

 we have imported are doing wonderfully well from the reports we have 

 on them. If we cannot do anything to propagate our native game 

 birds, we can at least help them propagate themselves, by destroying 

 their natural enemies. Owls, certain kinds of hawks, crows, magpies, 

 weasels and the like, destroy thousands of our game birds in a year. 

 If we had the money, an appropriate bounty should be placed on all 

 these, but we have not the money to do it with, so we must appeal to 

 the sportsmen for help. The appeal we sent out last spring has been 

 the means of thousands of these predatory birds being destroyed, which 

 means thousands of your game and song birds have been saved. 



We must not let up in the work already begun of destroying pre- 

 datory animals, coyotes, mountain lion, wolves and the like, that prey 

 on our game animals. These silent hunters are at work 365 days in 

 the year, they know no sex or closed season and the toll of game they 

 take in a year is enormous. We should, if possible, double our energies 

 in destroying them, and in this way we win the respect of the farmer 

 and the stockman, for they too, want these predatory animals killed. 



I believe, however, the bear should be put on the list of game ani- 

 mals, and that he should be protected by a closed season during certain 

 times of the year, when unfit for food or fur. The right, however, 

 should be given to destroy him at any time and in any manner when it 

 is shown that he is a killer of stock. The bear is fast disappearing. 

 The average person gets a greater kick out of seeing a bear in the 

 woods, than a whole herd of deer or elk. We must give him some pro- 

 tection before it is too late. 



