Work of State Game Warden 17 



Many of you have seen thousands and thousands of robins in one 

 roost; some of you can remember now a robin roost. There are 

 three or four that I know of today, and the vandals visit these roosts 

 now as they did years ago, and kill and destroy as many of them as 

 possible. This is a misdemeanor, and our farmers, except the van- 

 dals among them, desire that the law be enforced, but they are afraid 

 to give the information necessary to convict the offenders. I wonder 

 how long it will be until a robin roost will be a thing of the past. 



I was talking the other day to one of the U. S. Government Inspec- 

 tors, and he told me that he visited a camp in Arkansas, a camp of 

 duck hunters. Just behind the camp, in a ravine, he and his assist- 

 ant counted more than 600 ducks that had been thrown in the ravine 

 to rot. The hunters would kill and bring to camp as many ducks 

 as possible, select two or three of them to eat, and throw the rest of 

 them in the ravine to rot, and some of the natives would visit the 

 ravine and gather up the ducks in their wagons and feed them to 

 their hogs. In this State we have a law permitting the killing of 

 fifty ducks per day, and many hunters kill their limit. I wonder 

 how long it will be, if these practices are not stopped, until the whir 

 of the wings of the teel and black jack will be heard no longer along 

 the waters and lakes of Tennessee. 



The other day the State Game Warden of this State visited a 

 stream that had been dynamited, and he and the man who was with 

 him counted more than 2,000 little fish that had been killed by the 

 explosion of the dynamite in the stream. It was impossible for him 

 to secure a statement from any man that would convict the party 

 who violated the law by dynamiting the stream. 



In the spring of the year, as is well known to all of you, the game 

 fish, as well as the non-game fish, go up the streams to spawn. There 

 are some men in almost all localities who know the habits of fish, and 

 taking advantage of this knowledge, set traps and nets to catch the 

 fish as they go up to spawn, and this not only destroys the fish, but 

 destroys their eggs, also. 



In some counties of the State we have local laws permitting resi- 

 dents of the county to gig, and the other day I saw one of those peo- 

 ple with a string of sixteen trout that had been gigged off their nests 

 or beds. I wonder how long it will be, if these practices are not 

 stopped, until the trout will be as rare in our streams as is the pas- 

 senger pigeon in our air. I wonder how long it will be until the 

 farmers of this State recognize the fact that a man who wantonly 



