42 Bird - Lore 



When ihc Mallaril Ijegins to decrease preceptihly on the northern breeding 

 grounds it is time to inquire the cause of such depletion. 



Prof. W. W. Cooke of the Biological Survey gives as the 

 Causes o principal causes of the diminished numbers of water-fowl, market 



hunting, spring shooting, and the destruction of the breeding 

 grounds for farming purposes. The great prairies of the West and Northwest, 

 where the Mallard formerly bred in immense numbers, ha\x been settled and put 

 under the ])low. Marshes and sloughs have been drained and used as pastures. 

 This agricultural occupation and improvement of the land, which has broken 

 uj) the breeding grounds from Arkansas to Athabaska, has been accom])anied 

 l)v unlimited destruction of the birds for food and other purposes. Thus hunting, 

 particularly the spring shooting, has driven the birds out of the United States and 

 away from settled lands to the far north, greatly reducing their breeding area 

 and their opportunities for reproduction. Looked at from the standjwint of the 

 present day, the waste of bird life in the last century was appalling. Hundreds 

 of tons of ducks were killed in the South and W^est for their feathers b)- negroes, 

 Indians, half-breeds and whites and the bodies thrown away. 



Unrestricted market hunting was carried on also for many years and is still 

 continued in some regions. Prof. W. W. Cooke, of the Biological Survey, avers that 

 even as late as the winter of 1893-94 a single gunner at Big Lake, Arkansas, sold 

 8,000 Mallards, and 120,000 were sent to market during that season, from that 

 place alone. Sportsmen deceived b}' the apparently inexhaustible numbers of 

 wild fowl destroyed great numbers. 



Mr. W^ L. Finley who has recently (1908) e.\])lored Malheur Lake, Oregon, 

 says that formerly, when the wild fowl were ver\- numerous there, a party of 

 hunters could easily secure a wagon-load in a short time. On their return to town 

 the wagon was generalh' stopped on the corner of some street and passers-by 

 were allowed to help themselves as long as the supply lasted. One sportsman in 

 Minnesota boasted of having killed upward of 1,000 Mallards in a single fall. 



Notwithstanding the decrease of the birds, modern guns and methods now 

 render the gunner more destructive than ever before. In 1900 I visited a gunning 

 preserve in Plorida where northern sportsmen were shooting ducks by the hun- 

 dred and giving them away to their friends and to settlers. 



One of these gentlemen armed with repeating guns and supplied with a man 

 to load and others to drive the birds to his decoys is .said to have killed on a wager 

 over one hundred ducks in less than two hours. Even within the last two years 

 reports of reliable observers on the Gulf coast aver that market hunters there 

 have been killing 100 birds each per day. 



The Houston (Te.xas) Post of January 29, 1908, asserted tliat during the previ-, 

 ous week five citizens while hunting came upon a small lake into which the fowl 

 were flocking in great numbers. Using their repeating guns and acting by a 

 praerranged signal they Hushed the game, emptied their guns and gathered 107 

 killed, not counting the wounded and missing. The birds were mainly Mallards. 



