The Mallard 



43 



These recent instances will serve to show the danger that now menaces 

 American wild fowl by reason of the vast and increasing number of hunters and 

 the improvements in ammunition and firearms. 



If spring shooting, market hunting, cold storage and the 

 The Remedy breaking up of the breeding grounds have so greatly decreased 

 the numbers of ducks in the last forty years what will be the result 

 at the end of the next half century if with our improved firearms and means of 

 transportation the past policy is continued? In that case certainly, in fifty years 

 more there will be practically no wild ducks left in North America. The settle- 

 ment of the land and the extension of agricultural enterprises — including the 



WILD DUCKS AS PETS 

 Photographed on Lake Worth, Fhi. 



draining of marshes and sloughs — zvill go on; it cannot be stopped. Experience 

 shows that the number of hunters will continue to increase with the increase of 

 population. Ha\v then can the extermination of the birds be checked? Market 

 hunting can be stopped by prohibiting the sale of the birds. Let duck shooting be 

 limited by law to the fall months, and the month of December. Ever}- reason that 

 can be given for prohibiting the killing of upland game-birds after Januar}- i 

 will apply to wild fowl as well. With such laws well enforced, and with spring 

 shooting stopped, the birds will come back to breed in every favorable spot, 

 as they have done in states where spring shooting and sale are now pro- 

 hibited. Even a single limited locality soon feels the benefit of the prohibition 

 of shooting. At Titusville, Florida, where no shooting is allowed near the hotel 

 and wharves the wild ducks from the river become so tame that thev swini 



