Wild Ducks in Relation to Rice Culture 45 



hunters in the state in the }'ear 1900 and there has been a large increase in popu- 

 lation since that year. If these hunters should each kill but ten ducks or geese 

 in a year, 473,670 ducks and geese would be killed annually, and when we con- 

 sider that there are hunters who kill thousands of birds each in a year the value 

 of this natural resource — this food supph^ — to the state can hardly be estimated. 



Do the farmers of Texas purpose to exterminate birds that are bringing in 

 such an annual revenue to the state, merely because the Vjirds have eaten a few 

 thousand dollars worth of rice left neglected in shocks in the fields? Let the birds 

 be once exterminated and the farmers will begin breeding domesticated ducks 

 for food. Will they kill those ducks because they are obliged to feed them grain ? 

 Moreover it is evident, when the situation is understood, that the damage to 

 crops is only partially due to birds. The Texas Press of January, 1908, contains 

 many references to the injur}- done by wild fowl to the crop in the rice-belt and 

 there seems to be a disposition now to attribute to the birds all the loss sustained 

 Ijy the planters. It seems to have been forgotten that the main injury to the rice 

 crop of 1907 was not due to birds but to the heavy rains which, early in the season, 

 l:)eat upon the unstacked rice left in the flooded fields, prevented early harvesting 

 and destroyed a great part of the crop. In "Rice Industry" for November i, 

 1907, we find it stated editorially that the continued spell of rainy and damp 

 weather which had at that time lasted almost continually since about the middle 

 of September materially interfered with the harvesting of the rice crop over a 

 large section. x\gain on another page in the same issue, it is stated that the prin- 

 cipal damage is done to rice in shocks lying in the fields, and that the warm moist 

 weather had caused much of this to sprout. In the December (1907) number of the 

 same journal the Secretary of the Texas Rice Farmers' Association says " weather 

 conditions are such that 50 per cent of the rice yet to thresh will be almost a total 

 loss," and that all of it is in such bad condition that it will not keep in sacks. 



On another page a letter from New Orleans dated November 22, states that, 

 owing to heavy rains throughout the rice -belt, rice in shocks is in a deplorable 

 condition, rotten and floating. Similar returns coming from a large part of the 

 rice-belt prove conclusively that the ducks were not the primary cause of injur}-. 

 No doubt great numbers of ducks were attracted to the rice fields near the coast 

 b}- the unusual quantity of damaged rice remaining in the fields — some of it 

 already abandoned — and undoubtedly they helped to complete the ruin of this 

 part of the crop; but under ordinary conditions, when the rice is early harvested 

 and properly cared for, the ducks will do very little injury to the crop, and under 

 such conditions they may be counted among the best friends of the rice-planter. 



WILD DUCKS THE FRIENDS OF THE FARMER 



In ordinary seasons any farmer who has not sown more rice than he can take 

 care of can get it harvested and properly stacked in good weather early in the 

 season. It is then practically safe from rain and birds. Rice, even if left in shocks 



