BULLETIN NUMBER FOUR 147 



We read in the St. Louis GLOBE DEMOCRAT that Missouri has a 

 good law, and that it protects the game. I live across the river from 

 Missouri. For fifteen years I have hunted nearly every fall and nearly 

 every spring, and I have yet to see a Missouri game warden. 



Wild ducks are sold openly in the Kansas City and St. Joe hotels. 

 Young ducks and old ducks are slaughtered all summer long on the Mis- 

 souri lakes, and if there ever was a joke, it is the system of game pro- 

 tection as practiced from Kansas City to St. Joe in the lakes along the 

 river bottom. 



If the Lmited States Senate does not allow that meager appropriation 

 for the enforcement of the Federal law, I am satisfied that in a very few 

 years our waterfowl will be practically exterminated, and our song birds 

 will he greatly lessened in numbers. 



Those who desire to shoot all during March insist the birds do not mate 

 early in the spring. This is not true. I have personally observed wild 

 mallards in the act of mating in the first week in February. 



W. F. Bancroft, of the Biological Survey, was a visitor in Atchison on 

 March 14 of this spring. He accompanied me on a trip to several of 

 the Missouri lakes in this vicinity, and I showed that 80 per cent, of the 

 wild ducks on those lakes were mated and paired off. 



We saw all species of ducks common to this section from the blue-wing 

 teal to red-heads and mallards, and 80 per cent, putting it conservatively, 

 were mated. 



I write this letter to let you now that conditions in the Middle West 

 have been grossly misrepresented by selfish shooters, and that a great 

 wrong will be done if the United States Government is not permitted to 

 protect our rapidly vanishing waterfowl. We have good shooting here 

 both in the fall and in February, and the first week in March. A later 

 season than this is unthinkable. 



Sincerely vours, 



EUGENE A. HOWE, 



Editor, Atchison Globe. 



One more quotation from the "petition" to Congress : 



"We with pride call attention to the fact that our state game laws are 

 the most perfect and restrictive legislation of any of the various states." 



And this from Missouri, whose state game laws permit 

 spring shooting up to May 1, — less than thirty days before 

 the hatching of the young ducks found by Dr. Field in the 

 Kansas marsh! In New York, Pennsylvania, Massachu- 

 setts and many other states the above will be read with 

 amusement. 



The "petition" attempts to make capital out of the fact 

 that duck-shooting has been forbidden on the Missouri and 

 Mississippi rivers. Truly, it was forbidden ; and why? Be- 



