INTRODUCTION. 15 



twenty-five dollars, to the person who would beat his record 

 — nearly fifty birds — for a single shot at Geese. Fifteen 

 years later another gunner killed seventy -five birds at a single 

 shot on Suisun Bay.^ 



More recently the editor of Recreation investigated a 

 story that W. E. Newbert and W. H. Young of Sacramento, 

 Cal., killed one hundred and seventy-three Geese and " Brant" 

 in seven hours shooting. He found it to be a fact. The 

 Geese were so destructive to the newly sprouted grain that 

 the farmers were compelled to hire men to drive them off. 



In Dakota it was customary to build great fires on the 

 roosting grounds of the Geese on dark nights, and to shoot 

 the birds as they flew in " clouds " over the fires. One man 

 in Minnesota is said to have killed three thousand Geese in 

 this manner in ten days.^ 



Gillmore states that he and one companion killed eighty- 

 five Geese and a " large number of duck " on the prairie in 

 one day; and at Grand Prairie, HI., he alone killed nineteen 

 Geese and forty Ducks one day, and would have killed more, 

 but his ammunition gave out.^ 



Hunter states that in one day at Cobbs Island, Va., he 

 had killed fifty-six Brant when his shells gave out; and that 

 Nathan Cobb killed one hundred and eighteen, which he 

 considered a good day's work. He stated that one hun- 

 dred and eighty-six was his best tally for one day.* 



A few of the scores made by gunners in the days of the 

 old muzzle loader, supplied with the flint-lock or the per- 

 cussion cap, will serve to indicate the former abundance of 

 Ducks. Capt. John Smith, in his account of his journey to 

 the Pamunkee, in 1608, makes the following assertion: "An 

 hundred and forty-eight fowls the President Anthony Bagnall 

 and Seriegent Pising did kill at three shoots." ^ 



Hearne (1769-72) says that some Indians frequently kill 

 as many as one hundred Snow Geese each in a day.^ 



1 HatchjP.L.: Notes on the Birds of Minnesota, Zool. Ser., Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surv. of Mina., 

 1892, Vol. I, p. 76. 



2 Murphy, John Mortimer: American Game Bird Shooting, 1882, p. 246. 

 ' Gillmore, Parker: Prairie and Forest, 1874, p. 249. 



* Hunter, Alex.: The Huntsman in the South, 1908, pp. 157, 158. 



^ Smith, Capt. John: General History of Virginia and New England, 1819, p. 206. 



^ Hearne, Samuel: A Journey to the Northern Ocean, 1795, p. 439. 



