514 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



and nineteen, one hundred and forty-two and one hundred 

 and fifty-five Redheads on different days on the Detroit River. 

 He hunted for fifteen years prior to 1894. It needs Httle imagi- 

 nation to see how destructive such a market hunter can become. "^ 



Dr. D. G. Elhot states that a game dealer in New York 

 received twenty tons of Prairie Chickens in one consignment 

 in 1864, and that some of the larger dealers sold from one 

 hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand birds in 

 six months. Prof. Samuel Aughey, who gathered statistics 

 regarding the destruction of Bob-whites and Pinnated Grouse, 

 or Prairie Chickens, in Kansas from 1865 to 1877, asserts 

 that about four hundred and fifty thousand of these birds 

 were killed each year in thirty counties of Nebraska alone. 

 Game Commissioner John H. Wallace, Jr., of Alabama states 

 that before the present game laws of that State were passed 

 no less than nine million Bob-whites were killed there in one 

 season. All kinds of stratagems are used to evade the law 

 and get birds to market. Tons of rabbits or hares have been 

 shipped to market with Bob-whites stuffed into the cavity 

 in each hare, from which the viscera had been removed. 

 During a time when Prairie Chickens and Bob-whites could 

 be sold legally in Massachusetts but could not be shipped law- 

 fully from the west, the law was evaded by sending birds east 

 in coffins. These birds finally reached our markets in Boston 

 and New York City. In Forest and Stream of March 11, 1912, 

 it is stated that on February 18 nine thousand Bob-whites in 

 one shipment were seized by a sheriff and a game warden in 

 Oklahoma. These birds were destined for the northern mar- 

 kets. Quantities of Ruffed Grouse have been marked as fish or 

 chickens and illegally shipped to Boston fish or poultry dealers. 



The tons of Prairie Chickens, Quail, Pigeons, Eskimo 

 Curlews, Golden Plover and Upland Plover that once came 

 into Boston and New York markets in barrels are of the past, 

 and the marketmen are reaching out everywhere to find game. 

 They are now getting wild-fowl, rabbits, guinea hens, or any- 

 thing that can be legally sold. Mr. James Henry Rice, Jr., sec- 

 retary of the Audubon Society of South Carolina, writes me that 



» Mershon, W. B.: The Passenger Pigeon, 1907, p. 110. 



