32 Decrease of Birds 



six miles of thirty years ago, it is going to be a hard job 

 to check the slaughter. Short season and strict enforce- 

 ment of the law may help." Mr. B. D. Dargan, Florence, 

 estimates that gunners have increased two-hundred per 

 cent in the last four or five years. In the meantime, 

 improved guns, and other mechanical agencies of destruc- 

 tion, dogs, cats and English sparrows have increased in 

 proportion. 



Negroes 



The reports show that as an agency of destruction, the 

 negro, armed with his cheap gun, and with packs of half- 

 starved, mongrel dogs at his heels is a terrible scourge to 

 wild life. He kills in season and out of seasoij, non-game 

 as well, as game birds. He is a pot hunter of the worst 

 type. He robs nests, shoots Bob-whites on the ground 

 and kills the parent birds. His cabins are often built in 

 the corners of woods and other isolated places, and thus 

 he is enabled to roam the country and shoot indiscrimi- 

 nately without fear of detection, During the nesting 

 season his half-fed dogs scour the woods and fields and 

 destroy all the eggs and young of ground nesting birds 

 which they can find. Why do sportsmen permit such 

 slaughter? 



In the judgment of ninety-eight observers, awful des- 

 truction results from this source. Maj. Harry Hammond, 

 Aiken, reports, that gunners have been trippled since the 

 negro acquired the use of the shotgun, and that dogs have 

 also greatly increased. Mr. G. A. Jennings, Bamberg, 

 writes: "Decrease in Bob-whites caused principally by 

 breech-loading shot-gun and the accuracy of the negro's 

 aim which he has acquired in the last twenty years." 

 Capt. S. G. Stoney, Charleston, reports: "The negro with 

 the single barrel breech-loader is responsible for the great- 

 est destruction of song and all other kinds of bird Hfe." 

 Mr. Cleveland Saunders, Colleton, writes: "The Partridge 

 is killed in mating season with a shot-gun. Every negro 

 owns a single barrel shot-gun." Mr. B. D. Dargan, 



