22 GAME CLUBS, PARKS, AND PRESERVES 



tion and qualifications of members, usually that they 

 be males twenty-one years of age, and that they re- 

 ceive the vote necessary to elect them. Two or three 

 blackballs are usually sufficient for rejection. The 

 officers are a president, vice-president, secretary, and 

 treasurer, whose duties are similar to those of the 

 officers of other clubs. As a rule, the shares can be 

 sold by a member only to a person who has been duly 

 elected to membership. The shares in a shooting club 

 are often issued at $ioo or $200. In many of the clubs 

 they are now held at $5,000, and sell for even more in 

 some cases. There are annual dues which vary in 

 amount from $25 to several hundred dollars. 



In addition to the house committee, whose duties 

 correspond to those of a city club committee, there 

 is a game and fish committee, whose duty it is to at- 

 tend to the stocking of the grounds of the upland 

 clubs, to provide for the propagation of the pheasants, 

 and generally to care for the game, employ the game- 

 keepers, etc. At the duck clubs this committee pro- 

 vides for the feeding, or baiting as it is termed, of the 

 ducks, and the erection of the blinds, and has charge of 

 the live decoys and the boats, and employs the super- 

 intendent and the guides or punters. One of the 

 duties of the game committee of the Wyandanch Club 

 (Long Island) is to hire men " to plant patches of grain 

 to be left standing." This committee should also on 

 all upland preserves provide shelter for the birds in 

 the winter and nesting-places in the spring, such as 

 brush-heaps, corn-shocks, and brier and grass patches, 

 and the committee should also see to the destruction 

 of the natural enemies of the game. 



