148 THE SHOREBIRDS OR WADERS 



of the Biological Survey, discussed "two vanishing game 

 birds — the woodcock and the wood-duck," and his article 

 was issued by the department as a reprint, or bulletin, 

 and widely distributed. Unless strong protective meas- 

 ures are soon adopted, we are told, the woodcock and the 

 wood-duck, two popular and valuable game birds, will 

 become extinct. "In many places," Dr. Fisher says, 

 "where twenty-five years ago a fair shot with a good dog 

 could secure forty or fifty birds in a day's hunt, it is 

 doubtful if ten per cent, of the former bag could be ob- 

 tained." 



There are thousands of suitable covers from Maine to 

 the Mississippi Valley and as far West as Eastern Kan- 

 sas and Nebraska where not a single bird can be found 

 today at any season of the year, and the places where the 

 small percentage of birds named can be obtained are com- 

 paratively rare. 



I have seen the woodcock as plentiful as Frank For- 

 ester says they were. The younger sportsmen cannot 

 imagine how abundant they were a few years ago in the 

 Mississippi Valley and, in Forester's time, in the imme- 

 diate vicinity of New York City. Writing of the shoot- 

 ing in Orange County, N. Y., he says "the numbers I 

 have seen are incredible." In 1839, shooting with Mr. 

 Ward, of Warwick, who weighed above three hundred 

 pounds and shot with a single barrelled gun, they bagged 

 in three successive days, fifty-seven, seventy^nine and 

 ninety-eight cock over a single brace of dogs, not begin- 

 ning to shoot until it was late in the morning^ - The fol- 

 lowing year, shooting with a friend from New York (with 

 muzzle loading guns, of course), the ba^ contained one 

 hundred and twenty-five birds the first day and seventy 



