2 INTRODUCTION 



Field sport conditions have changed much. They 

 are diametrically opposite those of twenty-five years 

 ago. Forester wrote of the marvellous abundance of 

 game in the Eastern States, calling attention to the 

 fact that there was not a game law or a game pre- 

 serve in the land. With a friend he bagged one hun- 

 dred and twenty-five woodcock in a day, quite near 

 New York, aijd he records large bags of other game. 

 To-day the game birds are nowhere abundant in the 

 Eastern States: there is everywhere a multiplicity of 

 game enactments and there are hundreds of game 

 preserves. 



The abundance of game in the United States was 

 truly marvellous. It was not unusual for a sportsman 

 to shoot one hundred ducks in a day, and the market 

 gunners often killed as many at a single shot from a 

 swivel-gun. There are reliable records of over a hun- 

 dred shore-birds being killed at a shot. Bogardus 

 with a friend shot three hundred and forty snipe one 

 day in Illinois, and the writer was present in Ohio 

 when the bag contained over one hundred and fifty 

 partridges (Bob-whites), besides ruffed-grouse and 

 woodcock. Grouse were killed by the wagon-load. 



The prairie-grouse are extinct in many of the 

 States besides Kentucky, where Audubon says they 

 were regarded as pests on account of their destruction 

 of the buds of the fruit trees. There are few places in 

 America where one hundred ducks could be bagged 

 in a day except on the marshes owned and preserved 

 by clubs. 



A few years ago the shooting everywhere was free 

 and unrestrained. A posted farm in the Central and 



