Ohio and other states because they cannot stand our vermin 

 and some illegal shooting, even when shooting is prohibited. 



We now have several thousand pheasant breeders, some of 

 whom produce thousands of pheasants every year for sport. 

 Many State Game Departments have game farms, where 

 thousands of pheasants are reared every season, and thousands 

 of birds are imported annually for propagation. The industry 

 of pheasant breeding is interesting and profitable, and no good 

 reason can be assigned why the pheasant clubs should not have 

 pheasant-shooting, just as trap-shooting clubs have clay-bird 

 shooting. Many now prefer to shoot something which is good 

 to eat, and there can be no doubt the pheasant is one of the 

 most excellent food-birds in the world. 



It is absurd to say that pheasants purchased or bred by 

 syndicates of sportsmen or by commercial game breeders 

 belong to the state, and, under the game breeders' laws which 

 are popular in many states, the private ownership of pheasants 

 is recognized so long as the birds do not wander from the grounds 

 where they are propagated by private industry. There are 

 several hundred small breeders in Massachusetts and in a 

 recent report issued by the Commissioners of Fisheries and 

 Game of that state, we are told that the abundance of pheasants 

 must depend on the many small breeders, because there are 

 more people who can breed a few pheasants than there are 

 who can breed thousands. In several states complaints have 

 been made to the Agricultural Departments by farmers about 

 the damage done by state pheasants, and in answer to an in- 

 quiry addressed by the Agricultural Department of Massa- 

 chusetts, asking that if the state owned the pheasants would it 

 remove them from the farms where they were foimd to be 

 injurious, the Game Department replied that the pheasants 

 were more beneficial than harmful and that it would not be 

 long before they were regarded as a profitable farm crop. 



In New York a county grange is reported to have asked the 

 State Game Department to keep its pheasants out of the county. 

 It is evident that the farmers own most of the shooting grounds 

 and that the birds can be produced to the best advantage by those 

 who deal fairly with the land owners as many sportsmen do. The 

 state birds, of course, can be liberated on public lands and wild 

 lands where the shooting is open to the public. The "overflow" 

 from game farms and clubs adds materially to the public shooting. 



55 



