

iTOKTnAnmiCA had, only a few 

 years ago, a greater number and 

 variety of valuable wild food birds 

 than any country in the world. The 

 records of two guns shooting with 

 muzzle-loaders, over a hundred wood-cock in a day, quite 

 near New York; of the shooting of over a hundred bay snipe 

 at a single discharge; of the shooting of wagon loads of prairie 

 grouse and wild ducks, seem incredible, but they are authentic 

 as recorded in our ornithologies. Bogardus tells us that with 

 a friend he shot three hundred and forty Wilson's snipe one day, 

 in Illinois, and Mr. Pringle, in his history of "The Snipery," 

 in Louisiana, records the taking of thousands of these tooth- 

 some birds during a season, shooting day after day over marshes 

 near the house. Cody (Buffalo Bill) records the killing of four 

 or five hundred wild turkeys at one camp in the West. The 

 placing of a bounty on the ruffed grouse, in Massachusetts, 

 because it was considered too abundant for the successful grow- 

 ing of fruit; the destruction of prairie grouse, in Kentucky, 

 because, as Audubon says, they were regarded as pests, and 

 many more recent records might be cited to prove the former 



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