CONSERVATION OF GAME BIRDS. 529 



muscles had shrunk away from starvation, so that it hardly 

 seemed that the birds could fly. I stopped shooting, and took 

 the trouble to show the birds to a number of local gunners, all 

 of whom agreed that it was a shame to shoot birds that were 

 having so hard a time, and no local gunners shot Black Ducks 

 again that winter. 



"I believe that if the unprejudiced opinions of marketmen 

 could be taken on this point they would agree that birds shot 

 in New England in winter and spring are too thin in flesh and 

 too fishy in flavor to be a popular food, and the average gun- 

 ner — if the matter were brought to his attention and explained 

 to him — has too much sense of fair play to wish to destroy 

 the birds under such conditions." 



Even the diving Ducks, like the Old-squaws, sometimes 

 are reduced greatly by starvation and cold during unusually 

 cold seasons. At such times starving birds become reckless. 

 Mackay states that during the winter of 1888, when the sea 

 about Nantucket was covered with ice, two men covered them- 

 selves with sheets and lay down on the ice beside a crack near 

 a jetty on the north shore, and there killed with fishing poles 

 about sixty Old-squaws in a little over an hour. They found 

 on examining the Ducks that they were valueless, except for 

 their feathers, owing to their emaciated condition. Let all 

 true sportsmen, then, join in the movement to close the shoot- 

 ing season on the first day of January, and let all men lay 

 aside the gun then and give the birds a chance. 



Summer Shooting, 



Summer shooting is nearly as destructive to game birds, 

 wild-fowl and shore birds as is spring shooting. No one now 

 advocates the summer shooting of upland game birds, but 

 many now living can remember when July and August Wood- 

 cock shooting was defended in the sportsmen's journals by 

 both market hunters and sportsmen. As late as 1889 August 

 Woodcock shooting was permitted by law in the enlightened 

 Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was not until the breed- 

 ing Woodcock were nearly exterminated that laws finally were 



