530 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



passed prohibiting summer Woodcock shooting. All smnmer 

 shooting should be forbidden; it is too destructive to the birds. 

 In summer the schools and colleges are closed, and aU the pupils 

 and teachers are on vacation. Professional men, store clerks, 

 office boys and thousands of employees in various industries 

 take their vacations then. WTiere it is legal to shoot any 

 game in July and August thousands of boys and men will be 

 in the field with guns shooting the birds. The great majority 

 of these people do not know the law. They only know that it 

 is legal to shoot, and they shoot ad libitum. Many idle people 

 camp out in summer and wander about with guns. Even the 

 sheep and poultry suffer at the hands of such campers. I 

 never yet have met a summer vacationist in the field with a 

 gun who, when questioned, knew the law under which he was 

 shooting, and not one in a hundred knows enough about the 

 birds to be able to comply with the law if he knows it. They 

 are largely boys and J'oung men who, laboring under the im- 

 pression that they are shooting Plover, chase Peeps, or who 

 pursue Spotted Sandpipers supposing that they are shooting 

 Upland Plover or Wilson's Snipe. 



Many of these summer gunners come from other States, 

 and have never taken the trouble to inquire what the game 

 laws of ^lassachusetts require. They shoot any bird of large 

 size, whether it is protected by law or not, and some of them 

 indiscriminately slaughter small birds. Summer shooting 

 gives an excuse for lawbreaMng gunners, particularly the 

 foreign element, to be out after game, and it is well known 

 that these people kill birds of all kinds and their young. 

 Summer shooting has already destroyed or driven away most 

 of the shore birds which once bred or summered in New 

 England. A good part of the summer shooting is done by 

 campers along the shores and marshes of the sea-coast, or 

 about the inland lakes and rivers. Such shooting tends to 

 break up and destroy the breeding of Black Ducks and any 

 other Ducks which may chance to summer here, and on this 

 account alone it should be prohibited. Boys shooting in sum- 

 mer kill game birds of all kinds, old and young. Many native 

 Ducks or their half-grown young are killed by these gunners. 



