THE GAME BREEDER 



41 



QUAIL PRESERVING. 

 WILD BREEDING METHODS. 



By D. W. Huntington. 



The best methods for rearing quail 

 abundantly both for sport and for profit 

 are the methods which have been used 

 to make the gray partridges plentiful in 

 Great Britain and on the Continent of 

 Europe. By far the best and the cheap- 

 est shooting which American sportsmen 

 can undertake is quail shooting on the 

 farms, which are for the most part 

 posted against all shooting. The area of 

 the posted farms which are suitable for 

 quail preservation is tremendous and 

 since the number of farms which are 

 posted is increasing, and since the tend- 

 ency of our legislation rapidly is in the 

 direction of prohibiting quail shooting 

 for terms of years or at all times, there 

 should be no possible prejudice against 

 the inexpensive clubs or syndicates of 

 sportsmen who arrange with the land- 

 owners to produce quail for shooting on 

 the farms. Large numbers of these 

 birds should be marketed .every season 

 to pay the cost of production. 



It was the fashion a few years ago for 

 shooting clubs to rent the shooting rights 

 on a number of farms and to purchase 

 and liberate a lot of quail every season. 

 I have purchased quail for such clubs 

 when, it was legal to trap and sell birds 

 in some of the States, but since nothing 

 was done in the way of game preserving, 

 the foxes and other vermin took a good 

 part of the purchased stock and the 

 sportsmen shot what was left and relied 

 upon the purchase of new birds each 

 season in order to keep up some indiffer- 

 ent shooting. I have been told some re- 

 markable stories by superintendents of 

 clubs about the evident destruction of 

 birds by foxes and other vermin after 

 the quail were liberated, and, of course, 

 the system was entirely wrong. It sim- 

 ply amounted to trapping live birds in 

 Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina and 

 the other States and turning the birds 

 down at the Wyandangh, the Long 

 Island Country Club, the Nitany, or 



some of the many other clubs, to feed 

 vermin and to provide some fair shoot- 

 ing, possibly for one year, and very little 

 thereafter. It was necessary to pur- 

 chase birds every season. The quail 

 were trapped in one State to be ex- 

 terminated in another. State game de- 

 partments also were engaged in the same 

 folly, and often I have thought that a 

 capable game officer of a Southern State 

 was absolutely right when he refused to 

 grant a permit, as he had the right to 

 do, to a! State officer in a State where 

 the quail had become scarce, to purchase 

 a lot of quail and move them to places 

 where a sure extermination awaited 

 them. 



The secret of success in quail breeding 

 consists in making the ground safe and 

 attractive. Ground is made safe when 

 the numerous natural enemies of the 

 game are controlled, and when no dogs, 

 cats, rats or poachers are permitted to 

 destroy the eggs or birds. On suitable 

 ground the quail quickly will become 

 tremendously abundant and remain so, 

 although thousands be shot every season. 

 The guns simply take the birds which 

 vermin would have taken in the absence 

 of beat-keepers. 



Ground is made attractive by making 

 suitable nesting sites and safe small 

 covers at frequent intervals. In the good 

 old days of quail abundance many fields 

 were enclosed with rail fences, the angles 

 of which were full of grass, weeds and 

 briars. The woods, also, contained much 

 undergrowth, brush and briars ; there 

 was plenty of berries, sumacs, wild roses, 

 and many other natural foods for the 

 quail, and numerous covers for the birds 

 where ground and winged vermin found 

 it difficult or impossible to destroy them. 

 All sportsmen know that a freshly 

 plowed field, a meadow, a pasture and 

 all other fields surrounded by wire fences 

 and entirely devoid of cover and natural 

 foods, and open woodlands, containing 



