46 



THE GAME BREEDER 



usually bred wild. It has been found to 

 be an easy matter for beat keepers to so 

 protect the birds that quickly they be- 

 come and remain as abundant as they 

 should be on any area, although much 

 shooting be done in the open season. 

 Sometimes the birds become so abun- 

 dant that they are subject to diseases; 

 the remedy is, of course, to thin them 

 out. 



The partridges, also, are bred wild in 

 the fields and very little hand-rearing is 

 ever attempted, and when it is done it 

 is simply to supplement the main work 

 of the wild-breeding keepers. 



There are two very good reasons why 

 grouse and partridges should be bred 

 wild in the fields. First, because this is 

 the cheapest method and, second, be- 

 cause it is the safest and best method. 



Should a lot of grouse or partridges 

 be hand-reared and brought to maturity 

 without any knowledge of their natural 

 enemies and the dangers of the fields, 

 they would suffer great losses when 

 turned down to shift for themselves. It 

 is evident that the feeding habits are 

 quite different when birds are fed by 

 hand in enclosures than they are when 

 birds are required to glean in the fields 

 and find their own living. 



Wild bred birds, widely distributed on 

 a shooting area, are to my mind far more 

 interesting than birds which are reared 

 in enclosures. It certainly is not neces- 

 sary to attempt to breed our grouse and 

 quail in captivity, and there can be no 

 doubt that this is the more expensive and 

 often the most difficult way of producing 

 sport, excepting, of course, where the 

 birds are reared and penned to be liber- 

 ated for the shooting. Should an at- 

 tempt be made to restock any area with 

 hand-reared quail and grouse I am in- 

 clined to believe the undertaking would 

 fail just as attempts to restock Ameri- 

 can farms with gray partridges and 

 hand-reared pheasants have failed. 

 When wild breeding partridges have 

 been procured and liberated, these, also, 

 often have disappeared because they 

 were too innocent to cope with our ver- 

 min or were turned down in too small 

 numbers to have any chance of becom- 



ing established. Sometimes when shoot- 

 ing is prohibited they get a foothold and 

 soon become abundant, but more often 

 they become extinct. 



Hand-rearing produces such large 

 numbers of ducks and pheasants quickly 

 that it would seem to be more attractive 

 than the attempts to establish wild breed- 

 ing birds, which undoubtedly are fai 

 more difficult to produce for shooting, 

 provided the original stock be hand- 

 reared. There are ways, however, of 

 restocking areas with wild breeding 

 American birds, and in fact vast num- 

 bers now are produced and shot on many 

 places in America where no coops or 

 hens or incubators are ever used and 

 where no artificial production of any 

 kind is attempted. 



The owner of a country place, in my 

 opinion, will have a far more interesting 

 shooting provided a good part of his 

 game be bred wild in the' fields, all over 

 the place, than he will if he simply has 

 an array of pens and inclosures and 

 coops where thousands of birds are 

 hand-reared. There can be no possible 

 objection to having some hand rearing 

 as a supplementary undertaking or to 

 supply a lot of birds for some sure and 

 easy shooting, but the places which en- 

 tertain me best when I visit them are the 

 places where there does not appear to 

 be much game until a ramble in the fields 

 with well trained dogs discloses its abun- 

 dance, and, I may add, its natural wild- 

 ness. I am pleased to observe that there 

 are many places in America where 

 American game has been made abun- 

 dant. 



State Departments and Game Breeders. 



The live state departments which are 

 trying to furnish some shooting on pub- 

 lic lands are good customers of the game 

 breeders, and are beginning to see that 

 it is highly desirable to have places 

 where they can secure ten thousand or 

 more eggs or birds at attractive prices. 

 Some of the commercial farms now sell 

 upwards of twenty-five thousand eggs in 

 a season. These, for the most part, are 

 common duck and pheasant eggs. 



