THE GAME BREEDER 



85 



They are to be sure an escape from the 

 old Wm. C. Whitney game preserve on 

 October mountain, near Lenox. Four 

 got loose ten years ago. One was shot, 

 for which the hunters were fined $250 

 apiece. Since then the remaining three 

 have roamed in comparative safety and 

 increased their tribe. Automobile tour- 

 ists do not see them, but they are here. 



More surprising than the moose, how- 

 ever, was the animal shot by the game- 

 keeper for the New Marlboro Game As- 

 sociation (composed of a group of New 

 Yorkers who own 14,000 acres of wild 

 country east of Great Barrington) on 

 the second day of December, 1918. This 

 animal had got into the inclosure where 

 the wild geese were penned and had 

 killed and was carrying off a fifteen- 

 pound goose. Cornered in a fence he 

 could not jump the animal turned sav- 

 agely on the gamekeeper, who gave it 

 both barrels of his shotgun, almost blow- 

 ing its head off. It was a gray or tim- 

 ber wolf. 



I don't know how long it is since a 

 timber wolf was shot in Massachusetts, 

 but I don't remember hearing of such a 

 case. Certainly the skin of this animal 

 stretched and dryed on the barn door 

 was the first one I ever saw east of the 

 Michigan pine plains. It was a big 

 fellow, too, an inch or two over the 

 standard, 4 feet 9 inches. When a snow- 

 shoe tramp in the beautiful Berkshires 

 includes the possibility of crossing the 

 track of a bull moose and connecting up 

 with a timber wolf, things are lapsing 

 back a century ! 



What It Costs. 



Often we have inquiries as to what it 

 costs to breed a wild duck, pheasant, 

 quail, etc. Since these inquiries keep 

 coming we can not answer all of them by 

 writing long letters. In fact we do not 

 know the cost in the particular place 

 from which many letters come. 



It costs much more to rear a duck, 

 for example, on a small place where there 

 are no natural foods than it does on a 

 larger place where natural foods are 

 abundant either on the place or in the 

 immediate vicinity. Ducks will fly out 



to feed and return to places where they 

 are properly looked after. It will prob- 

 ably cost as much to feed a duck ex- 

 clusively on purchased corn throughout 

 the year as the duck is worth, but if 

 many eggs are sold these should pay the 

 food bill. We know places where ducks 

 have been wintered with very little arti- 

 ficial feeding, almost none in some cases. 

 The cheapest kind of foods often are 

 waste products grown on the place, tur- 

 nips, potatoes and other vegetables not 

 suitable for the market. 



The cost of a hand-reared pheasant 

 varies in different places and always it 

 is higher than the cost of a wild-bred 

 pheasant which obtains much of its food 

 in field and wood. Hand-reared quail 

 cost more than wild-bred quail, the last 

 named in some places cost nothing after 

 suitable wild foods and covers have been 

 planted, excepting the cost of protecting 

 the birds from their natural enemies. 



In the northern states a little food in 

 winter is desirable. In the southern 

 states this is not necessary except on 

 places where a very large number of 

 quail are bred and a large breeding stock 

 is left after the shooting. 



Some of the commercial game farms 

 and some of the game clubs and owners 

 of country places are beginning to keep 

 accounts of the cost and we hope some 

 of our readers who do this will send us 

 letters telling just what it costs to rear 

 a given number of birds. We all know 

 the good prices obtained for birds and 

 eggs. 



Undoubtedly some of the commercial 

 game farms keep the cost of rearing low- 

 er than such costs are on private pre- 

 serves and even on state game farms. 

 The last named purchase many birds and 

 eggs ; some of the clubs now have birds 

 reared by contract. 



Not Otherwise. 



It is not a difficult matter to hand- 

 rear thousands of pheasants, quail and 

 wild ducks on comparatively small rear- 

 ing fields. It often is found very diffi- 

 cult to introduce and establish hand- 

 reared birds all over a country place with 



(Continued on page 88) 



