134 



THE GAME BREEDER 



Farm. The wealthy State of California its 

 sire, an army of conservationists the land 

 over, its sponsors, but also it was damned by 

 every fish enthusiast in the state and this 

 proved its undoing, helped as the fisher peo- 

 ple were by many false economists who 

 grudged a few thousand dollars taken from 

 the money received for gunning licenses and 

 used for the Farm's support. Money which 

 otherwise would have been available for the 

 planting of salmon and trout fry in places 

 where the gulls, the crows, the irrigation 

 ditches and the drought of a long dry season 

 would make way with them by wholesale, all 

 of which last mattered little to the politicians 

 who were pulling trje wires because while their 

 constituents saw the fish fry planted, few 

 kept track as to whether they lived or died 

 and the votes came when and where they were 

 needed. 



Various Opinions. 



Discussing the varied opinions as to 

 what should be done, Mr. Martin says: 



One thought it bad policy to raise wild 

 turkeys. Perhaps it was, the kind of "wild" 

 turkeys the experiment was being tried with. 

 Into the discard they went, but not until a few 

 lean coyotes had grown fat on the square 

 meals those foolish birds supplied them, and 

 in places the ranchers were able bodied allies 

 of the coyotes. 



"Hungarian partridges?" said an employee 

 of the Commission. "This isn't Hungary if 

 these birds are," and they followed the 

 turkeys. 



Wild Ducks. 



Then came the ducks. This looked like 

 getting down to business. Some were grabbed 

 from the wild, mostly netted around Lake 

 Merritt in Oakland or from the banks of the 

 shallow lakes down Fresno way. These last 

 nearly all cinnamon teal. Then nests were 

 robbed of their eggs in the nearby Alvarado 

 marsh and the supply of ducks was run up 

 from a single pair to at one time about 600. 



So far, so good, but they would not lay. 

 Early in the game the mallards and a few 

 teal started nobly and then backslid. Wood 

 ducks, prolific layers and good breeders in 

 the_ East, one and all became confirmed old 

 maids. The other varieties acted like they 

 had never seen an egg and didn't know what 

 the word nest meant. Yet a local rancher but 

 a few miles from the state farm "borrowed" 

 a few mallard eggs from a nest in the wild; 

 hired an old red hen to incubate them and 

 started business this year with two ducks and 

 a drake. 



While the State Farm with a flock number- 

 ing several hundred was doing nothing — I do 

 not believe that one of the scattering few that 

 were hatched lived to reach maturity— this 

 old man raised a flock of a dozen and sold 



them at a fair profit. Yet the only pond he 

 had was a tin pan replenished night and morn- 

 ing with pure water, which the ducks shared 

 with the barnyard fowl. 



Too Much Publicity. 



Mr. Martin thinks that carting the 

 game birds all over the state for exhi- 

 bition purposes was bad and that the 

 location of the duck pond also was bad. 

 A public highway ran just outside of the 

 duck pond fence. There was a constant 

 tooting of horns and the head lights 

 shone on the pond. "While the ducks 

 didn't say so, it is certain they didn't 

 like the auto parade a little bit. This 

 fire business is something no wild bird 

 or animal ever gets used to." 



Private Breeders Succeed. 



These and like things did much to keep the 

 waterfowl from increasing, multiplying and 

 replenishing the land. 



Macomber of Picones has a game farm in 

 his own right and on his own land. He per- 

 mits none of the annoyances the state birds 

 were subject to nor does he stint on expenses. 

 He keeps in all several thousand ducks, geese, 

 pheasants, quail, partridges and I believe tur- 

 keys, just to see them around. 



With private breeders all game has done 

 well. Pheasants in particular have proved 

 very profitable. It is hardly complimentary to 

 the fish and game commission that they have 

 made a failure while every other raiser of 

 game, the rancher with his three ducks and 

 dishpan pond, Macomber with his thousands 

 of birds, the schoolboy wiith his pair of quail, 

 have succeeded. Such alas is the case, and 

 now our only hope is in a close season cover- 

 ing a term of years. 



The Wrong Remedy. 



Mr. Martin well says : 



Those same people, though, are sincere in 

 their desire to believe that game is on the 

 increase, but fail to realize that thinking a 

 thing is so does not make it so. "None so 

 blind as those who won't see," and those who 

 say that any sort of feathered game in Cali- 

 fornia is even holding its own are fit for a 

 post-graduate course at any institution for 

 people who have lost their vision. 



We are quite sure that the fashionable 

 remedy — a closed season — is not the 

 right one, unless the law excepts indus- 

 trious private breeders who are far more 

 numerous in California than most people 

 think they are. 



