THE GAME BREEDER 



81 



grass) he lies like a rock, and we often 

 find them in matted thickets of roses, 

 elders, etc. 



Of course, he is large and compara- 

 tively easy to hit in the open, but no 

 more so than quail which give more easy 

 shots in the open, more difficult ones in 

 the brush, than other game birds. Fin- 

 ally, the pheasant, does not winter-kill 

 if he has enough to eat, and he is a very 

 good bird on the table. In Massachu- 

 etts he seems to lengthen out the season 

 providing some sport before and after 



partridges, woodcock and quail can be 

 killed. On the whole he seems to me 

 well worth while on the right ground. 

 But to raise pheasants where the range 

 is all pasture fields and bare wood is a 

 waste of time and money, as they won't 

 stay there."* 



*The Spratts Book (25 cents) on Pheasant 

 Breeding referred to is published by The 

 Spratts Patent, Ltd., Newark, New Jersey, 

 whose advertisement appear in the magazine. 

 The use of maggots is advised in the book but 

 where insects are plentiful they are the best 

 food for young birds in connection with the 

 foods made by the Spratts. 



NOTES FROM THE GAME FARMS AND PRESERVES. 



The Busy Season. 



The egg market continues excellent. 

 The prices remain up and our advertisers 

 are reporting good results. All game 

 breeders are so busy at this season that 

 we find it diffiult to get them to write 

 the short stories about their experiences 

 which we are sure our readers want. 

 Some good things are promised, how- 

 ever, and we hope many readers will get 

 live quail prizes so that they may be 

 able to rear some personally owned quail 

 not subject to "song-bird nonsense." We 

 sometimes think it would be a good plan 

 for the breeders to use the black 

 throated bob white and the spotted 

 mearns quail so that there would be no 

 doubt about who owned the quail if a 

 big bag should be made in prohibition 

 states. We are quite sure the laws pro- 

 tecting state game are not intended to 

 apply to game produced by the thousands 

 by individual industry. The only trouble 

 is to prove the ownership when the birds 

 look exactly alike. The right way, of 

 course, is to consider all birds on a game 

 farm as owned by the farmer until they 

 stray and again become a part of the 

 game said to be owned by the public 

 because no one has captured it or taken 

 an interest in it. 



Contract Rearing. 



In the older countries many game birds 

 are reared by contract and delivered to 

 the preserve owners and shooting syndi- 



cates when full grown. In America 

 some of the smaller breeders now rear 

 some birds by contract and often birds 

 are sold by small breeders to our larger 

 advertisers. 



Mr. Henry M. Brigham made a valu- 

 able suggestion in the May number of 

 The Game Breeder, that the laws should 

 be amended so that game farms and clubs, 

 with expensive equipment where many 

 thousands of game birds are produced 

 annually, could sell live game to small 

 clubs for shooting purposes. As a mat- 

 ter of fact many quail clubs, which have 

 no expensive equipment for rearing 

 pheasants and ducks often do buy a 

 few of the hand-reared birds and liberate 

 and shoot them. We heard of such an 

 order to one of our advertisers only a 

 few days ago. They proceed, no doubt, 

 on the theory that laws protecting wild 

 or state game surely are not intended to 

 apply to game produced by industry and 

 purchased in good faith either as food 

 or to improve the shooting. Laws pro- 

 hibiting the sale and transportation of 

 live game became dead letter laws in 

 many states when producers began 

 shipping the game they produced and 

 game officers with common sense soon 

 realized that they should not seize and 

 confiscate private property under laws 

 enacted to protect wild game. 



The better way always is to have the 

 laws amended and not to have them pass 

 into a state of "innocuous desuetude." 



