44 



THE GAME BREEDER 



their plans as business men. Unless ligent effort be made to remedy the con- 

 some of these recommendations are fob ditions, importations should be prohib- 

 lowed and an earnest, sincere and intel- ited. 



A NEW FOOD INDUSTRY, 



(We wonder if our readers can guess who wrote this article for the Independent.) 



The United States Congress has just 

 enacted a law which promises to be 

 of great economic importance to all of 

 the people. I believe, if this law can 

 be properly executed, every one soon 

 can obtain all the wild ducks he can 

 possibly eat at prices surprisingly small. 



The law referred to is known as the 

 Migratory Bird Law. This gives the 

 Secretary of Agriculture the power to 

 make regulations governing the taking of 

 wild ducks, geese, woodcock, snipe and 

 the other edible migrants. Section 12 

 of the new law is important, since it 

 provides that nothing in the law shall 

 be construed to prevent the breeding of 

 game on game farms and preserves and 

 the sale of the game so bred for the 

 purpose of increasing the food supply. 

 In this section a rapidly growing food 

 producing industry is recognized and 

 protected by the Congress. 



It cannot be denied that in America 

 a prejudice has existed against the sale 

 of game. This prejudice was due in a 

 measure to the opinion of people inter- 

 ested in birds that the sale of game was 

 a great inducement to the killing of 

 game. The opinion seemed to be well 

 founded. A big mistake, however, was 

 made in legislating upon this subject 

 when the fact was overlooked that the 

 stopping of the sale of the food must 

 necessarily put an end to the produc- 

 tion of the food. The wrongs and hard- 

 ships created by laws regulating sport 

 were discussed for the first time in an 

 article in The Independent, which was 

 followed, at the request of the editor, 

 by a series of articles elaborating the 

 subject. Two of the articles were de- 

 voted to the subject of popular preju- 

 dice which, here as elsewhere, seems to 

 be wrong. 



After the appearance of these articles 

 many States soon enacted laws permit- 

 ting and regulating the production of 

 wild ducks and certain other species of 

 game and the markets undoubtedly 

 would be full of wild ducks and some 

 other game birds today provided the 

 same encouragement could have been 

 given to game breeding by State and 

 national officers which has been given to 

 the producers of other new foods. One 

 big difficulty which remained was that 

 the law permitting game breeding did 

 not permit the taking of wild birds for 

 breeding stock and eggs to be used for 

 propagation on the game farms and pre- 

 serves. 



The laws in many States, absurd as it 

 may seem, Only permitted the breeding 

 for profit of one or two species of ducks 

 and the imported pheasants, which least 

 need the breeders' attention because they 

 are in no danger of extinction. 



Hundreds of thousands of pheasants 

 and mallards are now produced an- 

 nually and the numbers are increasing 

 rapidly since people are beginning to 

 learn that it is more profitable to have 

 birds whose eggs sell for $25 per hun- 

 dred in large lots than it is to have birds 

 whose eggs sell for from $3 to $5 per 

 hundred. The wild ducks and the 

 pheasants when sold alive bring better 

 prices than poultry and the birds can 

 be reared by those who know how, in an 

 inexpensive manner. In safe fields and 

 marshes, for example, they can be 

 reared in a semi-wild state and will pro- 

 cure much of their food from the land 

 and water, one meal a day being amply 

 sufficient to hold them until the harvest 

 time or shooting time. A few laws hu- 

 morously require the game to be killed 

 "otherwise than by shooting." Darwin 



