THE GAME BREEDER 



83 



The regulation of this food industry 

 will make the State Game Departments 

 of great economic importance to all of 

 the people. They will represent the 

 farmers and the people who eat the food, 

 and the sportsmen who have been led to 

 believe they will be damaged by game 

 production soon will learn that an abund- 

 ance of game on the places where it is 

 produced will result in keeping the sea- 

 son open for all hands and will result 

 in the State Departments not being called 

 on to execute laws protecting game as 

 song birds. 



The demonstration on Long Island, 

 New York, where many game clubs 

 keep the shooting open for all hands, has 

 done much to convert those who were 

 opposed to game shooting clubs. When 

 an attempt was made to put the Long 

 Island quail on the song-bird list the 

 clubs put an end to the nonsense, and 

 anyone who wishes to shoot quail can do 

 so, since very little of the land is used 

 by the producers and a much larger area 

 is restocked yearly by the overflow from 

 club grounds. The dues in some of the 

 'clubs are as low as $10 per year. 



The Game Breeder is a good friend of 

 the State Departments which are endeav- 

 oring to preserve field sports. 



The Farmer's Chief Enemy. 

 By C. O. Le Compte. 



The record of the crow is like its 

 coat — about as black as black can be. It 

 may be that in the great plan of Nature, 

 sometime in the past, the crow served a 

 useful purpose — likewise the hawk and 

 the buzzard. Take the buzzard for ex- 

 ample. Once protected by human laws 

 everywhere because useful for removing 

 carrion, the stench of which offended the 

 nostrils of all animal life, it is now out- 

 lawed, because man realizes that it is 

 better to burn or bury the dead — leaving 

 no excuse for the existence of the 

 disease-carrying buzzard. So, in the be- 

 ginning, the mission of the crow, we 

 may conjecture, was to preserve some 

 equilibrium, some balance in the economy 

 of nature. It may be he was placed here 

 to hold in check the weed-seed and grain- 

 eating birds, because weeds were a fac- 



tor in the past in covering the waste 

 places of the earth and making them fer- 

 tile. However that may have been, there 

 seems to be no excuse for his existence 

 now since man, the agriculturist, seeds 

 the waste places to useful grains and 

 grasses, and needs the help of the insect- 

 ivorous birds. 



Probably no one has ever had a better 

 opportunity than I have had to observe 

 the crow and to study its life throughout 

 every period of its existence. I was reared 

 on a farm in a country where crows were 

 plentiful and on account of my health I 

 spent every hour of my life for years in 

 the open. When I was nine years old 

 my father bought me a gun, and one of 

 his first admonitions was : "Never shoot 

 a farmer's friend." Always the robin, 

 the meadow lark and the other insectiv- 

 orous birds were as safe near me as they 

 could have been anywhere. 



But, believe me, the crow was never 

 on our protected list, because we knew 

 from observation and experience that the 

 crow did a maximum of harm and a 

 minimum of good. Years ago I wrote: 

 "You see the crows hopping here and 

 there over the pastures and flitting along 

 the hedge-rows, and you may think they 

 are only looking for grain or insects, but 

 did you see behind them, as I so often 

 have seen, the trail of desolated bird 

 homes, you too would cherish in your 

 heart an undying hatred for these winged 

 devils of the fields and woods." 



About as omnivorous as anything 

 could well be, they eat dead animals and 

 are dreaded agents in the spreading of 

 diseases such as hog cholera, foot and 

 mouth disease and glanders. Insatiable 

 egg eaters, they scour the fields, hedge- 

 rows, thickets and orchards for nests of 

 birds and even for the eggs of the barn- 

 yard fowls. They displayed, I well re- 

 member, almost human intelligence in 

 watching our turkey hens in their nests, 

 and then waiting on some nearby fence 

 stake or dead tree top for the eggs. 

 They follow the wild ducks to their nest- 

 ing grounds in the far North to feast on 

 the eggs and young. Prairie chickens 

 suffer severely from their depredations 

 and the pheasant preserves are the fre- 



