THE GAME BREEDER 



179 



Duck Eggs. 



Since freshly trapped ducks often are 

 too wild to lay eggs the first season, read- 

 ers who wish to breed teal, pintails, gad- 

 walls and other species besides the mal- 

 lards are advised to purchase the eggs of 

 these species. Although it is legal to 

 take eggs for breeding purposes, under 

 permits issued by the b. S. Biological 

 Survey, comparatively few game breed- 

 ers in the United States are equipped to 

 gather eggs and in fact most of the wild 

 ducks breed so far north that no eggs 

 can be gathered in many of the state's. 



Our Minnesota and Dakota readers 

 and readers in all of the northern states 

 are advised to take out permits and to 

 gather some eggs for breeding purposes 

 and for sale to other breeders who hold 

 permits. They surely can get excellent 

 prices for wild duck eggs if they will ad- 

 vertise them in The Game Breeder. 



Teal and Other Shoal Water Ducks. 



Any breeder who will establish a flock 

 of teal, gadwalls, pintails and other river 

 ducks that will breed under control in 

 protected marshes will have a valuable 

 property \since the demand for these 

 ducks, which are tame enough to lay 

 eggs, is great and it surely will increase 

 since the new clubs and preserve own- 

 ers are aware that it is desirable to have 

 other ducks besides the common mal- 

 lards. 



Teal are splendid ducks both for sport 

 and for food and they are regarded by 

 many sportsmen as the best ducks we 

 have. 



Foxes and Nests. 



In the counties in England where fox 

 hunting is a popular sport and where 

 foxes are preserved the game keeper has 

 great difficulty in protecting his nests. 

 In The Game Keeper's note book we are 

 told that, "The keeper who must pre- 

 serve game and foxes takes steps to over- 

 come the scent of his birds. He sprin- 

 kles the neighborhood of all nests he 

 can find with some ill-smelling fluid. 

 But the foulest or strongest scent will 

 not save a bird when a fox has once seen 

 her. Fortunately he is not clever enough 



to know a new trap from an old one, nor 

 a sound from a broken one, and the 

 keeper finds at nesting time a good use 

 for his disused traps, placing them about 

 birds setting in dangerous spots. Any- 

 thing in the shape of scrap iron the fox 

 suspects ; anything unusual about a nest, 

 such as a piece of newspaper or a bush 

 nearby, will arouse his fears, and pos- 

 sibly save a bird's life. But as rooks 

 learn to treat scarecrows with contempt, 

 so foxes learn to have no fear for harm- 

 less terrors, and the keeper rings the 

 changes on all the fox-alarming devices 

 which ingenuity can suggest." 



Fox Hounds on the Preserve. 



In America where the preserves are 

 widely separated the keeper must con- 

 tend with the foxes which will come 

 to him from all four sides of his 

 ground and an abundance of game surely 

 will attract the foxes. It is a good plan 

 to keep a brace or more of fox hounds 

 and to let them run the foxes often. It 

 is easy to discover the route taken by a 

 fox when pursued and he will repeated- 

 ly run over the same course. A few guns 

 stationed on the line of his flight can 

 get an easy shot which will put an end 

 to the fox. 



Foxes are very difficult to trap but 

 traps adroitly set in paths where the 

 foxes travel will take some of them and 

 Owen Jones suggests that a cat buried 

 in a likely place where the fox must 

 step on the trap in order to approach it 

 makes a good bait. . 



Lures and Charms. 



To draw rats into his traps the keeper 

 sprinkles them with the sweet-scented 

 oil of rhodium and oil of aniseed. To 

 attract 'cats he uses tincture of valerian ; 

 the essences in the root of that plant 

 having so great a charm for cats that it 

 will draw them from far and near. To 

 attract stoats and weasels he uses oil 

 of musk. To entice a fox a dead cat is 

 one of the best lures and many a fox, to 

 our knowledge, has owed fts death to an 

 over-keenness in unearthing a cat that 



