138 



THE GAME BREEDER 



worse than the fastest pheasant before 

 dogs, and on this account the handsome 

 Gambels are not considered nearly so de- 

 sirable for sport as the Bob Whites are. 



Elliot's descriptions of the behavior of 

 this quail is not overdrawn. He says : 

 ''From my experience, however, in hunt- 

 ing them, I should say if they had any 

 choice of locality it lay between dense 

 clumps, matted with vines and bristling 

 thorns, into and through which nothing 

 living could penetrate save themselves, 

 or mountainsides that ascend in a direct 

 line and which are covered with jagged 

 stones and slippery boulders, over which 

 the light-footed birds pass without effort, 

 stopping occasionally to look down and 

 jeer at the struggling, panting mortal be- 

 low who is striving to conquer the 

 ascent, and when the pursuer had arrived 

 at the summit, the quail, it would be dis- 

 covered, had run to the edge of another 

 canyon, into which they flew at the first 

 appearance of the sportsman, and began 

 the ascent from below on the opposite 

 side, leaving the hunter gazing at them 

 across the great gulf that rolled between. 

 If there is another species of game bird 

 more tantalizing and vexatious in its 

 manners, and more utterly lost to all the 

 finer feelings that should compel it to 

 comform to the recognized rules that 

 govern field sports, I happily do not 

 know of it, and have no wish to meet 

 with it, if existing." 



It is quite evident that the Gambel's 

 quail need some training before they will 

 lie well to dogs and if the bob whites can 

 be induced to adopt them and rear the 

 young they may "learn to conform to the 

 recognized rules governing sport.'' 



Of course a surer way of performing 

 this experiment would be to place the 

 Gambel's eggs under bob white hens and 

 let them hatch the eggs and rear the 

 young in protected gardens, made safe 

 and attractive. Unfortunately, however, 

 we had a large number of cock bob whites 

 this year and only one hen. This hen 

 had been mated with a cock last year and 

 we let her have the same mate this sea- 

 son. After filling her nest with eggs the 

 hen suddenly died, but the cock at once 

 took her place on the nest and I saw him 



daily, when I visited him, sitting as 

 nicely as the best quail hen ever did. 

 He no doubt will hatch and rear a fine 

 brood. 



Next in importance to improving the 

 sporting manners of the Gambels is the 

 question of their settling down and 

 adopting a new home entirely different 

 in its vegetation and appearance from 

 the native habitat of the birds. Since the 

 old birds seem to thrive on the foods pro- 

 vided for them and they no doubt will 

 find many more insects and seeds when 

 liberated than they have in the pens, it 

 would seem that the food question will 

 not stand in the way of introducing and 

 establishing the birds on Long Island, N. 

 Y. The question of the exterminating 

 effect of professional wild lifers was set- 

 tled, we hope forever, when the notable 

 "hearing" was pulled off before New 

 York's intelligent State official who re- 

 fused to close Long Island to the quail 

 producers. There are other game ene- 

 mies, however, which will require atten- 

 tion : The house cat, the fox, the hawks, 

 owls, snakes, skunks and many others are 

 known to occur on the ground used for 

 the experiment, but there are two ways 

 of fencing- against these and making the 

 ground safe for the Gambels. The birds, 

 as Dr. Elliot has indicated, know a good 

 briar patch when they see one. Long 

 Island produces a cat briar that in our 

 opinion is as vermin proof as any New 

 Mexico or Arizona jungle. A patch of 

 these briars bordered with blackberry 

 and wild rose should make as safe a 

 retreat as any Gambel's quail would ask 

 for if it could make its cover wants 

 known. Traps and the gun already have 

 accounted for some house cats, skunks, 

 crows and other enemies. 



The birds are known to be abundant 

 near water holes and streams and evi- 

 dently they need water. They also re- 

 quire dusting places which easily are 

 made and grit. If when supplied with 

 an abundance of suitable Cover, food, 

 water, grit and dusting places, a good 

 number of Gambel's quail turned down 

 in company do not thrive we shall be 

 inclined to think they are hard to please 

 and that possibly there is something 



