FROM THE GAME FIELDS. 



The man who quits when he gets enough, with plenty of game still in sight, is a reai sportsman. 



SOME FLIMSY EXCUSES. 



In reply to your criticism in August 

 Recreation of the killing of 1,700 ducks 

 by our party last fall, I would say that 

 your ideas and mine, concerning the object 

 of trips for sport, do not agree. You ask 

 what legitimate use a man could make of 

 170 ducks during one hunting season, as 

 he could only eat 3 a day or 30 in 10 days. 

 I take from this that your idea of sport is 

 that a man should not hunt- ducks until he 

 is hungry and then not kill more than he 

 can eat. In other words he should hunt 

 ducks only to satisfy his stomach. This is 

 far from the fact in our case, as we had 

 supplied our larder with $250 worth of 

 stuff that our stomachs yearned for and 

 really had not thought much about ducks 

 as food. 



What did we do with the surplus of 

 ducks ? We gave many of them to the 

 pioneer settlers of this uncivilized country 

 who, as a rule, are not equipped for ob- 

 taining ducks for their food and with whom 

 the gaining of food in sufficient quantity is 

 quite a problem. Then we have in DulutH 

 a great many neighbors and some friends 

 who like ducks as food and who, owing to 

 circumstances over which they had no con- 

 trol, can not go hunting and, as our laws 

 do not allow the selling of game of any' 

 description, they would go hungry for game 

 if it was not for the generous disposition 

 of sportsmen who bring home their sur- 

 plus and divide it with their neighbors. 

 Such was the method of disposing of the 

 seemingly large amount of game killed or, 

 as you put it, slaughtered. 

 , I infer that you are of opinion that wild 

 ducks are becoming scarce. I do not be- 

 lieve such is the case. I have been hunt- 

 ing ducks 35 years and from my experi- 

 ence I believe they are just as plentiful as 

 they ever have been during this time. It is 

 true that in some localities they have dis- 

 appeared, but that is due to natural causes, 

 such as lack of food and the results of 

 civilization. They have changed their 

 haunts and their course of flight, but that 

 is all. I have never seen them more plenti- 

 ful in any country than they were last year 

 in Minnesota. 



The few ducks that are killed in their 

 flight each fall do not amount to much. 

 In my opinion man does not destroy the 

 life of 5 per cent, of the annual hatching. 

 Birds and beasts of prey are responsible for 

 10 times as much destruction of duck life 

 as man is. Another source of great destruc- 

 tion is the persistent shooting during the 

 winter months in our Atlantic and Southern 



sea coast countries, where game protec- 

 tion is unknown, or where laws are not 

 enforced. In those States they not only 

 shoot but they net birds by the thousands. 

 Then there are the Central and South Amer- 

 ican countries, without any game laws, 

 where our Northern bred ducks spend a 

 good portion of their winter. This I had 

 demonstrated to my satisfaction a few 

 winters ago during a trip to the West In- 

 dies and South America. A few years ago 

 I read an article in one of our magazines 

 in which a traveler in the Yukon country 

 described what he saw there. Alaska and 

 the Hudson Bay country are the chief 

 breeding grounds of our wild fowl. This 

 writer, whose name I have forgotten, said 

 one could walk miles through the marshes 

 of the Yukon stepping on goose nests at 

 every stride and that the air was continu- 

 ally filled with the flight of the alarmed 

 fowls. According to this authority com- 

 panies are incorporated and thousands of, 

 dollars invested in their plants for collect- 

 ing the eggs of these game birds for the 

 albumen of commerce. Herein lies the 

 greatest danger to our game fowls. Mil- 

 lions of eggs are destroyed by these com- 

 mercialists and there is where game pro- 

 tecting laws should be made to operate. 

 By legislation prohibiting such wanton de- 

 struction of the hatching grounds of the 

 ducks we could get to the bottom of the 

 trouble. Our Congress should be prevailed 

 on to enact laws that would put an end to 

 the business of these companies and it 

 would do more for the" propagation of our 

 wild ducks and geese than the combined 

 legislation of all the States of America. 

 W. H. Magie, M.D., Duluth, Minn. 



ANSWER. 



What Dr. Magie does not know about 

 wild ducks and geese would fill a bigger 

 book than Webster's International Diction- 

 ary. He hatches up that old fake story 

 about the collecting of ducks' eggs in 

 Alaska and making albumen from them. 

 The falsity of that story has been exposed 

 time and again by such naturalists as Drs. 

 Palmer and Fisher, of the Agricultural De- 

 partment, Mr. W. T. Hornaday, Director of 

 the New York Zoological Society, and half 

 a dozen others of almost equal prominence. 

 Still, Dr. Magie comes up and says that 

 "Companies are incorporated and thousands 

 of dollars invested in their plants for col- 

 lecting the eggs of these game birds for 

 the albumen of commerce. . . . Millions 

 of eggs are destroyed by these commercial- 

 ists." 



36 



