4 
NAVIGABLE RIVERS. 
The suspension of hunting on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri 
Rivers allows waterfowl a safe highway from their winter feeding 
grounds in the lower Mississippi Valley to their nesting grounds in 
Minnesota and the Dakotas and forms an extended refuge which is 
easily defined and can be generally recognized. 
ZONES. 
More than 50 separate seasons for migratory birds were provided 
under statutes in force in 1912. This multiplicity of regulations or 
zones to suit special localities has apparently had anything but a 
beneficial effect on the abundance of game. The effort to provide 
special seasons for each kind of game in each locality merely makes 
a chain of open seasons for migratory birds and allows the continued 
destruction of such birds from the beginning of the first season to 
the close of the last. It is believed that better results will follow 7 
the adoption of the few 7 est possible number of zones and so regu- 
lating the seasons in each as to include the time when each species is 
in the best condition or at the maximum of abundance during the 
autumn. For this reason the country has been divided into two 
zones, as nearly equal as possible, one to include the States in which 
migratory game birds breed or would breed if given reasonable pro- 
tection, the other the States in which comparatively few species breed, 
but in which many winter. Within these zones the seasons are fixed 
for the principal natural groups — waterfowl, rail, shore birds, and 
woodcock. In no case does the zone boundary cross a State line, and 
except in very rare cases the seasons are uniform throughout the 
States. Deviation from this rule leads ultimately to the recognition 
of a multiplicity of local seasons, which has done so much to retard 
game protection. 
SEASONS IN ZONE NO. 1. 
Apparently few changes have been made in existing hunting sea- 
sons in Zone No. 1, except in the elimination of spring shooting, and 
about half of the States in this zone now close the season on water- 
fowl by the middle of December or the first of January. In most 
States in this zone the hunting season begins on some date in Sep- 
tember, and these dates have generally been followed in the regula- 
tions. In two or three cases in which States have several different 
seasons for different counties it has been necessary to effect a compro- 
mise, either by adopting one season or the dates which most nearly 
conform with the seasons in adjoining States. A slight change in a 
few of the State laws would make it possible to eliminate most of the 
exceptions and apparent inequalities in the seasons. 
