forest and stream 
293 
Game Bird Conditions in Middle West 
Guernsey, Iowa, March 14, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream : 
If you have any idea that you would permit 
a farmer to express his ideas through the 
columns of Forest and Stream, I would like 
to make a few remarks relative to the new 
migratory game law, and why game birds are 
becoming more scarce. Having had several years’ 
experience as a market hunter, commencing thirty- 
three years ago, in Indiana and continuing dur¬ 
ing the hunting seasons for ten to twelve years, 
I have some conception of what a quarter sec¬ 
tion of land covered with game birds looks like. 
I lived in Indiana on a farm upon what we called 
the prairie country in White County, my father 
being a farmer and a good game marksman, nat¬ 
urally did considerable shooting for the market. 
Just four miles north of our home was where we 
would leave the prairie country and enter the 
timber and marsh country, and for some thirty 
to fifty miles north continued this unbroken marsh 
land and timber, including what is or was known as 
the Kankakee marshes and river. The geese and 
ducks would go from the marshes to the prairie 
to feed, commencing just at day break and con¬ 
tinue until about 10 A. M. and again at about 
3 P- M. and continue until dark. The flocks 
which went to the fields in the early day returned 
in the afternoon. 
These birds were so plentiful that at times I 
have seen as much as ten or twenty acres of 
ground covered so thickly that it would appear 
that there was no room for any more. When I 
was about nine years old (1880) my father 
bought one of the first breech loaders-that came 
to that community. He bought it of the famous 
Bogardus at one of his glass ball shoots at 
Logansport, Indiana. It was a Parker I well re¬ 
member, and the wonder of the shooting fratern¬ 
ity in the neighborhood. I have stood at the 
house and have seen father kill ten, fifteen or 
twenty geese flying across the fields coming from 
the marshes early in the morning in the course 
of one to two hours before breakfast. 
I used this gun later and for several years 
averaged two hundred, three hundred and some 
time four hundred geese and five hundred to 
twelve hundred ducks during the spring shoot¬ 
ing each year, and after duck shooting was over, 
we would shoot Golden Plover, and Jack, or 
English snipe for a period of thirty days. I gen¬ 
erally averaged one thousand plover and snipe 
every April. All the neighborhood was shooting 
for the market during all these years and we 
did not notice any perceptible diminishing in 
number or plentifulness of any kind of'game of 
this kind until we commenced to drain the land. 
Drain tile commenced to come in use and in 
later years the steam dredge ditcher was put in 
service and the marshes to the north ditched. 
The one marsh where we had been killing wagon 
loads of ducks, geese and snipe was drained, and 
I might mention too, that many times this old 
marsh, commonly known as the Blue Sea, has 
seen many a tired and worn out business and 
professional man from Chicago, Cincinnati, 
Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia 
and other cities spending a week or two with 
Phil Dobbins in his seat getting some rest and 
at the same time fighting the geese and ducks 
off, but as these marshes were slowly drained, 
so too was the shooting drained, and later when 
these former bird haunts were dry, there was 
very little game, but we would have a wet spring 
now and then and every marsh would be flooded. 
Then the ducks, geese and snipe were just as 
plentiful as before, and to this day when there 
is plenty of water there is very good duck shoot¬ 
ing as long as the water lasts. I have noticed 
that drainage all over the country has had a 
tendency to drive out our water fowl. I believe, 
notwithstanding the thousands we used to kill, 
drainage has been the most potent factor in 
driving the birds away. 
This part of Indiana which I mention was a 
great place for prairie chickens. There is no 
doubt that the gun has diminished the number 
of chickens, but when I attended the Grand 
American Handicap at Dayton, Ohio two years 
ago, I stopped to visit father a few days, who 
still lives in White County and he told me that 
there are still plenty of prairie chickens; he said 
the winter before he saw what he estimated at 
five hundred chickens sitting in the timber just 
north of the house at different times. Of course 
the cold weather causes them to bunch up. 
We often hear the question: Why are prairie 
chickens so scarce here in Iowa compared with 
years ago? And the usual answer is, they have 
all been killed, which in part only is true, but 
the principal reason I think is this: I have 
lived in this community for five years and prac¬ 
tically no chickens hatch here, (fifty-five miles 
southwest of Cedar Rapids) but every fall we 
see hundreds of chickens coming from the north 
and stay here all winter and in the spring they 
go back north, probably to northern Iowa and 
Minnesota and probably part of them as far as 
North Dakota. 
Why is it? The facts are that Iowa is so 
closely farmed and grazed that a prairie chicken 
has no place to make a nest. In this whole com¬ 
munity I have not seen even a fence row where 
there is enough grass for a chicken to make a 
nest. The stock clean out all the grasses right 
under the fences and the cross fences are farmed 
so close that there is no grass. Consequently 
the chickens have to go north to a wilder country 
to breed. The quail also are getting in the habit 
of migrating to a limited extent. During the 
spring and summer the quail sit on the garden 
fence near the barn and in fact we can at times 
count eight to twelve at one time saying: “Bob 
White and a little later there are many flocks of 
little quail which we generally take great pride 
in protecting, hut we have to hustle in the fall 
to have a little fun before they go a little south. 
I presume they go to Missouri and other warmer’ 
places during the winter. Last winter there were 
six quail wintered on this farm; during the fall 
we had four flocks of quail, but they all went 
south in December and this winter we have six 
quail again, presumably the same six of last 
winter. During the cold weather these six quail 
came to our hog lot to get fed, but within the 
next sixty days there will be pairs of quail every¬ 
where. 
Now the difference between the migratory 
birds and the native birds as viewed by the 
farmer. The average farmer takes pride in pro¬ 
tecting the native birds, including migratory song 
birds. When we run the mowing machine into 
a quail’s nest, not knowing it be there, we stop 
long enough to replace the nest, and fit it up in 
good shape and leave a pile of hay at the nest 
so that whoever of the family does the raking, 
after having been told about it, knows where 
that quail’s nest is and goes around it, and nine 
times out of ten the old mother quail will hatch 
the flock just the same as if it had not been 
disturbed, but as to geese, ducks and the vari¬ 
ous snipe family we take a different view. We 
are told by people who know and by writers 
who have studied the geese and duck family 
that their home is the whole earth, wherever 
they can get fed. We are protecting game birds 
that live the greater part of the year on the 
South American and other continents. 
I read a lady writer not long ago. (I have for¬ 
gotten the author’s name) who claimed to have 
followed the Golden Plover which abounds in 
this country during the spring, passing through 
here up the Mississippi River valley, lingering 
about 30 days. She says these plover and snipe 
after leaving Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa go to 
the extreme northern part of Canada to breed. 
When the young are ready to fly they start about 
September first or earlier and go to the eastern 
coast of Canada for a two weeks’ rest, then 
they start south along the coast of North 
America, flying in flocks sometimes miles long. 
They make another two -weeks’ stop somewhere 
on the Central American coast, thence they go 
to Argentine Republic where they remain all 
winter. After some reflection upon the question 
of protecting migratory birds we arrive at the 
conclusion that we are protecting the birds for 
foreign countries, the birds having no personal 
home. 
I have also noticed considerable comment by 
city writers on the “Pot Hunter.” If I under¬ 
stand just what the term means, I would suggest 
to those that think the “Pot Hunter,” is still a 
