"ebruary, 1923 
I his fellow, but rather a bloody pirate, 
/hose sole aim in life seems to be in 
ieing with the dark deeds of falcon 
ind fox, weasel and mink. 
This is the season for all hawks in 
act, the time of year when great havoc 
5 done our game. The cooper’s and 
harp-shinned hawks, which are among 
he worst, are to be found in all game 
overs, darting and hovering and flash- 
ng ceaselessly throughout the day, 
loing vast destruction and great harm 
lot only to upland game, but also to 
I lomcstic fowl. The peregrine falcon or 
luck hawk (the bird principally used by 
alconers of medieval times, because of 
lis unerring swiftness) will now desert 
he waterways to hunt on land. Bob- 
vhite and pheasant are on his menu as 
veil as poultry and pigeons. 
The great red-shouldered, red-tailed 
md rough-legged hawks, ordinarily well 
tehaved gentlemen who confine their 
;fforts chiefly to mice, moles and shrews 
luring the warm months, must now 
/ary their diet to suit seasonal changes; 
herefore, they must turn game hunters, 
vhether they choose to or not. 
Let us turn back now to the ice-bound 
nllsides with the bare white birches, 
eading up to the grouse cover at the far 
:nd, and see what Nimrod might have 
seen had he been there. Along the 
stonewall leading up over yonder rocky 
hillside are a series of strange tracks 
upon the crusted snow. Two marks, 
barely separated by the spread of a 
man’s thumb and little finger; two feet 
away, the same thing, and beyond, al¬ 
ways at the same interval, the tracks 
lead to the brush-covered base of a large 
beech tree. The singular thing about 
this trail is that the creature that made 
it must have jumped at a slight side 
angle to the direction in which he was 
traveling, which is precisely what he 
did for the tracks are those of a weasel, 
the most bloodthirsty little wretch of all 
the forest creatures, and once his trail 
marks are studied, they will never be 
forgotten, for they are like no others, 
with exception of those of his big cousin, 
the mink. 
At the foot of the beech tree is a sight 
that is far from being a pleasant one. 
Here are signs of a brief struggle, twigs 
and leaves and snow brushed aside in 
wild disorder, large drops of blood and 
some scattered feathers, and a few feet 
beyond lies a splendid grouse, scarcely 
touched, except for the matted, bloody 
feathers about its throat. The greatest 
tragedy is that the weasel is a wanton 
killer; he will leave his victim still 
warm, sucking only a few drops of blood 
and go to seek fresh fields wherein to 
satisfy his lust for killing. 
That trail of neat, small footprints so 
precisely placed one after the other, 
leading down the valley into the alder 
swamps, was made by a fox. He well 
knows where the grouse and pheasants 
stay in severe weather. The end of that 
trail too, might reveal the end of some 
splendid game bird; a ring of feathers 
in the snow with a few scattered bones 
may be all that is left of a fine pheasant 
—for a fox eats what he kills. 
55 
I F one seeks diligently, he may find 
1 tragedy in another form, a whole 
covey of quail starved and frozen to 
death by the severe weather. There 
is an old adage to the effect that “a 
quail with a full crop never freezes.” 
Nothing is truer than this, for Bob- 
white is well equipped by nature to 
withstand cold, provided he has the 
necessary food to supply him with 
energy and warmth. The chief reason 
that we have a lack of 
quail shooting in the 
\ 
North is, of course, the 
severe winters. There 
are at least two 
months, January and 
February, when, due to 
snow, ice and sleet, it is 
practically impossible for 
Bob-white to find adequate 
food on account of the fact 
that he is a ground feeder 
and does not “bud” on pop¬ 
lars and other trees as does 
the ruffed grouse. During 
this period, too, he becomes 
an easy victim to vermin of 
all sorts, because the wits of 
predatory animals are sharp¬ 
ened in direct ratio to the 
severity of the weather. 
Pheasants are apt to suc¬ 
cumb to lack of food because 
they also are ground feed¬ 
ers, and, spending most of 
their time on the ground as 
they do, are prone to the at¬ 
tacks of foxes, weasels and hawks. 
If Nimrod were as much naturalist as 
he is sportsman, he could do a lot to in¬ 
crease the number of game birds in his 
own territory, thereby furnishing better 
sport for himself and his fellow hunters. 
There is a lot of work to be done after 
the last barrel is fired over the dog’s 
back at the end of the season, and this 
work will be a two-fold source of joy 
if entered into in the right spirit; first, 
it will give the one doing it that deeply 
felt feeling of satisfaction that comes 
with doing a good deed, and second, it 
will furnish one with a fund of knowl¬ 
edge concerning the winter woods and 
covers that cannot be gleaned from the 
pages of a book, no matter how learned 
the writer may be. What better sight 
than that of a cock grouse thundering 
out of a snow-covered brush pile, scat¬ 
tering the powdery flakes in all direc¬ 
tions in his haste to be off ? Or a flock 
of red polls and snow buntings flying 
over each other as they feed in a weedy 
field ? Sometimes one sees a brilliant 
cardinal grosbeak in a sheltered clump 
of hemlocks, looking for all the world 
like a live, glowing coal! 
This, then, is an appeal to you follow¬ 
ers of dog and gun who have leisure 
time on your hands during the winter 
months. Instead of sitting around the 
fire and dreaming about spring peepers 
and arbutus and dark trout pools, this 
coming cold season, why not try this: 
Throw a couple of bags of buckwheat, 
cracked corn, millet, wheat, chicken feed 
or almost any kind of grain into the car, 
take your heaviest 12 -bore and some 
it 
shells loaded with 6 ’s and 4’s and plenty 
of powder, and drive to your covers. 
Put the feed out in several places where 
you know the birds will find it, and then 
devote the rest of your time to hawks 
and crows, take along a crow call and 
perhaps a half dozen crow decoys, al¬ 
though the latter are not essential. You 
are sure to get some shots, and beside 
having the pleasure of shooting, you will 
have the satisfaction of knowing that 
you are doing the game birds a real 
benefit. Crows destroy vast quantities 
of pheasant, grouse and quail eggs 
every nesting season, and therefore 
every crow put out of the way means a 
better chance for game next season. 
The necessity of controlling hawks is 
obvious, and it is not at all impossible 
for a man to kill a dozen or more each 
winter. Just a word about feeding—be 
sure to put the . grain under brush that 
is thick enough to shelter feeding birds 
from the attack of rapacious birds and 
yet not dense enough to shelter a 
weasel, skunk or fox. Never put feed 
in the midst of dense cover or near rock 
piles or stone walls. Why not get the 
bunch together some evening this win¬ 
ter and talk it over? Try to spread it 
around as much as possible and get all 
the sportsmen in your crowd interested. 
This is a fine subject to bring up at the 
next meeting of your local Fish and 
Game Association. Winter is a good 
time to get acquainted with new farm¬ 
ers and to renew acquaintances with the 
old ones over whose land you shoot in 
the fall. A few remarks dropped to the 
(Continued on page 86 ) 
