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WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD GAME REFUGE 

It is a common error that national, state and 
municipal forests are per se good game refuges. 
President John B. Burnham of the American Game 
Protective Association points out, that this is not 
necessarily true. In order to serve any good pur- 
pose as game refuges forests must be attractive to 
wild animal and bird life. They must contain food 
as well as shelter. 
The tendency in management of public forests is 
to plant and promote the growth only of such trees 
as will in time make merchantable timber, with no 
thought of such other free growth, shrubbery and 
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other plant life as is necessary to an attractive home 
for birds and animals. 
Game cannot live without food. “The reason,” 
says Mr. Burnham, “why many game refuges are 
absolutely worthless (aside from the question of 
vermin control) is that, to put it figuratively, they 
provide only a safe house, with no kitchen and no 
order in the grocery store. You cannot expect wild 
animals and birds to flock to foodless refuges just 
because they are planted with commercially at- 
tractive trees. Of the conifers, hemlock, white cedar 
and balsam, when small, furnish food for deer and 
hares in the Winter season. Pine has practically no 
food value and spruce none whatever. In summer 
even deer and rabbits will find nothing they can eat 
in a typically planted forest.” 
Mr. Burnham points out that for every coniferous 
tree planted there should be a number of deciduous 
trees—including fruit and nut-bearing trees. Game 
wants sunlight, too, and plenty of it. So openings 
and gaps in the forest must be left which will en- 
courage undergrowth. At least half of the forest 
area should be left unoccupied by commercial trees 
if it is to be a good game refuge. 
Quoting again from Mr. Burnham: “We should 
let Mother Nature have something to say as to what 
happens on this 50 per cent of so-called wasteland. 
There is nothing more valuable for our primary ob- 
ject than weeds and berry briars, sumachs, wild 
apples and grapes, barberries and thorn apples, and 
OWOSSO AOSHI 
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