person who buys a Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp; this postage-paid 
card is to be filled out and mailed. The card requests the stamp 
buyer's name and address, the number of stamps bought, the purpose 
of purchase (hunting, stamp collecting, or resale), and the names 
of junior hunters (under 16) living in the same household who are 
expected to hunt during the current season. Hunters who mail these 
cards as requested and junior hunters listed on the cards are sent. 
the questionnaire. 
Estimates of total kill are made on the basis of hunter responses 
and knowledge of the sales volume of stamps by State. In order for 
kill estimates to be available by early August it is necessary to use 
the July through March summaries of stamp sales supplied by the Post 
Office Department, but these are substantially the same as the final 
figures that are available later. 
Hunters are asked to record total bag (by ducks, geese, and 
coots) and total number of trips; most respondents give this informa- 
tion. They also are asked to give more detailed information on 
species composition, and to record on a calendar the number of days 
they hunt and the number of waterfowl they bag in the different 
parts of the season, Not all hunters supply this additional informa- 
tion and therefore fewer data are available for estimating species 
composition, seasonal distribution of the kill, and seasonal partici- 
pation in hunting than for estimating the total bag and total hunting 
activity for the season. As used in the tables, percentage of hunters 
participating during any given period is the percentage of reporting 
hunters who listed one or more trips during that period. 
The seasonal distribution of the kill is estimated on a slightly 
different basis for 1960-61, as compared with the previous season. 
In 1959-60 the hunters were asked to list on the calendar only ducks 
killed. It was evident, however, that many of them were in fact 
recording all waterfowl, for the totals on their calendars exceeded 
the total number of ducks they recorded in another part of the question- 
naire, For the 1959-60 season, reports that showed a total kill of 
coots plus geese greater than the total kill of ducks were eliminated 
from the tabulation of seasonal kill (but not from the tabulation of 
total kill). To improve consistency of response, the wording in the 
questionnaire was changed in 1960-61, so that hunters were asked to 
list on the calendar all waterfowl killed. Tabulation of data, how- 
ever, was restricted to reports of kill and activity during the duck 
hunting season. Thus, the seasonal kill data listed for each flyway 
apply to all waterfowl killed during the duck hunting season, not 
just to ducks killed. Probably the information fairly well represents 
the duck kill alone, however, because in most areas ducks predominate 
in the bag. 
