foc oA UDURON, BULLETIN 7 

Protests Crow Extermination 
From the New Jersey Audubon Society 
HE New Jersey Audubon Society, joining with many other 
organizations and individuals, is making a vigorous protest 
against the International Crow Shoot being conducted by Du 
Pont De Nemours and Co. Characterizing the crow shoot as merely 
a thinly veiled method of the Du Pont director of sales to increase 
business by a most ill advised and deplorable means, and asserting that, 
though designated by its author as “‘crow control,” its-actual effect, if 
successful, would be much more nearly extermination, the statement of 
the Society denounces the crow shoot unqualifiedly. 
Pointing out that the verdict of the expert scientists of the United 
States Department of Agriculture is unquestionably the highest author- 
ity extant as to the economic status of the crow, the Audubon Society 
quotes that verdict as follows: “‘From the evidence at hand the crow’s 
merits and shortcomings appear about equally divided. While it would 
he unwise to give it absolute protection, and thus afford the farmer no 
recourse when the bird is doing damage, it would be equally unwise to 
adopt the policy of killing every crow that comes within gunshot.” 
Yet, the Society points out, the latter is the very policy encouraged by 
the Du Pont crow shoot for prizes. There is also an incentive to the 
use of poison and traps by the dishonest, with many other creatures 
accidentally sharing the fate of the luckless crows. 
Not only, says the Society, has Du Pont put a price on the head of 
every crow that can be killed, but included as points for prizes are sharp- 
shinned, Cooper’s and goshawks, great gray and snowy owls, kingfisher, 
row blackbird, starling, hedgehog, woodchuck, weasel, red squirrel, 
held rat, bobcat, gopher, snapping turtle, water snake and house cat, 
eighteen forms of life, some of them of neutral if not absolutely valuable 
economic status. 
In the protest against the crow shoot it is claimed that the induce- 
ment will take many aficld with guns when they can not legally do so; 
ita time when wild life is propagating and will be disturbed by unwonted 
shooting; that a greater destruction of valuable game and non-game wild 
life will result than crows would ever cause. If generations prior to 
“vilization, when so called “vermin” existed in greater nunibers and 
under more favorable conditions than ever since, such “‘ vermin” did not 
Seriously threaten useful wild life, why should it be feared that it will 
Now do so under less favorable conditions, the Society asks. 
Finally, the Society regards as extremely unfortunate the opening of 
‘controversy between sportsmen and their purveyors on the one hand 
And conservationists on the other. 
