File:American game-bird shooting (1910) (14753089794).jpg

Identifier: americangamebird00grin (find matches)
Title: American game-bird shooting
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Grinnell, George Bird, 1849-1938
Subjects: Game and game-birds Hunting
Publisher: New York, Forest and stream publishing company
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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d keep the rays of light onhim as he flew. This was easily done by tilting thelamp with the hands. The results of the hunt weretwenty-nine; my companion killed fourteen and Ikilled fifteen, all flying. I do not now recall that Imissed a single shot. Several times my companion,shooting at too long range for his squib load, missed,and I killed the bird in the air. But it was not re-markable shooting at all, for when the light wasthrown on him he seemed practically to stop in theair. I could almost have killed them with a rifle. The vast alluvial region of southern Louisiana hasmany large areas peculiarly favorable to woodcock life.Years ago, before the pothunter had effected so muchdestruction, the woodcock congregated in those regionsin vast numbers in November and December. Theheavy tropical rains, of whose volume and persistencythe northern resident has little conception, softenedvast areas of land, cultivated and uncultivated, andthus fitted them for the feeding grounds of the wood-
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WOODCOCK 27 cock. At the same season snipe abounded in enormousnumbers, and for the same reason. Another casual, but purely local, agent of destruc-tion to the woodcock is the forest fires, which burn sofrequently in many of the Eastern States and whichrun through groves or swamps where the woodcockhave their nests. In such States as New York, NewJersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts,small brush or forest fires started by careless railroadengineers or thoughtless boys, occur in autumn andspring, and these may travel over considerable stretchesof country, destroying great numbers of young seedlingtrees, burning through the leaves, dry underbrush anddead branches of swamps, and destroying the nestsof quail, woodcock and ruffed grouse, and sometimeseven injuring the birds themselves. These fires, whiledoing harm here and there, are not of regular occur-rence and work but little injury compared with thoseprairie fires which in old times used to sweep over thefertile States o

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