The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-02-26
TEXAS WEALTH OF CAME BIRDS A Great Slaughter of Game
 Is Complained Of IN LONE STAR STATE Wild Geese Are Plentiful But Are Harder to Shoot-Birds Are
 Being Killed and Left on
 the Ground
from the Nav York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
 "A northern sportsman could scarcely imagine condition of things that per mitted the killing without protest of nearly 1000 quail, not a single one of which was picked up from the ground where it was shot" said former resi- dent of Texas, and yet just such a slaughter was committed without inter- ruption at a famous Texas sporting re- sort, and not so very long ago at that
 .It was not only not interfered with, but the sportsman who was guilty of the deed was regarded as something Of a lion by the natives thereabout for he had made a record killing for one man, one dog and one gun. He had come down to Rockport from Omaha. He committed his great act on St. Joseph's island. He was five days doing it. His lowest days record was 180 birds. His higest was 192. It should be said, how ever, that this slaughter was perpetrated before the present strict game law was passed in Texas
 This mans record illustrates the abundance of birds on St Josephs is- iand. The gunner today will find quail
 
 as to amaze him. In tramp of mile on the island through the mesquite cov- CTS last fall I flushed 70 coveys, in not one of which were there less than dozen and half of the plumpest birds.
 "A wild dove abounds on St. Joseph's island, which is superior to any dove ever encountered both as to it's capacity to put the skill of the wing shot to it's best test and as to it's quality In flesh. This bird gets up with rush and whistle that startles one. and darts and dives about in the mazeS of the thick mesquite timber in as mystifying man ner as the squealer duck engineers it's way in deviating suddenness through the thick timbered Arkansas swamps. The man who beat the trick with his gun five times out of a dozen can pat himself on the back and call himself a good one.
 "All varieties of shore birds swarm along the margins of St. Joseph's island and the others on the coast of Texas Tons of these birds were shipped away to market from every gulf coast center every season before the Texas law was passing prohibiting the marketing of game.
 There the Wilson or. English snipe Is in its glory, wild and wary and difficult to shoot as if there were only a brace of the birds to be hunted instead of droyes of them. But there are no woodcock there While that royal game bird winters by the thousand upon thousand in Texas it Is not found west of San Antonio.
 ''But 1t is for wild fowl, the web footed visitors from the north, that this peculiar coast is a paradise, Every bay, estuary, prairie lake and slough and reed bor- dered river or bayou is the resort of wild fowl in myrlads. They feed in the stubble of the sodden rice fields on the prairie roots and seeds and grass tufts and on acorns and pecan nuts that dropped in the bayou and river waters from the sea- sons crops of mast and sleep at night on the surface of the bays and sloughs and ponds, covering sometimes in front of Corpus Cristi alone, on the distant fringe of the bay, surface hundreds of acres in area.
 Arkansas bay often bears of night on its shallow waters host of sleeping wild fowl so great that if ones footsteps were light enough he might walk dryshod upon them for miles from open water % open water. And 1t Is so with all the ad- jacent bays and inlets and passes.s Red heads and canvasbacks are conspicuous among the ducks, and no species of wild goose is unrepresented
 "I don't know any other place where wild duck may be bagged in way so peculiar as conditions on St. Josephs island offer. The island. is an immense cattle ranch and to supply water for the 5000 or 1000 head of stock on the island wells have been sunk. The water Is run into pools or ponds, some of them cover ing more than quarter of an acre, where the cattle come to drink. Lying in ann bush near these fresh water pools, the duck hunter fills his bag without much