FIGURE 233.—Mallards—aquatic game birds that are easy to propagate
WATERFOWL Breeding a Necessary Adjunct to Protective Measures
With increase of population the areas available for the natural production of wild ducks and other waterfowl are constantly being reduced. At the same time the numbers of hunters, with their destructive effect upon the abundance of these birds, are increasing. Thus arises a problem in diminishing returns, and its only solution, if hunting is to be continued on the present scale, is to increase the production of waterfowl. Natural propagation may be aided both in unreserved as well as in reserved waters by keeping the food supply adequate in variety and quantity and by controlling predatory enemies of the birds. Creating refuges is in itself not sufficient. Left to themselves such areas may become paradises indeed, but more for the vermin than for the creatures for which they were established. To have their full effect, reservations must be thoughtfully administered and efficiently patrolled. Their productivity can be increased several fold by food planting and vermin control, and until this is accomplished it can not be claimed that the best is being done to encourage the natural propagation of waterfowl.
Propagation of game birds in confinement has its chief value as a protective measure in that it reduces the drain upon the wild stock. Some sportsmen and sporting clubs now produce or purchase from game farms all the birds needed for the season’s sport, practices which if more widely followed would help lessen the menace to the wild supply. Such centers of propagation never reap the full harvest of the birds they produce, so that there is a steady overflow that not only increases the game-bird population of adjacent areas but in some degree contributes also to the main stream of waterfowl migration.
The inexperienced need not fear that waterfowl propagation is too difficult for them to attempt. Rather they should realize that successful methods already are well worked out. The propagation of one of the waterfowl species, the mallard, has been found to be fully as easy as that of any other game bird, lowland or upland. (Fig.233) Farmers’ bulletins on the propagation of game birds are available.
Equipment for the propagation of waterfowl should include one or more ponds, hatching and rearing coops, broody hens, rearing fields for the young, and if the birds are to be used for sport a flight range, over which they can be trained to return to the home pond over high obstacles, so as to give difficult shots. Personnel employed should include at least one competent game breeder, but his assistants can be hired locally as needed and be sufficiently trained in a short time.
There must be, of course, some outlay of funds in waterfowl propagation, but the cost per bird should easily be kept far below the average cost of bringing to bag wild ducks from their natural haunts. Once this is realized, this economy alone should greatly increase interest in waterfowl propagation; but above all reasons looms one that must become evident to all in time: If sportsmen are to continue to reap their annual harvest in the hunting field, they certainly must sow.