Chapter XII: Destruction of Song Birds by Southern Negroes and Poor Whites

Before going farther, there is one point that I wish to make quite clear.

Whenever the people of a particular race make a specialty of some particular type of wrong-doing, anyone who pointedly rebukes the faulty members of that race is immediately accused of "race prejudice." On account of the facts I am now setting forth about the doings of Italian and negro bird-killers, I expect to be accused along that line. If I am, I shall strenuously deny the charge. The facts speak for themselves. Zoologically, however, I am strongly prejudiced against the people of any race, creed, club, state or nation who make a specialty of any particularly offensive type of bird or wild animal slaughter; and I do not care who knows it.

The time was, and I remember it very well, when even the poorest gunner scorned to kill birds that were not considered "game." In days lang syne, many a zoological collector has been jeered because the specimens he had killed for preservation were not "game."

But times have changed. In the wearing of furs, we have bumped down steps both high and steep. In 1880 American women wore sealskin, marten, otter, beaver and mink. To-day nothing that wears hair is too humble to be skinned and worn. To-day "they are wearing" skins of muskrats, foxes, rabbits, skunks, domestic cats, squirrels, and even rats. And see how the taste for game,--of some sections of our population,--also has gone down.

In the North, the Italians are fighting for the privilege of eating everything that wears feathers; but we allow no birds to be shot for food save game birds and cranes. In the South, the negroes and poor whites are killing song-birds, woodpeckers and doves for food; and in several states some of it is done under the authority of the laws. Look at these awful lists:

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IN THESE STATES, ROBINS ARE LEGALLY SHOT AND EATEN:

Louisiana North Carolina Tennessee Texas Mississippi South Carolina Maryland Florida

IN THESE STATES, BLACKBIRDS ARE LEGALLY SHOT AND EATEN:

Louisiana Pennsylvania Tennessee District of Columbia South Carolina

CRANES ARE SHOT AND EATEN IN THESE STATES:

Colorado North Dakota Nevada Oklahoma Nebraska

In Mississippi, the _cedar bird_ is legally shot and eaten! In North Carolina, the meadow lark is shot and eaten.

IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, DOVES ARE CONSIDERED "GAME," AND ARE SHOT IN AN "OPEN SEASON:"

Alabama Georgia Minnesota Ohio Arkansas Idaho Mississippi Oregon California Illinois Missouri Pennsylvania Connecticut Kentucky Nebraska South Carolina Delaware Louisiana New Mexico Tennessee Dist. of Columbia Maryland North Carolina Texas Utah Virginia

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The killing of doves represents a great and widespread decline in the ethics of sportsmanship. In the twenty-six States named, a great many men who _call_ themselves sportsmen indulge in the cheap and ignoble pastime of potting weak and confiding doves. It is on a par with the "sport" of hunting English sparrows in a city street. Of course this is, to a certain extent, a matter of taste; but there is at least one club of sportsmen into which no dove-killer can enter, provided his standard of ethics is known in advance.

With the killing of robins, larks, blackbirds and cedar birds for food, the case is quite different. No white man calling himself a sportsman ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food. That burden of disgrace rests upon the negroes and poor whites of the South; but at the same time, it is a shame that respectable white men sitting in state legislatures should deliberately enact laws _permitting_ such disgraceful practices, or permit such disgraceful and ungentlemanly laws to remain in force!

Here is a case by way of illustration, copied very recently from the Atlanta _Journal_:

Editor _Journal_:--I located a robin roost up the Trinity River, six
miles from Dallas, and prevailed on six Dallas sportsmen to go with
me on a torch-light bird hunt. This style of hunting was, of course,
new to the Texans, but they finally consented to go, and I had the
pleasure of showing them how it was done.

Equipped with torch lights and shot guns, we proceeded. After
reaching the hunting grounds the sport began in reality, and
continued for two hours and ten minutes, with a total slaughter of
10,157 birds, an average of 1,451 birds killed by each man.

But the Texans give me credit for killing at least 2,000 of the
entire number. I was called 'the king of bird hunters' by the
sportsmen of Dallas, Texas, and have been invited to
command-in-chief the next party of hunters which go from Dallas to
the Indian Territory in search of large game.--F.L. CROW, Dallas,
Texas, former Atlantan.

Dallas, Texas, papers and Oklahoma papers, please copy!

As a further illustration of the spirit manifested in the South toward robins, I quote the following story from Dr. P.P. Claxton, of the University of Tennessee, as related in Audubon Educational Leaflet No. 46, by Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson:--

"The roost to which I refer," says Professor Claxton, "was situated in what is locally known as a 'cedar glade,' near Porestville, Bedford Co., Tennessee. This is a great cedar country, and robins used to come in immense numbers during the winter months, to feed on the berries.

"The spot which the roost occupied was not unlike numerous others that might have been selected. The trees grew to a height of from five to thirty feet, and for a mile square were literally loaded at night with robins. Hunting them while they roosted was a favorite sport. A man would climb a cedar tree with a torch, while his companions with poles and clubs would disturb the sleeping birds on the adjacent trees. Blinded by the light, the suddenly awakened birds flew to the torch-bearer; who, _as he seized each bird would quickly pull off its head_, and drop it into a sack suspended from his shoulders.

"The capture of three of four hundred birds was an ordinary night's work. Men and boys would come in wagons from all the adjoining counties and camp near the roost for the purpose of killing robins. Many times, 100 or more hunters with torches and clubs would be at work in a single night. _For three years_ this tremendous slaughter continued in winter,--and then the survivors deserted the roost."

No: these people were not Apache Indians, led by a Geronimo who knew no mercy, no compassion. We imagine that they were mostly poor white trash, of Tennessee. One small hamlet sent to market annually enough dead robins to return $500 at _five cents per dozen_; which means _120,000 birds_!

Last winter Mr. Edward A. McIlhenny of Avery Island, La. (south of New Iberia) informed me that every winter, during the two weeks that the holly berries are ripe thousands of robins come to his vicinity to feed upon them. "Then every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is after them. About 10,000 robins are slaughtered each day while they remain. Their dead bodies are sold in New Iberia at 10 cents each." The accompanying illustrations taken by Mr. McIlhenny shows 195 robins on one tree, and explains how such great slaughter is possible.

An officer of the Louisiana Audubon Society states that a conservative estimate of the number of robins annually killed in Louisiana for food purposes when they are usually plentiful, is a _quarter of a million_!

The food of the robin is as follows:

Insects, 40 per cent; wild fruit, 43 per cent; cultivated fruit, 8 per cent, miscellaneous vegetable food, 5 per cent.

SPECIAL WORK OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES.--In 1912 a female colored servant who recently had arrived from country life in Virginia chanced to remark to me at our country home in the middle of August: "I wish I could find some birds' nests!"

"What for?" I asked, rather puzzled.

"Why, to get the aigs and _eat 'em!_" she responded with a bright smile and flashing teeth.

"Do you eat the eggs of _wild_ birds?"

"Yes indeed! It's _fine_ to get a pattridge nest! From them we nearly always git a whole dozen of aigs at once,--back where I live, in Virginia."

"Do the colored people of Virginia make a _practice_ of hunting for the eggs of wild birds, and eating them?"

"Yes, indeed we do. In the spring and summer, when the birds are around, we used to get out every Sunday, and hunt all day. Some days we'd come back with a whole bucket full of aigs; and then we'd set up half the night, cookin' and eatin' 'em. They was _awful_ good!"

Her face fairly beamed at the memory of it.

A few days later, this story of the doings of Virginia negroes was fully corroborated by a colored man who came from another section of that state. Three months later, after special inquiries made at my request, a gentleman of Richmond obtained further corroboration, from negroes. He was himself much surprised by the state of fact that was revealed to him.

In the North, the economic value of our song birds and other destroyers of insects and weed seeds is understood by a majority of the people, and as far as possible those birds are protected from all human enemies. But in the South, a new division of the Army of Destruction has risen into deadly prominence.

In _Recreation_ Magazine for May, 1909, Mr. Charles Askins published a most startling and illuminating article, entitled "The South's Problem in Game Protection." It brought together in concrete form and with eye-witness reliability the impressions that for months previous had been gaining ground in the North. In order to give the testimony of a man who has seen what he describes, I shall now give numerous quotations from Mr. Askins' article, which certainly bears the stamp of truthfulness, without any "race prejudice" whatever. It is a calm, judicial, unemotional analysis of a very bad situation: and I particularly commend it alike to the farmers of the North and all the true sportsmen of the South.

In his opening paragraphs Mr. Askins describes game and hunting conditions in the South as they were down to twenty years ago, when the negroes were too poor to own guns, and shooting was not for them.

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SPECIAL WORK OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES.

It is all different now, says Mr. Askins, and the old days will only
come back with the water that has gone down the stream. The master
is with his fathers or he is whiling away his last days on the
courthouse steps of the town. Perhaps a chimney or two remain of
what was once the "big house" on the hill; possibly it is still
standing, but as forlorn and lifeless as a dead tree. The muscadine
grapes still grow in the swale and the persimmons in the pasture
field, but neither 'possum nor 'coon is left to eat them. The last
deer vanished years ago, the rabbits died in their baby coats and
the quail were killed in June. Old "Uncle Ike" has gone across the
"Great River" with his master, and his grandson glances at you
askance, nods sullenly, whistles to his half breed bird dog,
shoulders his three dollar gun and leaves you. He is typical of the
change and has caused it, this grandson of dear old Uncle Ike.

In the same way the white man is telling the black to abide upon the
plantation raising cotton and corn, and further than this nothing
will be required of him. He can cheat a white man or a black, steal
in a petty way anything that comes handy, live in marriage or out of
it to please himself, kill another negro if he likes, and lastly
shoot every wild thing that can be eaten, if only he raises the
cotton and the corn. But the white sportsmen of the South have never
willingly granted the shooting privilege in its entirety, and hence
this story. They have told him to trap the rabbits, pot the robins,
slaughter the doves, kill the song birds, but to spare the white
sportsman's game, the aristocratic little bobwhite quail.

In the beginning not so much damage to southern game interests could
be accomplished by our colored man and brother, however decided his
inclinations. He had no money, no ammunition and no gun. His weapons
were an ax, a club, a trap, and a hound dog; possibly he might own
an old war musket bored out for shot. Such an outfit was not adapted
to quail shooting and especially to wing shooting, with which
knowledge Dixie's sportsmen were content. Let the negro ramble about
with his hound dog and his war musket; he couldn't possibly kill the
quail. And so Uncle Ike's grandson loafed and pottered about in the
fields with his ax and his hound dogs, not doing so much harm to the
quail but acquiring knowledge of the habits of the birds and skill
as a still-hunting pot-hunter that would serve him well later on.
The negro belongs to a primitive race of people and all such races
have keener eyes than white men whose fathers have pored over lines
of black and white. He learned to see the rabbit in its form, the
squirrels in the leafy trees, and the quails huddled in the grass.
The least shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he
distinguished at once as a rabbit, a glinting flash from a tree top
he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement of a hidden
squirrel, and the quiver of a single stem of sedge grass told him of
a bevy of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all
the skill of the Indian, has more industry in his loafing, and kills
without pity and without restraint. This grandson of Uncle Ike was
growing sulky, too, with the knowledge that the white man was
bribing him with half a loaf to raise cotton and corn when he might
as well exact it all. And this he shortly did, as we shall see.

The time came when cotton went up to sixteen cents a pound and
single breech-loading guns went down to five dollars apiece. The
negro had money now, and the merchants--these men who had said let
the nigger alone so long as he raises cotton and corn--sold him the
guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South.
Then shortly a wail went up from the sportsmen, "The niggers are
killing our quail." They not only were killing them, but most of the
birds were already dead. On the grounds of the Southern Field Club
where sixty bevies were raised by the dogs in one day, within two
years but three bevies could be found in a day by the hardest kind
of hunting; and this story was repeated all over the South. Now the
negro began to raise bird dogs in place of hounds, and he carried
his new gun to church if services happened to be held on a week day.
Finally the negro had grown up and had compassed his ambition: he
could shoot partridges flying just the same as a white man, was a
white man except for a trifling difference in color; and he could
kill more birds, too, three times as many. It was merely a change
from the old order to the new in which a dark-skinned "sportsman"
had taken the place in plantation life of the dear old "Colonel" of
loved memory. The negro had exacted his price for raising cotton and
corn.

Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so
in the matter of recreation. He may slouch about alone and pot a
bevy or two of quail when in actual need of something to eat, or
when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to shooting for
fun he wants to be with the "gang." I have seen the darkies at
Christmas time collect fifty in a drove with every man his dog, and
spread out over the fields. Such a glorious time as he has then! A
single cottontail will draw a half-dozen shots and perhaps a couple
of young bucks will pour loads into a bunny after he is dead out of
pure deviltry and high spirits. I once witnessed the accidental
killing of a young negro on this kind of a foray. His companions
loaded him into a wagon, stuck a cigar in his mouth, and tried to
pour whiskey down him every time they took a drink themselves as
they rode back to town. This army of black hunters and their dogs
cross field after field, combing the country with fine teeth that
leave neither wild animal nor bird life behind.

There comes a time toward the spring of the year after the quail
season is over when the average rural darky is "between hay and
grass." The merchants on whom he has depended for supplies make it a
practice to refuse credit between January first and crop time. The
black has spent his cotton money, his sweet potato pile has
vanished, the sorghum barrel is empty, he has eaten the last of his
winter's pork, and all that remains is a bit of meal and the meat
his gun can secure. He is hunting in grim earnest now, using all the
cunning and skill acquired by years of practice. He eats
woodpeckers, jaybirds, hawks and skunks, drawing the line only at
crows and buzzards. At this season of the year I have carried
chicken hawks up to the cabins for the sake of watching the delight
of the piccaninnies who with glowing eyes would declare, "Them's
mos' as good as chicken." What happens to the robins, doves, larks,
red birds, mocking birds and all songsters in this hungry season
needs hardly to be stated.

It is also a time between hay and grass for the rabbits and the
quail. The corn fields are bare and the weed seeds are exhausted. A
spring cold spell pinches, they lose their vitality, become thin and
quite lack their ordinary wariness. Then the figure-four trap
springs up in the hedgerow and the sedge while the work of
decimation goes more rapidly along. The rabbits can no longer escape
the half-starved dogs, the thinning cover fails to hide the quail
and the song birds betray themselves by singing of the coming
spring.

With the growing scarcity of the game now comes the season of sedge
and field burning. This is done ostensibly to prepare the land for
spring plowing, but really to destroy the last refuge of the quail
and rabbits so that they can be bagged with certainty. All the
negroes of a neighborhood collect for one of these burnings, all
their dogs, and of course all the boys from six years old up. They
surround the field and set it on fire in many places, leaving small
openings for the game to dash out among the motley assembly. I have
seen quail fly out of the burning grass with flaming particles still
attached to them. They alight on the burnt ground too bewildered to
fly again and the boys and dogs pick them up. Crazed rabbits try the
gauntlet amidst the barking curs, shouting negroes and popping guns,
but death is sure and quick. The few quail that may escape have no
refuge from the hawks and nothing to eat, so every battue of this
kind marks the absolute end of the birds in one vicinity; and the
next day the darkies repeat the performance elsewhere.

At this season of the year, the first of May, the blacks are putting
in some of their one hundred working days while the single
breech-loader rusts in the chimney corner. Surely the few birds that
have escaped the foray of the "gang," lived through the hungry days,
and survived their burned homes can now call "Bob White" and mate in
peace. But school is out and the summer sun is putting new life into
the bare feet of the half-grown boys, and the halfbreed bird dogs
are busier than they were even in winter. The young rabbits are
killed before they get out of the nest, and the quail eggs must be
hidden rarely well that escape both the eyes of the boys and the
noses of the dogs. After all it is not surprising that but three
bevies remained of the sixty. Doubtless they would not, except that
nature is very kind to her own in the sunny South.

Not every white man in the South is a sportsman or even a shooter;
many are purely business men who have said let the "nigger" do as he
likes so long as he raises cotton and buys our goods. But Dixie has
her full share of true men of the out-of-doors and they have sworn
in downright Southern fashion that this thing has got to end.
Nevertheless their problem is deep and puzzling. In Alabama they
made an effort and a beginning. They asked for a law requiring every
man to obtain written permission before entering the lands of
another to hunt and shoot; they asked for a resident license law
taxing every gun not less than five dollars a year; for a shortened
season, a bag limit, and a complete system of State wardens.
Unfortunately, a lot of white farmers were in the same range as the
blacks, and being hit, too, they raised a great outcry. The result
was that the Alabama sportsmen got everything they asked for except
the foundation of the structure they were trying to build, the high
resident license or gun tax which alone could have shut out three
dollar guns and saved the remnant of the game. Under the new law the
sale of game was forbidden, neither could it be shipped out of the
State alive or dead; the ever popular non-resident license was
provided for; the season was shortened and the bag limited; the
office of State game warden was created with deputies to be paid
from fines; hunting upon the lands of another without written
permission became a misdemeanor; and then the whole thing was
nullified by reducing the resident license to nothing where a man
shot upon his own land, one dollar in his own county, and two
dollars outside of it. In its practical workings the new law amounts
to this: A few northern gunners have paid the non-resident license
fee, and enough resident licenses have been taken out by the city
sportsmen to make up the handsome salary of the State warden. The
negro still hunts upon his own land _or upon the land of the man who
wants corn and cotton raised_, with perfect indifference to the
whole thing. Who was to enforce the law against him? Not the one
disgusted deputy with three big counties to patrol who depended for
his salary upon the fines collected from the negroes. It would take
one man to every three miles square to protect the game in the
South.

The one effective way of dealing with the situation in Alabama was
to have legislated three dollar guns out of existence with a five
dollar tax, adding to this nearly a like amount on dogs. Hardly a
sportsman in the South will disagree with this conclusion. But
sportsmen never had a majority vote either in the South or in the
North, and the South's grave problem is yet unsolved.

I do not favor depriving the black man of his natural human right to
hunt and shoot. If he is the owner of land, or if he leases or rents
it, or if he does not, he should have exactly the same privilege of
hunting that the white man has. That is not the question now,
however, but how to restrict him to legal shooting, to make him
amenable to the law that governs the white man, to deprive him of
the absolute license he now enjoys to kill throughout the year
without mercy, without discrimination, without restraint. If only
for selfish reasons, we of the North should reach to southern
sportsmen a helping hand, for by and by the last of our migratory
song birds will go down into Dixie and never return.

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Mr. Askins has fairly stated a profoundly disturbing case. The remedy must contain at least three ingredients. The sportsmen of the South must stop the unjustifiable slaughter of their non-migratory game birds. As a matter of comity between states, the gentlemen of the South must pass laws to stop the killing of northern song-birds and all crop-protecting birds, for food. Finally, all men, North and South, East and West, must unite in the work that is necessary to secure the immediate enactment by Congress of a law for the federal protection of all migratory birds.

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