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afforded by the game laws, which merely prescribe that it cease on a 
certain legal date. As well kill all the chickens anybody can find 
on the farm in November, and then expect eggs in March. That is exactly 
what we have been expecting of farm game. We are now in process of a 
belated realization that somebody has to provide food and cover, and 
call a halt on shooting as soon as the surplus has been killed. 
Of course, when we say that the present 150 million dollar game 
crop is "produced" by human hands, we are stretching the term.
Game, 
like Topsy, just grows up, but so far it has had a chance to grow up 
only where tough old nature was able to take advantage of economic accident.

What has "produced" our game crop is not so much the expensive
birds 
released by the state with its paternal blessing, as the cover which the

farmer neglects to cut or graze, the grain accidentally spilled in the 
fields, and the weed seeds accidentally missed by the cultivator. 
No one of these elements of a habitable game range is effective 
without the other two. Thus the reverted farms of New England, have 
millions of acres of cover, but no grain and few edible weeds. Hence 
there is little game. On the other hand the cornbelt has vast quantities

of waste grain and weeds, but no cover. Hence there is little game. The 
great gamefields of the South all lie where cover and food come together.

Millions of acres of southern farms lack food, and hence game. 
What would happen if the cornbelt farmer deliberately left brush 
and weeds of the right kind on every waste spot, to balance the waste 
grain in his fields? A prodigious increase in game would happen. I 
have made counts of all the game, cover spots, and food spots on nearly 
a thousand farms in-half a dozen cornbelt states, and can certify to the