UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
 
BUREAU OF BIOLOGICAL SURVEY 
IN REPLY REFER TO 
V -i 6. HICKS, DIRsCTQ4.' 
rtive Wildlife Research Ste,0 
St U,. Columbus, 0.                                     September 20, 1937

 
Mr. Aldo Leopold,                                                      CAP-*

Department of Agricultuml Economics, 
University of Wisconsin, 
Madison, Wisconsin 
Dear Mr. Leopold: 
Your letters and the manuscript received. I have gone over 
same and am returning it to you. 
Rather than mention any month it wculd be better to use "late 
winter" as the dates I recall for release of game farm adults have 
fallen between January 25 and April 15, or slig4itly later than the 
average data at which wild, live-trapped birds have been released. 
I notice that there were tvo or three of the birds which you 
were unable to sex and consider them hermaphroditic. I might say 
that this condition has not been at all uncommon in Ohio pheasants - 
possibly as frequent as one per thousand. However, we have never 
had a good exanple in our wild trapped birds, but have seen a number 
of cases in Game Farm birds where disease and meal-nutrition had been 
prevalent. Beveral of these birds have been posted without us being 
II able to learn a great deal as to the causes of their condition, although

the reversal invariably seems to be from female to male and due to 
tuberculosis of the ovaries. 
Your comments on sex ratio in the article are interesting. I 
notice that in one ease you trapped more hens than cocks, but in the 
drive flushed more cocks than hens and you seem to feel that the 
figures based on the drive were more accurate. Of course I cannot 
say what was the true ratio in this case, but with us trapping has 
almost invariably given a figure closer to the true sex ratio than 
data from birds flushed. 
We sometimes are able to observe 100 or 200 birds on open ground 
in young wheat and easily sex and count same, but when the same group 
of birds is driven across into cover - even cover as short as wheat 
II stubble - it is seldom possible to flush the whole group, and that 
portion which is flushed always shows a disproportionate percentage of 
cocks.