Duck Dinner

A loud rap sounded one evening last week at the door of a banquet room in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria in which sat Utilities Tycoon Harvey Crowley Couch, Munitions Tycoon Alexis Felix du Pont, Herbert Lee Pratt, onetime board chairman of Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., President Charles K. Davis of Remington Arms Co., some 200 other big & little wigs. A waiter opened the door, and in waddled Field & Stream's hearty Publisher Eltinge F. Warner disguised as Donald Duck, with a large basket on his arm. Squawking, he advanced to the speaker's table, pumped the hand of Connecticut's onetime Senator Frederic Walcott who was presiding as toastmaster, launched into a falsetto speech acknowledging the gratitude of ducks for what the diners were doing for them. This done, he started for the door, stumbled, dropped his basket. Out popped three live wild ducks, which went flapping up & down the room to the hilarious confusion of the distinguished but convivial banqueters.

Thus was launched the first annual Duck Hunters' Dinner of the American Wildlife Institute. Founded by 33 sportsmen in 1935 to help Government and private conservation agencies preserve and restore the nation's wildlife, the Institute has had backing from arms, sporting goods, automobile and other manufacturers interested in preserving the $500,000,000 business of U. S. hunting & fishing. Its chief accomplishment to date, financed by a $150,000 Remington Arms donation, has been initiation of game breeding research projects in nine agricultural colleges.

Despite the opening horseplay, at last week's Duck Dinner every diner except one was dead serious about the problem of North America's diminishing wild ducks. The lone, tipsy dissenter held up proceedings for ten minutes while he argued with great gravity that the press of urgent civic problems made duck discussion trivial if not unpatriotic. Earnest conservationists listened with growing restlessness as other speakers deplored the duck decrease, bemoaned the fact that since most ducks breed in Canada there is little the U. S. can do about it. The audience wanted something constructive. They got it when 260-lb. Ira Noel Gabrielson, Chief of the U. S. Biological Survey, heaved up to speak.*

Chief Gabrielson, an expert who has been with the Survey since 1915, reviewed its New Deal program of restoring marsh land for duck breeding grounds and refuges. Minimum requirement, said he, is 7,500,000 acres. The Survey is about halfway to that goal. But, continued the broad-beamed Chief, "there are two small groups among people who hunt who may defeat this program." One group is composed of commercial hunters, usually petty thieves and miscreants. "So long as a section of the American public will pay exorbitant prices for contraband game in restaurants, night clubs and hotels, we will have this problem to deal with."

Chief Gabrielson next delivered a thoroughgoing rebuke to rich U. S. hunters. "At the other extreme," he barked, "is a numerically small but exceedingly noisy group of shooters (I won't call them sportsmen) who have by some strange process of reasoning reached the conclusion that because they have invested money in lands where they may hunt waterfowl on their own property, they are entitled to special consideration and even the privilege of violating the law with immunity. Frankly I can find less excuse for this type of man than for the poor devil who takes the birds to eat or who needs the money to support his family."

Appealing from game-hogs to all U. S. sportsmen, Chief Gabrielson continued: "We have a continent-wide resource which has diminished to a critical stage. . . . We believe that by careful management and moderation in the taking of birds we can build it back. . . . We believe that it will take the consistent, aggressive support of the sportsmen and of the conservation agencies of this country. We may as well face the fact that rigid restriction on the take of birds is going to be absolutely necessary for some time to come."

In Washington two days later, More Game Birds in America. Inc., an older organization whose backers include many an American Wildlifer, announced the formation of Ducks Unlimited, a non-profit foundation. With the promised cooperation of Canada's provincial Premiers, it will aim to raise several hundred thousand U. S. dollars per year for five years to acquire up to 1,000,000 Canadian acres for duck breeding grounds.

*In Washington last week Chief Gabrielson announced that he had requested the Department of Agriculture's Solicitor to file charges against Supreme Court Justice Willis Van Devanter for neglecting, through ignorance of the law, to buy a Federal duck stamp before he went duck-hunting in Virginia last month (TIME, Jan. 4). Maximum penalty for this offense: $500 fine, six months' imprisonment.

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