American Game Bird Shooting (1892)

Others did not know how to employ rapidly improving firearms and ammunition most efficiently. American Game Bird Shooting encompasses seventeen chapters, each focusing on a particular species or group of similar birds. Each chapter, then, includes information not only on the natural history or biology of each but also various means of hunting them, plus appropriate hunting gear and accessories. Interestingly, the last chapter is titled Pigeons, Doves, Bitterns, Cranes, and Herons. Neither Bitterns nor Herons have been considered game birds for nearly a century and their taking is prohibited by Federal, State, and Provincial laws and regulations. Illustrations and interesting bits of information are scattered throughout the text. Murphy relates, for example, an instance where a market hunter sold his bag of Canada geese taken in a single day for several hundred dollars. Not bad, considering that laborer wages of the time were $1 to $2 a day. The book vividly reflects the author’s personal experiences over wide areas of the United States and his unusual powers of observation and skillful writing.–Henry M. Reeves.