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under the present opening date (October 16th) the ducks are immune when once driven from the rice fields to the tule and overlowed lands. The ducks must have a place to rest when driven from the rice fields. By using the bomb during September and up to the 16th of October, the duck will leave and go to the duck clubs and other waters where they will be contented to eat the natural duck foods, going out on the grain fields at night gathering the grain lost in harvest just as they have done in years past before an acre of rice was planted in California, and as they are now eating the lost rice in the rice stubble fields. You may see any day during the winter months on Lake Merritt, almost in the heart of the City of Oakland, many thousands of ducks, contented and happy simply because they are protected.

Again, the rice growers will not permit shooting or trespassing on the growing rice at any time, as can be seen from the hundreds of "No Trespassing or Shooting" signs posted on the rice lands. Under these conditions it would not be consistent to change the date of the open season.

With the amount of publicity given by the papers recounting the millions of ducks in the rice fields, how does the rice farmer expect to keep the hunters out of his rice fields? It would take an army to enforce the trespass act and the damage done by the hunter would be a thousand times greater than that done by ducks and mudhens, as is shown by the following quotation from a letter and resolution passed by the Pacific Rice Growers' Association, speaking for practically all of the growers in Northern California: 

"At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Pacific Rice Growers' Association held recently at Sacramento, it was brought to the attention of the Board that due to the wide publicity given by some of the rice growers of the State as to the harm done