REGULATIONS RELATING TO MIGRATORY BIRDS AND CERTAIN GAME MAMMALS: 1951

[Approved by the Secretary of the Interior July 27, 1951, 16 F. R. 7513, as amended August 29, 1951. Part 1, Chapter I, Subchapter B, Title 50, Code of Federal Regulations]

§ 6.1 Definitions of Migratory Birds and Game Mammals

(a) Migratory Birds:

Migratory birds included in the terms of the conventions between the United States and Great Britain for the protection of migratory birds, and between the United States and United Mexican States for the protection of migratory birds and game mammals concluded, respectively, August 16, 1916, and February 7, 1936, are as follows:

(1) Game Birds:

(i) Anatidae, or waterfowl, including brant, wild ducks, geese, and swans. (ii) Gruidae, or eranes, including little brown, sandhill, and whooping cranes. (iii) Rallidae, or rails, including coots, gallinules, and sora and other rails. (iv) Limicolae (charadrii), or shorebirds, including avocets, curlews, dowitchers, godwits, knots, oyster-catchers, phalaropes, plovers, sandpipers, snipe, stilts, surf birds, turnstones, willet, woodcock, and yellowlegs.

(v) Columbidae, or pigeons, including doves and wild pigeons.

(2) Insectivorous and Other Nongame Birds:

Cuckoos (including road-runner and anis), flickers, and other woodpeckers; nighthawks, or bullbats, chuck-will's-widow, poor-wills, and whip-poor-wills; swifts; hummingbirds; kingbirds; phoebes, and other flycatchers; horned larks; bobolinks, cowbirds, blackbirds, grackles, meadowlarks, and orioles; grosbeaks (including cardinals), finches, sparrows, and buntings (including towhees); tanagers; martins and other swallows; waxwings; phainopeplas; shrikes; vireos; warblers; pipits, catbirds, mockingbirds, and thrashers; wrens; brown creepers; nuthatches; titmice (including chickadees, verdin and bushtits); kinglets and gnatcatchers; robins and other thrushes; and auks, auklets, bitterns, fulmars, gannets, grebes, guillemots, gulls, herons, jaegers, loons, murres, petrels, puffins, shearwaters, and terns.

(b) Game Mammals:

Game mammals under the terms of the aforesaid convention between the United States and the United Mexican States include:

Antelope, mountain sheep, deer, bears, peccaries, squirrels, rabbits, and hares.

§ 6.2 Definition of Terms

For the purposes of §§ 6.1 to 6.10, the following terms shall be construed, respectively, to mean and to include:

(a) Secretary.-Secretary of the Interior of the United States.

(b) Director.-Director, Fish and Wildlife Service, United States Department of the Interior.

(c) Regional Director.-Regional Director, Fish and Wildlife Service, United States Department of the Interior.

(d) Person.-Individual, club, association, partnership, or eorporation, any one or all, as the context requires.

NOTE.-Persons desiring information regarding further restrictions on seasons, bag and possession limits, and other hunting provisions should communicate with appropriate State officials, whose addresses are given on p. 15.

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(e) Take.-Hunt, kill, or capture, or attempt to hunt, kill, or capture. (f) Open season.-Time during which migratory game birds may be taken. (g) Transport.-Ship, carry, export, import, and receive or deliver for shipment, conveyance, carriage, exportation, or importation.

§ 6.3 Means by Which Migratory Game Birds May Be Taken

(a) Migratory game birds on which open seasons are specified in § 6.4 may be taken during such seasons only with bow and arrow or with a shotgun not larger than No. 10 gage, fired from the shoulder, except as permitted by §§ 6.5, 6.8, and 6.9, but they shall not be taken with or by means of any automatic-loading or handoperated repeating shotgun capable of holding more than three shells, the magazine of which has not been cut off or plugged with a one-piece metal or wooden filler incapable of removal without disassembling the gun so as to reduce the capacity of the said gun to not more than three shells at one time in the magazine and chamber combined. Such birds may be taken during the open seasons from land or water, with aid of a dog, and from a blind, boat, or other floating craft not under tow or sail, except sinkbox (battery), motorboat (excluding a boat having a detached outboard motor), and sailboat: Provided, That nothing herein shall permit the taking of migratory game birds from or by means, aid, or use of any motor-driven conveyance, motor vehicle, or aircraft of any kind, the taking of waterfowl by means, aid, or use of cattle, horses, mules, or live duck or goose decoys, the concentrating, driving, rallying, or stirring up of waterfowl and coots by means or aid of any motor-driven land, water, or air conveyance or sailboat: Provided further, That nothing herein shall exclude the picking up of injured or dead waterfowl, coots, rails, or gallinules by means of a motorboat, sailboat, or other craft.

(b) Migratory game birds may not be taken within one-half mile of any place where salt or any feed that may attract such birds is placed, exposed, deposited, distributed, scattered, or present at any time during or within two weeks prior to the open season on such birds. In addition, migratory game birds may not be taken under any circumstances by the aid or use of salt or any feed that constitutes for such birds a lure, attraction, or enticement to, on, or over the area where hunters are attempting to take them.

Nothing in this section shall be construed to apply to propagating, scientific, or other operations in accordance with the terms of permits issued pursuant to § 6.8, or to the taking of birds over properly shocked corn and standing crops of corn, wheat, or other grain or feed, and grains found scattered solely as a result of normal agricultural harvesting; or to the feeding of migratory game birds at any time not in connection with hunting.

(c) No person over 16 years of age may take migratory waterfowl unless at the time of such taking he has on his person an unexpired Federal migratory-bird hunting stamp, validated by his signature. written across the face thereof in ink. Persons not over 16 years of age may take migratory waterfowl without such stamp.

§ 6.4 Open Seasons, Bag Limits, and Possession of Certain Migratory

Game Birds

(a) During the open seasons prescribed and except as hereinafter provided in this section, ducks, geese, brant, and coot may be taken daily from one-half hour before sunrise to one hour before sunset, and rails, gallinules, woodcock, mourning or turtle doves, white-winged doves, and band-tailed pigeons from one-half hour before sunrise to sunset. The hour for the commencement of hunting of waterfowl and coot on the first day of the season, including each first day of the split seasons, shall be 12 o'clock noon.

(b) A person may take in any one day during the open seasons prescribed therefor not to exceed the numbers of migratory game birds permitted in this section which numbers shell include all birds taken by any other person who for hire accompanies or assists him in taking such birds. When so taken such birds may be possessed in the number specified in this section, except that no person on the opening day of the season may possess any migratory game birds in excess of the applicable daily limits and no person may possess any freshly killed migratory game bird during the closed season for such bird.

(c) Nothing in this part shall be deemed to permit the taking of migratory birds on any reservation or sanctuary established under the Migratory Bird Conservation Act of February 18, 1929 (45 Stat. 1222), or any area of the United States set aside under any other law, proclamation, or Executive order for use as a bird, game, or other wildlife reservation, breeding ground, or refuge, or on any area designated as a closed area under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act except so far as may be permitted by the Secretary of the Interior.

(d) No migratory bird may be taken at any time, by any means, from, on, or across any highway, road, trail, or other right-of-way, whether public or private, within the exterior boundaries of any duly established national wildlife refuge. (e) The open seasons (dates inclusive) on the following migratory game birds only, the daily bag and possession limits, and the exceptions to the hours of hunting heretofore stated, shall be as shown in the following schedules:

1 Rails and gallinules: When permitted to be taken during the waterfowl season they may not be hunted after 1 hour before sunset.

2 Not more than 15 in the aggregate of rails (other than sora) and gallinules. No open season in District of Columbia but migratory game birds may be possessed therein in accordance with § 6.6 (c).

Shooting hours for mourning doves in States indicated-12 noon until sunset. 5 Florida: Rails (including sora) and gallinules, daily bag and possession limit 15, singly or in aggregate of all kinds.

Florida: Mourning doves in Dade, Monroe, and Broward Counties, Oct. 1 to Oct. 30.

1 Rails and gallinules: When permitted to be taken during the waterfowl scason they may not be hunted after 1 hour before sunset.

Not more than 15 in the aggregate of rails (other than sora) and gallinules. Shooting hours for mourning doves in States indicated-12 noon until sunset. Wisconsin: On opening day the season for rails and gallinules will start at

1 p. m.