THE KILLING GAMES WERE COMING to an end. At the turn of the 20th century fewer sportsmen were participating in bygone Christmas Day “side hunts,” competitions in which hunters would split into teams and set out on a “cheerful mission of killing practically everything in fur or feathers that crossed their path,” as ornithologist and editor Frank Chapman described in the pages of Bird-Lore, the precursor to Audubon magazine. “We are not certain that the side hunt is wholly a thing of the past, but we feel assured that no reputable sportsman’s journal of today would venture to publish an account of one, unless it were to condemn it; and this very radical change of tone is one of the significant signs of the times.”
Chapman had a proposal: Replace the side hunt with a new tradition of observing and tallying birds, what he called a “Christmas bird-census.” He urged readers to mail their “hunt” report to ’s Englewood, New Jersey, office by bedtime on Christmas. The reports should include the locality, when the count began and stopped, the air temperature, the character of the
