Maurice Broun

Maurice Broun pioneered the establishment of the Pleasant Valley Sanctuary in Lenox, Massachusetts in addition to the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. He was also the author of the Index to North American Ferns. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife, Irma, in the historic old Schaumboch house, where he autographed a copy of Hawks Aloft for me.

In October, 1927, Dr. George M. Sutton, then connected with the Game Commission, visited the mountain to see for himself. He gathered up 158 hawks of four species, all killed by several gunners "in a remarkably short time." Hawks Aloft, 1949.

 

"One case of extreme cruelty witnessed was that of a wounded hawk tied to a log. When another hawk appeared in the sky, a man would jab the wounded bird with a stick to make it scream and thus attract its fellow migrant to a similar fate. Ibid.[cited from the Bulletin of the Hawk and Owl Society, 1933.]

 

Another decoy consisted of a hawk thrown into a tree by means of a stone on a string and left dangling there in the northwest breeze. Ibid.

 

Most of the hunters I encountered had been killing hawks on this mountain for many years. Most of them were obdurate in their opinion of hawks in general and, they insisted all hawks should be exterminated. Ibid.

 

. . . soon after 11 o'clock a swirling mass of broad-wings boiled over the mountain, and they soon filled the southern sky in a seemingly interminable, densely straggling line, moving rapidly. My 18-power binocular revealed a level sheet of moving birds as far to the south as I could see . . . My tally for that last hour of the morning was 7,587 plus broad-wings. Ibid.

 

In spite of the excellent reputations most hawks have earned for themselves, and in spite of the ever-increasing numbers of enlightened and sympathetic people, the hawks will always be at the mercy of irresponsible, trigger-happy ignoramuses. Ibid.