12 GKOUSE AND WILD TURKEYS OF UNITED STATES. 



extremely abundant throughout Ohio and Kentucky. It is now rare 

 in both States. A part of the ground it has lost in the East it has 

 gained by a westward and northward movement. It has followed 

 the grain fields of the pioneers of the plains, and with the extension 

 of grain culture into Minnesota and Manitoba it has become plentiful 

 there. According to Doctor Hatch, it was by no means common when 

 the white man first came to Minnesota, and he says that in Illinois as 

 late as 1836 a hunter was extremely lucky if he could bag a dozen in 

 a day. Some years later, with much less effort, one could have shot 

 [)0 in a day, and there were records of 100 to a single gun." 



The former status of the bird in the East is well indicated by 

 Audubon's classic observations at Henderson, Ky., in 1810. Audubon 

 says : ^ 



In those days during the winter the Grous would enter the farm-yard and 

 feed with the poultry, alight on the houses, or walk in the very streets of the 

 villages. I recollect having caught several in a stable at Henderson, where they 

 had followed some Wild Turkeys. In the course of the same winter, a friend 

 of mine, who was fond of practicing rifle shooting, killed upwards of forty in one 

 morning, but picked none of them up, so satiated with Grous was he, as well 

 as every member of his family. My own servants preferred the fattest flitch 

 of bacon to their flesh, and not unfrequently laid them aside as unfit for cook- 

 ing. * * * They could not have been sold at more than one cent apiece. 

 * * * So rare have they become in the markets of Philadelphia, New York, 

 and Boston, that they sell at from five to ten dollars the pair. 



So far as the sportsman is concerned, the prairie hen is now extinct 

 in Kentucky, and nowhere is the royal game bird even approximately 

 so abundant as it formerly was in that State. There is little good 

 chicken shooting east of the Mississippi. The best now to be had is 

 in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Manitoba. For- 

 tunately many people are actively interested in the protection and 

 preservation of the prairie hen and excellent laws in its behalf already 

 exist. There is a constantly growing sentiment in favor of nonresi- 

 dent hunting licenses and a legal limit to the day's bag, while some 

 States afford the bird absolute protection for a period of years," and 

 their example should be followed wherever it is growing scarce. 

 The passage of nonexport laws in most of the States has been ]3ro- 

 ductive of much good. These State laws have been made effective 

 by a recent Federal law — the Lacey Act — which prohibits interstate 

 commerce in game killed in violation of local laws. Through its 

 operation the sale of the prairie hen was virtually stopped in 1902 and 

 1903 in all the large cities of the East. Absolute enforcement of this 

 law and successful prohibition of local sales must be effected before 



a Birds of Minnesota, p. 163, 1892. 

 6 Ornith. Biog. II, p. 491, 1835. 



c Illinois, Louisiana, and Oregon protect prairie hens until 1909, and Michigan 

 and the Province of Ontario until 1910. 



