10 THE RUFFED GROUSE IN THE MARCH OF TIME 



One can come closer to wiping out these birds, in a patch of woodland, with snares than 

 by any other means. Edward Howe Forbush"" for many years state ornithologist for Mas- 

 sachusetts, reported ''two men in the vicinity of Westfield, Massachusetts, took one hundred 

 and twenty of these birds from snares in one day". Five men of Foxborough snared grouse 

 prior ti) 1888 and averaged about a hundred birds a week. The most successful snarers 

 probably never published their records, for obvious reasons, though one finds, in an 1878 

 issue of "Forest and Stream", a notation that 1,189 grouse were snared in 54 days, an 

 average of better than 22 a day. 



We have seen somewhat similar arrangements designed to catch grouse by the feet at their 

 dusting places. Fox traps set at the edge of spring-holes in winter still take a surprising toll of 

 feathered game, a method doubtless also employed by some marketeers during the off-season 

 for other trapping operations. 



But shooting remained the most popular method wherever large numbers had to be secured 

 at definite intervals. Unlike today, around every center of populati(m there was always plenty 

 of back country into which but few of those interested in grouse, save the market hunter, pen- 

 etrated. There grouse were undisturbed and so were comparatively unafraid of man. For- 

 bush'" quotes E. F. Staples of Taunton, Mass, who writes, "This gentleman said that, in the 

 early 1880's. about a thousand birds were killed in a season on 20.000 acres that he ranged." 

 It was not unusual, in a good year, for one hunter to kill from 30 to 50 birds in a day. Careful 

 inquiry, however, indicates that the average was substantially lower than this. Mershon"', 

 when a boy. found ten to twelve birds a day to be a fair average under Michigan conditions. 

 Also, Maynard in 1870"°. states that market hunters from Worcester, Mass., killed ten to 

 fifteen birds a day. While the year's best hunts, then as now, were long remembered, personal 

 contact with several of the fast vanishing market hunters in the Northeast indicates the aver- 

 age daily bag in this region to have been much higher. 



Most birds were shot on the ground, an item seldom ap|)reciated when one compares tlie 

 take of yesteryear with today's much smaller legal limits. Roads, trails and woods edges were 

 favorite places, for there the cover was open and the birds more apt to be concentrated, partic- 

 ularly in the summer and fall. When spring shooting was permitted, drumming logs often 

 provided an unexpected rendezvous with death. 



So highly commercialized were these activities that individual hotels, in many a large city, 

 employed their own hunters. One trapper in Chenango Countv°' reported selling over 3,500 

 grouse to one New York hotel. Some 2.500 birds were shipped to the New York City markets 

 from the Poughkeepsie railroad station alone in 1875". Mr. George Howes killed and mar- 

 keted 398 birds in one shooting season while Haight'" relates the fact of two men taking 998 

 grouse from Septeinl)er 15 to January 31. »ne season in the late 1800s. 



Down from the timbered hills to the markets came the grouse bv the hundreds of thousands 

 — in barrels, in boxes, in bags, by horse or traiTi — until the turn of the present century. 



Almost from the beginning, a few men had decried the [iractice. \uttall"'. though (irima- 

 rily a botanist, was also a keen observer of animal life. As earlv as 1<!32. it was his opinion 

 that this indiscriminate killing had greatly thinned the numbers of grouse throughout the 

 more populous parts iif the Union. Toward the close of the last cciiturv. these complaints 

 became more widespread but it was the shortage of the grouse crop in 1897. followed by a 

 more severe decrease in 1903-04, that lent substantial impetus to the drive to outlaw all mar- 

 ket hunting. Hunters were increasing and grouse was prized game. The idea of a periodic 

 disap|)earance was, as yet, unborn, and so, when the decrease came, market hunting received 



