20 The Ruffed Grouse 



home, as the prize of the hunt, to the log cabin as the fitting larder 

 for a pioneer family. 



It is to be expected that such a creature would quickly find its 

 way into the writings of the time. Probably the first printed record 

 is that of Morton in 1632, just twelve years after the initial white 

 settlement. He was greatly impressed with the abundance of the 

 bird, having seen as many as forty in a single tree at one time. Baron 

 de Lahontan, in 1703, wTote of the great abundance and "comical" 

 stupidity of the "wood hen," as he termed it. This "fool hen" charac- 

 teristic did not detract from the high regard in which the bird was 

 held as a table delicacy. Audubon, writing in 1856, considered it 

 second only to the wild turkey among the upland game birds as a 

 delectable food. 



A Change of Character and Economics. The journals of the early 

 American ornithologists contain many notes on the distribution, 

 abundance, and habits of the species. From Wilson ( 1812) in Penn- 

 sylvania and Nuttall ( 1832 ) in New England to Bartram ( 1751 ) in 

 Georgia, and Swainson and Richardson (1831) in Saskatchewan, 

 the story developed until by 1849 Audubon determined that its 

 range was the whole breadth of the continent. As the settlers ad- 

 vanced into the wilderness, the grouse continued to play an impor- 

 tant part in the home diet. 



With the forests being cleared to make way for agricultural 

 lands, grouse range was vastly restricted. In the process, the range 

 was temporarily improved by the vast development of edges ^ 

 through the extensive woods, but ultimately the clearing reached 

 such proportions that the species was eliminated from large areas 

 and confined to a small fraction of the former range in others. 

 Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this process 

 continued. Concurrently, as farming mtensified and communications 

 developed, cities sprang up all over the nation and the grouse ceased 

 to be of great importance as a staple food. An era of commercializa- 

 tion developed, with professional hunters and trappers replacing 

 the scattered pioneers. Along with the passenger pigeon and other 

 game birds, the grouse were mostly shipped to the big city markets. 

 The birds became scarce in the vicinity of big cities as this traffic 



"^ "Edge," as used in wild-life management, refers to the boundaries between 

 dissimilar types of cover, as for example hay field and woodland. It is so significant 

 in animal ecology that game is sometimes said to be a product of edges. 



