Man's Relation to the Grouse 255 



AS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER 



To the early settler, the grouse was one of several game species 

 that helped fill the family larder. Its role was purely utilitarian. As 

 agriculture grew and cities developed, the taking of grouse turned 

 into a commercial venture. There was little sport in hunting the 

 "fool hen" grouse of those days. Wilson ( 1812 ) speaks of the advan- 

 tages of a "good" dog thus ". . . the more noise he keeps up seems 

 the more to confuse and stupify them, so that they may be shot 

 down, one by one, till the whole are killed." 



It is difficult from the records of the era of commercialization of 

 grouse to gauge how many were taken, what the populations might 

 have been, and other relevant information. Audubon ( 1856) records 

 their sale in the Cincinnati markets for twelve and one-half cents 

 each in 1820, which might indicate that large numbers were avail- 

 able. Elliott ( 1864), condemning the slaughter of the young, relates: 

 "I know of one firm that receives sometimes, on many Saturdays in 

 succession, five hundred pairs of these birds." Market hunting flour- 

 ished through most of the nineteenth century, varying in intensity 

 with the abimdance of the birds, but gradually waning wdth the 

 more limited range, the more and more restrictive laws, and the 

 slow change in emphasis toward hunting as a sport Monon (1875) 

 indicated the resentment toward this business when he says: "The 

 whole north country, from Amsterdam to Northville (New York), 

 is infested with pot shooters who hunt (out of season) for the Sara- 

 toga market." By the turn of the century the shift to grouse hunting 

 as a sport was about complete, although some illegal market hunting 

 continues even today. 



Forbush (1912) gives one of the few records that indicate former 

 grouse abundance when he quotes E. F. Staples of Taunton, Mass., 

 that in the early 1880's about one thousand birds were taken in a 

 season on twenty thousand acres that he ranged. He comments that 

 these were "real good" years, the last good ones that he had observed 

 up to the time he was interviewed in 1908. With densities only equal 

 to those of the 1930's (and former peak periods may have been 

 higher) there could have been on such an area from four thousand 

 to five thousand birds on the basis of a twenty to twenty-five per 

 cent kill. 



