Man's Relation to the Grouse 259 



were much lower than the actual kill. In Pennsylvania in 1940, 

 Studholme ( 1941 ) found the hunting season loss to be twenty-three 

 and two-tenths per cent, of which at least seventeen per cent was 

 attributable to hunting by man. 



These Midwest and Pennsylvania records corroborate the New 

 York results remarkably closely. We may conclude that the normal 

 hunter kill is in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty per cent of the 

 prehunting season population. 



We have discussed the total kill. Now let us see what this means 

 to the individual hunter. What is the average daily and seasonal bag 

 of giouse? This will be a discouraging revelation to those who are 

 considering becoming grouse hunters— and reassurance for the ex- 

 perienced shot who may still be smarting from being unable to get 

 his eye on 'em the last time out, for there are multitudes who have 

 fared worse. Before revealing the shockingly low effectiveness of 

 hunters it may be well to pause and note again that the grouse pre- 

 sents as hard a wingshot as any American game bird. ( I know quail, 

 woodcock, and duck hunters will rise up in wrath at that statement! ) 

 That this creature could so develop from a "fool hen" in the space 

 of a century is a remarkable tribute to its adaptability. 



High daily and seasonal bags of individual hunters are plentifully 

 recorded in the old literature. Forbush (1912) lists a number of 

 such occurrences from Massachusetts thus: "I can remember when 

 a market hunter going out from the city of Worcester by train each 

 day, walking to the covers and returning at night, killed from ten 

 to fifteen birds daily. . . . Mr. George Howes shot and marketed 

 three hundred and ninety-eight birds in one shooting season. . . ." 

 With the disappearance of the market hunter went the stor)' of large 

 individual kills. The very limit of the present-day laws, as for exam- 

 ple two per day, ten per season in Pennsylvania, three and fifteen in 

 New York, makes large bags legally impossible. But the hunter who 

 attains these figures is rare indeed. 



On Fig. 11 is shown the seasonal take per hunter based on the 

 number of hunters who reported taking some game.^ Of course this 

 is very conservative since many of these hunters who reported taking 

 game did not pursue grouse at all. For what it is worth, the average 

 game-taking hunter in New York has bagged an annual total of from 



^ This is based on actual data beginning 1932, on computed data 1923-31 using 

 the 1932-38 average of 3.5 times as many licenses reporting as reported taking game. 



