Management of the Ruffed Grouse 351 



feeding cover, while the interior of the unit should be dominantly 

 conifers. This principle may be followed either in a square unit or a 

 parallel band system (see Plate 50). When the planting unit ex- 

 ceeds twenty acres and is quite evenly proportioned in shape, it may 

 be desirable to consider the need of more shrub bands than merely 

 along the outside borders. Areas of forty acres or more may well be 

 planted in two or more units of bands and blocks of shrubs, hard- 

 woods, and conifers. 



Integrally related to the pattern of large plantations is the need 

 for open land. So far as possible interior openings may be supplied 

 by roads maintained for transportation of products, administration 

 and patrol, and fire control. These roads through plantations and 

 woodland also serve somewhat as firebreaks and provide an oppor- 

 tunity to improve grouse food conditions. The need for roads of 

 this type depends upon the lack of open-field edges, pond borders, 

 and wide stream margins. When points in the plantation (or woods) 

 are three hundred feet or more from the outside, there is need for 

 open edges in the interior. Six hundred feet apart is as close as these 

 openings are recommended for grouse habitat. 



The Coniferous Plantings. Reforestation has been practically syn- 

 onymous with conifer plantings until very recent years (see Plates 

 51, 52). The problem of reforesting public land had been attacked 

 almost entirely from the forestry and watershed protection points 

 of view. So habitual had the practice become that it was generally 

 advocated by sportsmen and others interested in wild life. Within 

 the last decade wild-life studies have indicated the limitations of 

 coniferous plantings as desirable cover for game (Edminster, 1935). 

 The principle of edges, so well enunciated by Leopold and other 

 pioneer wild-life ecologists, was gradually clarified as it applied to 

 reforestation work. It was shown that when a uniform type plan- 

 tation exceeds a certain size, its center becomes a biological desert 

 as far as game is concerned. The distance that a bird or animal will 

 habitually penetrate this cover varies with the different species. 

 Grouse are more tolerant than many. They utilize the outer two 

 hundred-foot band of conifer stand fully, and make considerable 

 use of the next hundred feet. Beyond this it is practically worthless 

 to them. We may then proceed on the basis that a coniferous plant- 

 ing, not exceeding six hundred feet in the narrow dimension, will 



