170 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL, MUSEUM 



monly skulked on foot, if not too closely pressed. Even when I forced them 

 to take to wing by running after them, they rarely went more than a few 

 yards before alighting in a tree, or dropping again to the ground, over which 

 they might continue to hasten, if much alarmed, until it was useless to follow 

 them farther. 



After this and several similar experiences, he learned that the only 

 way to secure any of these unsophisticated grouse was to " pot " 

 them in the " time-honored fashion of local hunters " by shooting 

 off their heads as they sat on trees, bushes, or logs, or on the ground. 

 More than once he was able to bag all the birds in a flock, shooting 

 one at a time, while the survivors refused to fly. While hunting for 

 ducks one day in a boat, he saw a grouse sitting on a log. " When I 

 finally shot her," he says, " the report of the gun started six others, 

 hitherto unseen, although close about her. Flying only a few yards, 

 they alighted in trees and bushes within plain view, and remained 

 there gazing at us while, sitting in the bow of the boat, I loaded and 

 fired until the last bird had fallen." 



Such shooting was unsportsmanlike, of course, unless the hunter 

 gave the birds a chance by using a rifle and shooting at the head. It 

 was the only method in those days, but is no longer necessary now 

 in any but the more remote regions, for the birds have become edu- 

 cated and have learned to give the sportsman a chance to show his 

 skill. Good sport may now be had with dog and gun in these same 

 woods. 



Fall. — Brewster's (1925) very full and exceedingly interesting ac- 

 count of the Canada ruffed grouse contains several references to a 

 migratory movement or an erratic autumn wandering, similar, per- 

 haps, to their queer behavior during the restless " crazy season " that 

 we have noted elsewhere.. I quote a story, one of three similar 

 incidents, told him by Luman Sargent : 



After spending an October night (before 1870) in the old log-camp of Middle 

 Dam and leaving it at about sunrise the next morning, he had gone only a 

 short distance into neighbouring woods when he saw a Partridge on a log and 

 shot it. Startled by the report of his gun so many birds of the same species 

 rose far and near on wing, one after another, that for half a minute the air 

 seemed full of them as far as the eye could range through trees and brushwood. 

 There could not have been less than one hundred of them, he said. When fol- 

 lowed they all kept moving on by successive flights in the same direction, and to 

 the southward. They were so restless and shy that he had difficulty in getting 

 near them and was able to kill only a few more before losing track of them 

 altogether. 



Winter. — Ernest Thompson Seton (Ernest E. Thompson, 1890), 

 referring to the habits of the ruffed grouse in Manitoba, says: 



It seems to be the normal habit of this bird to roost in a snow drift during the 

 coldest weather. The wonderful non-conductivity of the snow is well known, 

 but may be forcibly illustrated by the fact that although the thermometer 



