RUFFED GROUSE 159 



ings or through windows. Once one flew through a window into 

 our machine shop, where the machinery was running and scores of 

 men were working. One of my neighbors once found one inside her 

 house with no visible means of entrance except through a chimney. 

 Forbush (1927) says tha<>- 



Some have been known to go through the glass of moving motor cars or 

 trolley cars and even into locomotive headlights. So careless are they of ob- 

 structions that a high wire fence around a covert is likely to kill all the Ruffed 

 Grouse within its confines. Dr. A. O. Gross found that three birds which 

 had been killed by flying against obstructions were infected by internal para- 

 sites, and he suggests the possibility that the irritation caused by such para- 

 sites may be the initial cause of the " crazy " behavior commonly observed. 



Game. — Although the bobwhite may be more universally popular, 

 for the reasons stated elsewhere, I think most sportsmen will agree 

 that the ruffed grouse, known in the South as " pheasant," in the 

 North as " partridge " or " patridge," and in Canada as " birch par- 

 tridge," is the unrivaled king of North American upland game birds. 

 Shooting into a flock of whirring quail gives a thrill, but it is com- 

 paratively easy, and shooting the straight-flying prairie chicken in 

 the open is child's play compared with stopping the swift rush of 

 the wily grouse through the treetops. The thundering roar of the 

 rising bird, the flash of nitro at a vanishing glimpse of brown 

 feathers, the dull thud of a plump partridge falling to earth, and 

 the whir of wings among dry leaves as it beats its final tattoo, com- 

 bine to produce the thrill of thrills for the successful sportsman. 

 And with the freshly killed monarch of the woods in hand come 

 admiring thoughts, so well expressed by Charles B. Morss (1923) : 



In no other game bird do the tones of gray, black, cinnamon, and white 

 shade and blend with such quiet harmony. Child of the wilderness that he is, 

 in the full dark pupil of that eye surrounded by an iris of October's own brown, 

 seem always to dwell the brooding shadows of the great forest he loves so 

 well. And in the moulding of him Nature seems to have embodied all of the 

 beauty, all of the charm, all of the inexplicable strangeness and romance of 

 the autumnal woods and produced her feathered masterpiece — the perfect game 

 bird. * * * And wherever you chance to find him — in the still shadow of 

 ravine and glen where the climbing bittersweet twines its orange offering 

 about old stumps and windfalls — on rocky hillsides clad with second growth 

 where the wild barberry fruits in crimson racemes and berries of the winter- 

 green flash among the leaves — or in the grass-grown tangles of birch meadow 

 and maple swamp where glows the steady flame of the black alder — always is 

 he the woodland's pride, alert, instinct with life, and filled with a spirit and 

 dash that furnishes, when in such mixed cover as we were hunting this day, the 

 very climax of shooting with the shotgun. 



A good partridge dog adds much to the pleasure and success of the 

 hunt, but good partridge dogs are scarce, and a poor one is worse 

 than none. I once had one that showed real " bird sense," knew 

 where to hunt for the birds, would not run too far away, was careful 



