414 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
explain to himself why he did so and at the next shot 
correct his error. 
Like all the prairie grouse with which I am ac- 
quainted, the meat of the full-grown sharp-tailed 
grouse is dark, though the half-grown birds are white- 
meated. The flesh is tender and well flavored, as might 
be expected of birds that had passed the summer feed- 
ing on prairie insects and a variety of berries. In 
winter, when the character of the food largely changes, 
and willow and cottonwood buds constitute a large 
share of its dietary, its flesh is less toothsome, being 
much drier. 
The sharp-tailed grouse, owing to the character of 
country which it inhabits, brushy ravines, willowy bot- 
toms, and, at certain seasons of the year, hillsides over- 
grown with underbrush and some large trees, is much 
less easily killed than the pinnated grouse, and will 
probably remain with us much longer than that spe- 
cies. If it could be introduced to eastern covers, and 
protected until it had established itself, it would prove 
a grand bird for Atlantic coast gunners. So intro- 
duced, and so acclimated, it would, however, bear only 
the very lightest shooting, perhaps not more than three 
or four per gun in a season. More than that would 
soon result in their extermination, and the efforts put 
forth to introduce them would thus be wasted. 
In the early days of western field trials held on 
prairie chickens in this country, the birds sought for 
were chiefly the pinnated grouse. These proved not 
sufficiently numerous, and were so readily killed that 
