124 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



or near posted lands provided with caretakers, the birds are 

 now more common, also, in some parts of western Massachu- 

 setts many birds are left over. 



Reports on the present numbers of the Grouse are contra- 

 dictory. One man finds no birds, while another, near at hand, 

 finds many. There are sections where very few young birds 

 were reared in 1920, and others where many were raised, but, 

 on the whole, the increase of the year was disappointing. 



More than 95,000 hunters were licensed last year to kill 

 Grouse in this Commonwealth. The species has been killed 

 off or driven out of large sections in many States. With the 

 increasing number of hunters, motor cars and automatic guns, 

 the clearing of more and more land, and all the accessory ad- 

 verse influences due to modern civilization, the Grouse cannot 

 stand continuous shooting year after year if we are to rely alone 

 upon the number of birds that the woods naturally produce. 



Artificial propagation never has been a commercial success 

 with any woods Grouse. To increase this species more pro- 

 tection will be necessary. There is a complete remedy for the 

 decrease of this bird which can be applied whenever it be- 

 comes necessary. Whenever the sportsmen of Massachu- 

 setts are willing to practice sufficient self-denial, we may have 

 the Ruffed Grouse almost as plentiful again as it was in the 

 early decades of the nineteenth century. 



The remedy is a closed season for two or three years. Wher- 

 ever such a law has been enacted and enforced the decimated 

 birds have increased wonderfully. Recently, after such a season 

 of forbearance in Michigan, Ruffed Grouse became so remarkably 

 abundant that they were common in places where they had 

 not been noted at all for many years. After a similar closed 

 season in Minnesota, more than 500,000 birds were killed, ac- 

 cording to the tabulated reports of the sportsmen as returned 

 by them individually to the game commissioners. 



There is a disadvantage, however, in leaving the protection 

 of this bird entirely to the legislative body. The Legislature 

 meets before the breeding season and has no means of knowing 

 what the year's increase will be or how much protection will 

 be required. The Department of Conservation could ascer- 

 tain the facts after the breeding season and before the hunting 



