82 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



prairie grass. They flew into the bottom from some 

 distance off about daybreak, fed for a couple of 

 hours, and soon after sunrise again took wing and 

 flew up along the course of the dry creek mentioned 

 above. While on the bottom they were generally 

 quite shy, not permitting anything like a close ap- 

 proach before taking wing. Their habit of crowing 

 or clucking while flying off is very noticeable ; it is, 

 by the way, a most strongly characteristic trait of 

 this species. I have been especially struck by it when 

 shooting in Minnesota, where both the sharp-tail 

 and the common prairie fowl are found ; the contrast 

 between the noisiness of one bird and the quiet of 

 the other was very marked. If one of us approached 

 a covey on horseback the birds would, if they thought 

 they were unobserved, squat down close to the 

 ground; more often they would stand very erect, 

 and walk off. If we came too close to one it would 

 utter a loud kuk-kuk-kuk, and be off, at every few 

 strokes of its wings repeating the sound a kind of 

 crowing cluck. This is the note they utter when 

 alarmed, or when calling to one another. When a 

 flock are together and undisturbed they keep up a 

 sociable garrulous cackling. 



Every morning by the time the sun had been up 

 a little while the grouse had all gone from the bot- 

 tom, but later in the day while riding along the creek 

 among the cattle we often stumbled upon little flocks. 

 We fired at them with our revolvers whenever we 

 were close enough, but the amount we got in this 

 way was very limited, and as we were rather stinted 



