98 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



hundred and five grouse, of which sixty-two had 

 fallen to my brother's gun, and forty-three to mine. 

 We would have done much better with more ser- 

 viceable dogs; besides, I was suffering all day long 

 from a most acute colic, which was anything but 

 a help to good shooting. 



Besides the sharp-tail there is but one kind of 

 grouse found in the northern cattle plains. This 

 is the sage cock, a bird the size of a young turkey, 

 and, next to the Old World capercailzie or cock of 

 the woods, the largest of the grouse family. It is 

 a handsome bird with a long pointed tail and black 

 belly, and is a very characteristic form of the re- 

 gions which it inhabits. 



It is peculiarly a desert grouse, for though some- 

 times found in the grassy prairies and on the open 

 river bottoms, it seems really to prefer the dry arid 

 wastes where the withered-looking sage brush and 

 the spiny cactus are almost the only plants to be 

 found, and where the few pools of water are so 

 bitterly alkaline as to be nearly undrinkable. It is 

 pre-eminently the grouse of the plains, and, unlike 

 all of its relatives, is never found near trees ; indeed 

 no trees grow in its haunts. 



As is the case with the two species of prairie 

 fowl the cocks of this great bird become very noisy 

 in the early spring. If a man happens at that season 

 to be out in the dry plains which are frequented by 

 the sage fowl he will hear in the morning, before 

 sunrise, the deep, sonorous booming of the cocks, 

 as they challenge one another or call to their mates. 



