CHAPTER VI 

 RUFFED GROUSE 



T~?X PL AN ATI ON of Map. The "present range" of the ruffed grouse, as 

 uj shown on Map 13, is denned as range containing grouse in every township. 

 The "scattering range" does not contain grouse in every township. The boundaries 

 of both full and scattering range are believed to be accurate in Wisconsin except in 

 the southwestern part of the State, where some of the regular range may possibly 

 be better classified as scattering. The Minnesota range boundaries are accurate 

 and are furnished by R. T. King, of the University of Minnesota. The boundaries 

 in all other States are approximate. 



In Ohio a questionnaire has been sent to game wardens by the conservation 

 department asking them to report whether the species was present or absent in 

 the county. A check mark indicates that they were present in 1928, the letter "N" 

 that they were absent. This of course is second-hand information from a mixed 

 body of observers. 



Centrifugal Shrinkage of Range. This is the only non-migratory 

 species covered in this report which originally ranged throughout all appropriate 

 parts of the entire north central region. If its original exterior boundary en- 

 tered the region at all, it did so on the prairies of northwestern Missouri and 

 western Iowa and Minnesota. In the Ozark region its range extended across the 

 Missouri boundary into Kansas. Widmann seems to have considered it absent 

 from the extreme southern parts of Missouri, but the map shows that this is not 

 now the case. 



The species next most universal in distribution was the whitetail deer, but 

 Shiras (1921) says deer were originally absent from the north shore of Lake 

 Superior. 



Map 13 shows that the present distribution of ruffed grouse is almost en- 

 tirely confined to the northern, eastern and southern margins of its original range 

 in this region. This centrifugal shrinkage may be of great import in the present 

 cyclic behavior of ruffed grouse populations. 



The extreme persistence of the species in the small remnants of ungrazed 

 woodland along the river bluffs of Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana is strongly sugges- 

 tive of a special "affinity" for this cornbelt range. An equal degree of deforesta- 

 tion in central Wisconsin would, I firmly believe, have exterminated the species 

 long ago. I hold the opinion that the center of the north central region was the 

 optimum range of the ruffed grouse, and that the bulk of its present distribution 

 occurs on marginal (which is to say adverse) environments. 



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