Prairie Chickens 165 



may have ebbed and flowed with changing weather and food conditions, and with 

 cycles if there were any. 



Increase with Settlement: Learning to Use Corn. Judd (1905), 

 quoting Hatch, says of the pinnated: 



". . . in Illinois as late as 1836 a hunter was extremely lucky if he 

 could bag a dozen in a day. Some years later, with much less effort, one could 

 have shot 50 in a day, and there were records of 100 to a single gun." 



Here was an increase caused by, or at least associated with, the introduction 

 of settlements and grain feed. 



Audubon found the pinnated very abundant in Kentucky at a much earlier 

 date, possibly by reason of the earlier influx of cultivation. Writing of Hender- 

 son, Kentucky, in 1810, he says: 



. a friend of mine, who was fond of practicing rifle shooting killed 

 upward of 40 in one morning, but picked none of them up, so satiated with grouse 

 was he, as well as every member of his family." 



Bogardus, writing in Illinois in 1874, does not even mention Kentucky as a 

 place to hunt chickens. Evidently Kentucky had already reached the stage of too 

 much cultivation, or shooting, or both. The prairies of Illinois, however, which 

 Hatch describes as poor in 1836, and where Bogardus describes chickens as only 

 "rather numerous" in 1857, had in 1874 just passed their prime as chicken coun- 

 try. In 1872, Bogardus says two men had killed 600 in 10 days in MacLean 

 County. He adds as of 1874: 



"Where I live (on the Sangamon in Logan County) grouse are nearly as 

 abundant in the latter part of the jail as they were 17 years ago . . . but 

 not anything like as many young grouse ... in August or September as 

 there used to be." 



In short, the central Illinois peak must have come in I860. By 1874 the 

 main shooting was on late fall migrants from the north. 



Bogardus' most interesting contribution, however, is not his tales of mighty 

 bags, but his assertion that chickens had to learn how to use corn cover, and 

 presumably how to eat corn as food: 



"When I first came to Illinois (1857), the grouse in October and later were 

 mostly found in the prairie-grass. There has now been a change m their habits, 

 and they seem to like best to lie in corn. I suppose the reason was that as prairies 

 were much broken up, and the quantity of land in corn rapidly increased, the 

 grouse found out that lying in the corn was excellent, and the habit was soon 

 formed. In the corn there is a great plenty of various kinds of food. The 

 ground is mellow and affords excellent dusting places." 



The italics are mine. This original reluctance to use corn is on all fours with 

 Stoddard's observation that Georgia quail had to learn to eat buckwheat. It does 

 not speak well for the agricultural enterprise of the Illinois Indians in pre-settle- 

 ment days. They evidently failed to raise enough corn to teach the chickens it was 



