166 



Game Survey of the North Central States 



a food, or else their corn patches were in the woods where chickens could not get 

 the corn habit. 



Little was learned of the early history of the pinnated grouse in Iowa. 

 Missouri, or Minnesota. E. L. Schofield told me he remembers they were 

 abundant on the prairies of southwest Missouri in 1870. Widmann says of 

 Missouri: "As long ago as 1888 reports came . . . with the lamentable 

 notation once common now rare'." 



John H. Stevens, who settled at St. Paul in 1849, says "prairie chickens were 

 abundant, but there were few quails" at that time. 



By anticipating certain information to be presented later, we may now cast 

 up the rise and fall of the true priarie chicken, that is, its response to various 

 degrees of settlement, in its original prairie home: 



Southern Sharptails. We have already seen that sharptails, in the role 

 of "burr-oak grouse" extended south to Chicago. What was their southern 

 boundary elsewhere? 



Alonzo Jacha told me the sharptail persisted in southern Iowa County, Wis- 

 consin, until 1900. It occupied the large hazelbrush stumplots which the dairy 

 industry has now largely done away with. 



I encountered during the survey, but was not able to verify, a report of sharp- 

 tails in Missouri. This, if true, is a matter of great ornithological interest. The 

 alleged occurrence is on the brushy borders of a remnant of original prairie. 

 The locality will be divulged, on request, to responsible persons who can show 

 that they are not going to "collect" the remnant. Game departments should take 

 special measures to conserve interesting remnants of this kind, where they exist, 

 but unfortunately their interest too often centers on shootable species only. 



In northwestern Iowa sharptails were reported to me as winter migrants. It 

 seems probable, however, that in this case "sharptail" is just a convenient name 

 under which to shoot winter pinnated, the latter being closed, and the former not 

 mentioned in the game law. 



Rise and Fall on Acquired Range: Skipped Cycles. We have fol- 

 lowed the history of the pinnated grouse in its original prairie home. It re- 

 mains to recount its fortunes in invading the north. 



