176 Game Survey of the North Central States 



shifts of scores of miles. The present annual and seasonal mobility remains 

 cloudy, and the daily radius even more so. (On daily radius we have one de- 

 pendable fragment of information to be described later: In Marathon County, 

 Wisconsin, chickens fly five miles every day to the feeding station.) 



Facts on mobility are of obvious importance to management. Banding is 

 needed to get exact facts. Meanwhile we must construe the evidence as best we 

 can. Taken all together, the evidence shows that prairie chickens are more mobile 

 than any other gallinaceous game, and not permanently attached to a fixed 

 locality to the same degree as quail. Their seasonal cruising radius is long and 

 variable. Therefore, from the standpoint of management they partake to a cer- 

 tain degree of that peculiar character which necessitates special governmental in- 

 tervention in behalf of migratory birds. A given State, or county, or landowner 

 may tolerate abuses in birds of this character without promptly suffering the con- 

 sequences in the form of a short crop, because the deficit is made up out of the 

 mobile breeding stock conserved by the neighboring States, counties, or land- 

 owners. 



Therefore, in the long run, the priarie chicken will be somewhat more de- 

 pendent on public, and somewhat less on private, initiative than quail, because 

 the incentive for local or private conservation is weakened to the extent that a 

 species is migratory or mobile. This principle is abundantly proved by the present 

 waterfowl situation in the nation at large, and by the history of the migratory 

 bird laws. 



Conversely, and for the same reason, the prairie chicken's response to public 

 measures such as refuges and feeding stations will be the greater and the more 

 satisfactory. In the case of feeding stations, this principle is already borne out in 

 actual experience, as we shall presently see. 



WINTER HABITS; WINTER FEEDING 



Budding. Curiously enough, many people who know that ruffed grouse 

 and sharptails bud, doubt whether the true chickens do. The following ob- 

 servations were compiled during the Wisconsin survey, and from Judd's classic 

 bulletin: 



