252 Ruffed Grouse 



season of extreme cold, food and shelter will be better. Movements like 

 this take place with many birds and mammals. We used to see such 



shif tings with buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope, and cer- 

 Autumnal . . 



w , . tain other American grouse, and there seems no doubt 



that they take place in the case of the Ruffed Grouse 

 and Bob-white. At all events, in the mild weather of the middle fall, 

 Ruffed Grouse are often found in extraordinary and unexpected places, 

 as outbuildings, the trees or lawns near houses in private places, and even 

 in the middle of a mowing-lot. After the first cold weather, however, the 

 birds are likely to choose a swamp or woods for winter quarters. 



A good dog for Ruffed Grouse is exceedingly hard to find. He should 

 have a keen nose, great caution, and the more experience the better. 

 The scent given forth by this bird so excites the ordinary dog that he 

 loses all idea of caution, and runs about as if demented. In his noisy 

 racing back and forth, he alarms the grouse, which thus has ample oppor- 

 tunity to lay plans to foil its pursuers. The wise old "partridge dog" 

 acts very differently. Naturally intelligent, he understands the difficulties 

 of his task, and his experience in the ways of many grouse in other 

 years causes him perfectly to comprehend the diffi- 

 culties of the task required of him. He works close 

 to the gun, and, at the faintest suggestion of the scent 

 of a grouse, stops and waits for his master to come up. Then cautiously 

 and in silence he works out the scent, and satisfies himself as to what 

 the bird has done and probably now is doing; and then he tries to be a 

 little more cunning than the bird. Sometimes such a dog, when he finds 

 that a grouse is persistently running before him, will leave the trail, make 

 a wide circle, and go around beyond the bird, coming back from the 

 point toward which it was running, with the purpose of stopping it and 

 making it He until the gunner comes up. 



The Ruffed Grouse is so persistently shot that in the East there are 

 now few districts where good shooting can be had. In less thickly popu- 

 lated districts as parts of New England, New York. 

 Decrease Michigan, and Wisconsin this bird is still abundant. 



Even if the stock of grouse in southern New England 

 and in southern New York has been brought down very low, extermina- 

 tion as yet has hardly come wherever covers suited to the Ruffed Grouse 

 remain. 



Classification and Distribution 



The Ruffed Grouse belongs to the Order Galliiia: and the Family Telraonida. 

 Its scientific name is Bonasa uinbellus. The range of the species extends from the 

 southern Alleghenies, Kansas, Colorado and northern California to Alaska, central 

 Quebec and Nova Scotia. Four subspecies are distinguished : T. u. umbellus, of 

 the eastern-middle United States ; T. u. togata, of eastern Canada, New England and 

 northern New York ; T. u. umbelloides, the Gray Ruffed Grouse, of Alaska and 

 Yukon ; and T, u. sabini, Sabine's Ruffed Grouse, of the Northern Pacific Coast. 



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