PRAIRIE-CHICKEN SHOOTING. 187 



prietor, with all his knowledge of cuisine, cannot 

 impart the delicate flavour that the same bird would 

 have from the hands of the most ignorant cook, pro- 

 vided it were served a few hours after heing killed. 



This grouse can easily be domesticated. Mr. Audu- 

 bon, the naturalist, for sometime kept quite a number 

 in a walled garden, where they became as tame 

 as domestic fowls; from this circumstance I do not 

 believe there would be any difficulty in transporting 

 them across the Atlantic. To gentlemen stocking 

 preserves, or desirous of being able to show a great 

 variety of game upon their estate, this magnificent 

 member of the grouse genus ought to receive attention. 



The best prairie-chicken shooting I have ever had 

 was in the month of October; and although September 

 had been both wet and boisterous, yet the birds had 

 not packed, and lay well. Day after day I killed from 

 twenty brace upwards, and this in the northern portion 

 of Illinois, with a fourteen-bore, light-made, twenty-six- 

 inch-barrelled gun. I have little hesitation in saying 

 that, if I had had a ten-bore, which I now always use for 

 general shooting in America, my score would have been 

 at least double. As it was I saved nearly every bird, for 

 in the numerous shipments which I made to a wide 

 circle of acquaintances I did not hear of one arriving 

 at its destination unfit for the table. Now, in Sep- 

 tember, this would have been impossible, though hours 

 had been spent over each packing-case, and the ex- 

 pected hamper contained at starting as much ice and a 

 little more charcoal than game. Some knowing hands 

 profess that by immediately drawing the fowl upon 

 being knocked over, and stuffing a wisp of grass in the 

 cavity, putrefaction will be delayed ; but what an agree- 



