234 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



were so abundant as to be caught in pens and traps, 

 and any one could kill as many as he wished. Indeed, 

 Audubon speaks of a friend who was fond of practicing 

 rifle shooting, who killed upward of forty in one morn- 

 ing and did not pick them up. 



Twenty-five years later Audubon speaks of them as 

 at that time not being found in any numbers east of 

 the State of Illinois, and says that there, too, they are 

 decreasing at a rapid rate. 



At the approach of spring the large packs, which 

 have held together during the winter, break up into 

 smaller companies of from twenty to fifty, and before 

 long in March or April the mating begins. This 

 has been spoken of by many writers as the booming 

 of the prairie chicken, or the dance of the prairie hen, 

 though this last term is more commonly applied to the 

 spring maneuvers of the sharp-tailed grouse. This 

 mating has been described in a somewhat spectacular 

 manner by Audubon, but recent observers have not seen 

 such fierce encounters as he describes. An excellent 

 account of this mating play was printed in Forest and 

 Stream many years ago by Judge John Dean Caton, 

 an early settler of Illinois, who had been familiar with 

 these birds for almost all his life. He says : 



"The spring of the year is the season of courtship 

 with them, and it does not last all the year round, as 

 it does with humans, and they do it in rather a loud 

 way, too; and instead of taking the evening, as many 

 people are inclined to do, they choose the early morn- 

 ing. Early in the morning you may see them assemble 



