8o GALLINACEOUS BIRDS GROUSE 



wheat-stubble. Roosevelt describes killing one him- 

 dred and five sharp-tails one day while shooting with 

 his brother, over inferior dogs, in the stubbles to the 

 eastward of his ranch on the Little Missouri. I have 

 seen no reason to change my opinion that the sharp- 

 tailed grouse are not driven away by the railway, but 

 on the contrary, thrive in a wheat-farming country; 

 and if sufficiently protected they will increase and 

 multiply so as to afford the finest grouse-shooting in 

 America for many years to come. One season I took 

 a ride of about a thousand miles through the country 

 inhabited by sharp-tails. Starting at Fort Buford, 

 North Dakota, we ascended the Yellowstone Valley 

 from the mouth of the river to Fort Keogh, Montana, 

 and went thence up the valley of the Rose-bud ; 

 crossed the Panther Mountains to the Tongue River 

 and proceeded to the Big Horn Mountains; thence 

 northward along the Big Horn and Little Big Horn 

 to the Yellowstone, and crossing that river we re- 

 turned again to Forts Keogh and Buford. The 

 sharp-tails had not then been shot at. It was just 

 before the surrender of Sitting Bull, and we travelled 

 over country which was well preserved by the Indians. 

 The sharp-tailed grouse were very abundant in many 

 of the valleys and out on the plains, but no more so, I 

 am satisfied, than they were some years later on the 

 stubble fields of Dakota before they were much perse- 

 cuted. Sharp-tails do not like small farms, but 

 neither do the prairie-grouse, and for the same reason 

 in a closely settled country there are too many 

 guns. It is no wonder when the shooting began in 

 July and the birds brought good prices in the Chicago 



