The Ruffed Grouse 383 



More interesting than his winter feeding is the winter sleeping 

 quarters of the Ruffed Grouse. Where the snow is deep and soft 

 he commonly burrows or dives into it for the night. More snow 

 may fall before morning, and often the Grouse finds himself cov- 

 ered a foot deep. Now and then a crust may form on the surface 

 and so imprison him seriously. In some regions where in certain 

 years the total number of Grouse has been greatly reduced this has 

 been the alleged cause. Personally, I find but slight ground for 

 this explanation and I believe it must be a very rare occurrence on 

 such a scale. 



THE KING OF GAME BIRDS 



Full of interest as is the Grouse to the lover of nature and of 

 birds in particular, he is perhaps most widely known and most 

 familiar to sportsmen. In all the eastern states this is by far 

 the most important land game bird. The Bob-white, where he 

 occurs, may share the sportsman's attention ; but the Grouse is 

 more universally distributed than the Quail. Doubtless there are 

 those who would say the Pheasant divides honors with the Ruffed 

 Grouse as a game bird, or even that the former is the finer and 

 more desirable bird. The Pheasant is a foreigner, an involuntary 

 immigrant. His colors are the extravagant hues of the Orient. 

 His flight is comparatively slow and labored and his haunts are not 

 preferably and characteristically the woods ; rather, the}' are the 

 relatively open places. These conditions, taken together with his 

 large size, render the Pheasant an easy target and his pursuit a 

 tame sport. How different is the Ruffed Grouse ! This hardy 

 native American must be sought in the deep woods. Here he is 

 so much at home that the successful hunter must be pretty much 

 of a woodsman himself. Most hunters employ a dog to find and 

 detain the birds ; many shooters would not consider it at all prac- 

 ticable to hunt Grouse otherwise ; they regard the dog as no less 

 indispensable than the gun. However, it is only by hunting them 

 without the aid of a dog that one comes to fully appreciate their 

 wiliness and resourcefulness. It should be borne in mind that even 

 in such hunting the game is heavily handicapped. The hunter is 

 armed with that finished engine of destruction, the modern breech- 

 loading shotgun, while the Grouse must depend wholly on his wits 

 and speed. Where is the hunter who would even attempt to match 

 Bonasa on even terms ! 



It is several years since the writer abandoned his gun altogether 

 in favor of the camera and sketch book. And now there is little 

 enough satisfaction in the reflection that that gun shot many a 

 Grouse, albeit all of them on the wing and not one over a dog. 

 I have, after all, never taken a Grouse except through the immense 

 advantage of my infernal powder and lead. I never outwitted him 

 fairly; I have never held his limp form in my hand without feeling 

 the rebuke of those maltchless wings. I found no iust ground to 

 glory over the dead body of that perfect product of the wild out- 



