THE SHARP-TAILED GROUSE. 87 
resort to the stubble-fields for food in the autumn and 
winter, and remain there all day, in cloudy weather, but 
they only visit them each morning and evening when the 
sun is bright and warm, the remainder of the day being 
passed in the shade. 
They are so numerous in some of the regions beyond 
the Rocky Mountains that a person may easily bag twenty 
or thirty brace a day, if he is armed with a breech-loader 
and accompanied by a steady dog. They are trapped, 
like the prairie-chickens, by pot and market hunters, 
and are shipped to the Eastern cities in such extensive 
quantities as to lead a person to infer that they will be 
extinct in a few years. Ifit is true that they will not 
live in close vicinity to man, their extinction is only a 
matter of time, unless some efforts are made to preserve 
them in places where they may be comparatively safe 
from his intrusion. They will be abundant enough dur- 
ing the present generation, however, as they have a vast 
mpire, well-stocked with food, in which to roam, and 
= lea little from the severity of the weather. 
Ihave seen flocks, which competent judges estimated to 
number a thousand at least, as early as November and as 
late as February, but after the latter month they break 
up, preparatory to mating. They do not separate in the 
more northern regions before April, so that the broods 
are not fit to be shot before the middle or the last of 
September. 
Old and young are so unsuspicious in the early part of 
autumn that they will allow the sportsman to approach 
exceedingly close before they attempt to flee; even when 
shot at several times they seem loth to take to the wing, 
and depend on skulking and running as the principal 
means of escape. They are not unlike the prairie-fowl in 
their habit of roosting, for they seek shelter at night in 
the tallest grass, and leave it early in the morning for 
more open spaces, except when the hens are accompanied 
