128 © AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
spring. Being solitary in habit, and of a roving, restless , 
disposition, this grouse may be found in many regions, 
the opposite of each other in character, but its favorite 
haunts are wooded mountains having an altitude varying 
from one to six thousand feet. It makes its winter home 
-among the highest trees in districts where snow falls 
heavily, and there it lives secure from all dangers, except 
the lightning or the tempest. 
It is found in all the wooded regions from the Rocky 
Mountains to the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges. It 
mingles with the ruffed grouse in some places, for both 
species are much alike in taste and habits. It does not 
“‘ pack,” as its prairie congeners do; hence, it is a rare 
occurrence to find more than ten or a dozen together 
after the families break up in the autumn. Single birds 
are met with in winter oftener than packs, especially if 
they have been shot at much; yet I have seen a group 
of twelve in the month of December. They are wilder 
in winter than at any other time, but they will even then 
allow a man to come within easy shooting range before 
they attempt to flee. If they become alarmed when they 
are on the ground, they squat as closely as they can, 
stretch out their necks, and peer vigilantly about; and 
if they are flushed, they rise with a loud whirr, and, with 
a few rapid, powerful strokes of the wing, find refuge in 
some towering conifer. 
A person may fire at them in a tree a dozen times 
without eliciting a note or a movement from them, for 
they stand the leaden hail that falls about them with 
greater indifference than the coolest veteran that ever 
entered a battle field. If one is wounded, however, it 
will attempt to fly, and this is likely to cause the whole 
pack to dart away, but they may not go more than two. 
or three hundred yards before they alight again. It is 
nothing unusual to meet twenty or thirty families in a 
day’s walk in some of the regions beyond the Rocky 
