PRAIRIE CHICKENS— PINNATED GROUSE. 303 



sight, standing up so alertly a couple of hundred yards 

 from the track, their mottled feathers blending prettily 

 with the ground, covered with the spotless white of the 

 soft snow. At such times, the novice wishes he was out, 

 and had his gun; foolish boy, he could not get anywhere 

 near gunshot to them, for at this time they are the -wild- 

 est. As their line of flight is about the height of the tel- 

 egraph wires, many birds are killed by flying against 

 them, and the sharp eyes of the section -men along the 

 railroad are always on the watch for the ever-welcome 

 chicken. At the season of the year when the snow is 

 deep and food is hard to obtain, the farmer's boy exhibits 

 his cunning, and with his trap baited with corn catches 

 the birds, and at home he marches in, throwing down his 

 feathered prizes, when for a time salt pork and bacon are 

 relegated to the cellar, and the family feast on prairie 

 chickens. The laws are very stringent against the trap- 

 ping of pinnated grouse, but the farmer seems to think 

 that the law of the land has no effect on 7iis land, so far 

 as 7ie or his family are concerned; in other words, that he 

 has the right at all times to capture, as he sees fit, suffi- 

 cient of the birds for the use and benefit of himself and 

 family. This impression is entirely erroneous, for the 

 prairie chickens are regarded in the eyes of the law as 

 ferce naturcB — that is, animals of a wild nature, belong- 

 ing to no one, but being under the protection of the law 

 as provided by statute; and the farmer has no more right 

 to kill or capture these birds in the close season than has 

 the veriest stranger. The fact that they breed on his land 

 makes no difference; they are not his until he has them 

 in his actual possession; even then, they are only his so 

 long as he retains possession of them; let them escape, and 

 they become again animals ferce naturcB, and remain 

 so unless they have animus revertendi (the intention 

 of returning), which no member of the grouse family ever 



