300 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
The pinnated grouse is that best known—that which 
affords the best sport and the best eating; the sharp- 
tailed grouse, however, is shot with it to the westward of 
Lake Michigan, though not, I believe, to the eastward of 
that noble sheet of water, and is scarcely inferior to it. 
The great sage grouse is not shot at all as a sport, and | 
is only killed rarely by the voyageurs who cross the dreary : 
wastes, in which alone it has its abode, and the adventur- 
ous hunting parties, who from time to time invade its wild 
fastnesses. 
The pinnated grouse abhors wooded country ; is rarely, 
if ever, found in tall timber; carefully eschews low, wet 
lands ; and haunts in preference, high, dry, rolling prairies, 
where there is little water. Indeed, itis believed that this 
bird never drinks, but takes all the liquid which it uses 
by picking the dew or rain, drop by drop, from the herbage 
or bushes on which it has fallen. This curious fact was 
first discovered by a gentleman, who kept a hen bird for 
some considerable time in a cage, and observed that she 
would never take water from a cup, though if any were 
spilled over the bars of her cage she would eagerly pick it 
off. 
This is a beautiful and noble species, the full-grown 
male weighing nearly two pounds, and being proportiona- 
bly vigorous, bold, and strong on the wing. It is decidedly 
the finest gallinaceous game, if it may be so called, of 
America, and affords the greatest sport to those who are 
80 fortunate as to reside where it abounds. 
In the barrens of Kentucky and the prairie regions of 
Ohio, it begins first to be found in numbers, increasing as 
