20 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Audubon says that adepts in the sport of Woodcock 

 shooting have been known to kill upwards of one hundred in 

 a day. 



Doughty asserts that in 1825, in the meadows bordering 

 on the Cohansey River, in the lower part of New Jersey, 

 three men in about two hours killed more than forty Wood- 

 cock on a small spot of ground ; ^ and also that in a very small 

 spot in the lowlands west of New York City a party of two or 

 three men killed upwards of eighty Woodcock, while in a very 

 small spot of a few acres in Salem County as many as one 

 hundred and fifty were killed during that day, and very many 

 more on the same spot on the day succeeding.^ 



In the early days of the settlement of America, and for 

 many years afterward, the Ruffed Grouse was not only very 

 numerous in the eastern and middle States and in Canada, 

 but was a tame and apparently stupid bird, as it still is in a 

 few of the wilder regions of the country. Lahontan regarded 

 the stupidity of the " Wood Hen " as the most comical thing 

 he had seen, for they sat upon the trees in flocks, and were 

 killed one after the other, without offering to stir. The 

 Indians shot at them with arrows, for they were not worth 

 a charge of powder.^ Evidently he refers to the Ruffed 

 Grouse, for he describes how they drum on a log. 



Wilson, in travelling among the mountains that bounded 

 the Susquehanna River, was always able to get an abundant 

 supply of these birds without leaving the path. 



Abbott avers that in the swamps of central New Jersey 

 these birds used to congregate by thousands, and that in 

 the closing years of the eighteenth century it was a common 

 sport on all farms to surround the Ruffed Grouse, and when 

 a great host of birds had been gathered in a few trees, all 

 the farmers would fire at a given signal, their old flint-locks 

 loaded with bits of nails and cut pieces of lead, and repre- 

 sentatives from the different farms would go home loaded 

 with a " big mess of patridge." The Grouse congregated in 



' Doughty, J. and T.: The Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sporta, 1830, Vol. I, 

 p. 97. 



' Mi., Vol. II, p. 15. 



3 Lahontan, Baron de; Some New Voyages to North America, 1703, Vol. I, p. 66. 



