THE GAME BREEDER 



9 



PRAIRIE GROUSE AND SHARPTAILS. 



Third Paper. 



By D. W. Huntington. 



I have re-visited' favorite shooting 

 grounds, where a few years ago it was 

 an easy matter to shoot fifty or a hun- 

 dred prairie grouse or sharp-tail grouse 

 in a day, and have found the birds en- 

 tirely or very nearly exterminated. The 

 birds are extinct in entire States where 

 easily they can be made abundant. In 

 places where vast areas are plowed and 

 where no cover or food is left for the 

 birds, they are exposed to their natural 

 enemies and must migrate or starve. 

 Quickly the grouse have vanished from 

 such areas and it would be impossible 

 to restore them . without first planting 

 some cover and natural foods. 



The prairie grouse should be tremen- 

 dously abundant from Texas and Louisi- 

 ana north to the Dakotas and Montana 

 and from Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana 

 west to the great plains. Its northern 

 relative, the sharp-tailed grouse, once 

 was plentiful in Illinois and Nebraska 

 and northward to Canada, where it still 

 is plentiful in regions where the covers 

 and foods have not been destroyed. 

 Sharp-tails also were plentiful in Cali- 

 fornia and there are many remain-ing in 

 parts of Oregon and Washington. The 

 birds, however, must vanish here, as 

 elsewhere, when the land is plowed and 

 the covers and foods are destroyed. It 

 is important to give these birds some 

 practical protection and to look after 

 them properly not only in places where 

 they still occur but in places where 

 easily they can be restored. 



The late Sylvester D. Judd, in a bulle- 

 tin issued by the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture in 1905, says : "The 

 restocking of suitable places in the for- 

 mer range of the prairie hen and even 

 the former range of the heath hen in 

 the coast region of Virginia and Mary- 

 land appears to be quite practicable. 

 The significance of an experiment made 



by Audubon many years ago at Hender- 

 son, . Ky., is of special ' interest in this 

 connection. In the fall he secured 60 

 prairie hens and, clipping their wings, 

 turned them loose in his garden and 

 orchard, which contained about 4 acres. 

 The birds quickly became tame and 

 walked about the garden like so many 

 tame fowls, mingling occasionally with 

 the domestic poultry. The importance 

 of the prairie hen as a destroyer of 

 weeds and insects has been demonstrat- 

 ed, and its value as a food and game 

 bird is well known. As the bird pos- 

 sesses such good qualities and as proper 

 efforts for its re-introduction into parts 

 of its former range will almost certainly 

 be successful, it is to be hoped the un- 

 dertaking will not be long delayed. It is 

 unquestionable that the presence of thi.s 

 bird will add appreciably to the value of 

 any farm." 



The reason why the farmers and 

 sportsmen have done little or nothing to 

 restore the birds and to keep them 

 plentiful may be found in the game 

 laws, which, it has been well said, "tend 

 to protect the game off the face of the 

 earth." How can we expect a farmer 

 to devote any of the land needed for 

 cover and food to the grouse if the laws 

 prevent his selling a bird or its eggs and 

 even prohibit his having a grouse for 

 dinner. Sportsmen, of course, will not 

 rent the land and plant the covers and 

 foods essential to the birds' existence so 

 long as they are prevented from shooting 

 or eating a bird. It is fortunate that 

 the laws have been amended in many 

 states so that profitable grouse breeding 

 is no longer a criminal offense and we 

 may expect a rapid increase in the num- 

 ber of the birds in the fields and in the 

 markets as soon as the people realize 

 what they can do and learn how to do it. 



Dr. Judd was quite right in saying, 



