THE GAME BREEDER 



119 



PRAIRIE GROUSE AND SHARPTAILS. 



By D. W. Huntington. 



"The inevitable day will surely come that will bring the same fate to all our wild crea- 

 tures, and the prairie chicken, like other natives of the wilderness, will remain only as a 

 memory." — Daniel Girard Elliot. 



The distinguished ornithologist, Elliot, 

 ends his chapter on the prairie hen with 

 the words above quoted. At the time 

 he wrote the prairie grouse had become 

 extinct in Kentucky, where Audubon de- 

 scribed them as so plentiful they were 

 regarded as pests on account of the 

 damage done to the fruit trees. The 

 birds were gone also from Ohio and some 

 other states when Elliot wrote his books 

 about the game-birds, and rapidly they 

 were vanishing in Illinois, Missouri, 

 Kansas and throughout their range. We 

 know why the birds vanished and I am 

 quite sure it will be an easy matter to 

 make them more plentiful than they ever 

 were. No American game-birds, how- 

 ever, need the practical attention of game 

 breeders more than the prairie grouse 

 and the other grouse of the open coun- 

 try do. The sharp-tailed grouse of the 

 northern plains and the big sage grouse 

 of the western sage plains are as surely 

 destined to "remain only as a memory," 

 as Elliot says, or to become tremendous- 

 ly plentiful, as I am sure they will as 

 soon as the western breeders realize 

 how inexpensively and profitably they 

 can be reared in a wild state on the 

 farms where grain and grass are culti- 

 vated and on the vast plains where the 

 artemesia or wild sage grows. 



The heath-hen, another open country 

 grouse was almost extinct before efforts 

 were made to increase its numbers and 

 it is now well known that this bird is in- 

 creasing in numbers and soon it can be 

 introduced and made plentiful in other 

 localities, provided the ground be made 

 safe and attractive and the birds be 

 properly looked after. 



The sage grouse has vanished from 

 vast areas where it should be profitably 

 plentiful for the very good reason that 



it cannot stand the losses due to its nu- 

 merous natural enemies and the serious 

 additional check to its increase, due to 

 much shooting. 



All of the grouse of the open country 

 are comparatively easy marks early in 

 the season when they are most desir- 

 able for food. It is far easier to pro- 

 tect the woodland grouse by laws limit- 

 ing the bag and shortening the season 

 than it is to protect the grouse of the 

 open country. It is far more impor- 

 tant that we should look after the last 

 named at once and take active steps to 

 make them profitably plentiful. I say 

 profitably advisedly since no one can be 

 expected to do anything which will not 



pay- 

 Game laws and capable game officers 

 are not enough to save the prairie grouse 

 and sharp-tail grouse, because the cul- 

 tivation of the lands they inhabit 

 destroys entirely their natural foods 

 during certain seasons of the year and 

 also the cover which is essential to their 

 existence. No protectively marked birds 

 which rely on concealment to escape 

 their natural enemies can survive when 

 the covers are ploughed under on vast 

 areas, leaving nothing but a bare sur- 

 face of earth, often unbounded even by 

 wire fences ; no birds can survive a total 

 loss of their foods during long periods 

 when food is most needed. 



I shall discribe at length to the many 

 foods of the grouse of the open coun- 

 try and also the character of the cover 

 which was abundant not only during the 

 nesting season but also in the winter, 

 at which times concealing covers are 

 most needed. 



When I used to shoot large numbers 

 of prairie grouse in Illinois and other 

 states and as many sharp-tailed grouse 



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