THE VANISHING PRAIRIE HEN 
Its Past, Present and Future—Why It Cannot Survive 
BY CLATE TINAN| 
Editor Kimball (South Dakota) Graphic 
GEIZZZ=)T a South Dakota rancher’s 
: early morning breakfast table 
one beautiful August day in 
the middle eighties I sat 
y opposite a most charming 
young woman and with ad- 
admiring side-glances noted 
.__| the gusto with which she 
made way with a skilfully 
broiled young prairie chicken. 
It did not take me long to 
reach the conclusion that any girl of city 
breeding who could arise with the sun and 
eat a breakfast that would make a harvest 
hand think he had acute dyspepsia would 
_ make a wife that would—in the vernacular 
of the day—do to “tie to.” And many 
chickens of the kind have since then been 
jointly discussed across the dining table by 
the same lady and “yours truly.” 
It is not strange, then, that the thought 
comes over me in my musings, that the 
game bird which indirectly brought me a 
charming wife is doomed to extinction in 
the very land where so much contributes to 
its happiness and, under reasonable con- 
ditions, a long life? For be it known, no land 
between the rising and the setting sun on this 
continent is so well adapted to the prop- 
agation of the pinnated grouse as the 
sparsely settled prairies of Nebraska and 
the two Dakotas. But man is much the 
same wherever you find him—selfish to a 
degree. He recks not of the morrow, but 
kills, kills, kills, and with a reckless 
abandon when game crosses his path that 
passeth understanding. It is natural to be- 
lieve that the commercial instinct of the 
average American would give him pause 
when the market shooter seeks a profit from 
the traffic in game birds, for no other class 
would receive greater financial benefit from 
a rigid protection of the pinnated grouse. 
One consignment of game from Nebraska 

received in Chicago a few years since con- 
tained eighteen barrels of prairie chickens— 
from a locality where they were and are 
now comparatively scarce. A rough esti- 
mate of the number of these birds killed in 
Nebraska that year was placed at 5,000,000, 
of which all but 1,000,000 were for shipment 
out of the State. The frightful slaughter of 
the birds in this State, Kansas and the 
Dakotas during the past five years has told 
with awful effect upon the supply; and to- 
day localities which but three years ago gave 
the finest of sport are almost barren of even 
one day’s fair shooting in the very beginning 
of the season. 
No finer game bird flies the American 
continent than the pinnated grouse, and it 
is the wonder of all true sportsmen every- 
where that the great West, so generous in 
its temperament, so indifferent to the dollar, 
should countenance the destruction of 
practically the only game bird which the 
West can really calls its own. And yet it is 
this generosity, this indifference, which is 
loth to take action against those responsible 
for the certain but sure extinction of the 
prairie chicken, that is slowly, but none the 
less surely, driving the prairie chickens to 
final extinction. The violations of the some- 
what liberal game laws are winked at when 
committed by a neighbor, and the stranger 
is given the freedom of the prairies and the 
utmost courtesy to do as he likes. He may 
not only shoot all the birds that he and his 
companions and their hosts can possibly 
consume, but backs are turned when he 
packs for shipment what he cares to trans- 
port to his friends at home. If he meets 
with poor success, the local market shooter 
and his perfectly trained dogs can be had 
at a moment’s notice to add to his supply. 
After his departure, and the local hunters 
have picked off from each covey a reason- 
ably satisfying number of birds and the 
