248 
fever has worn off to a great extent, the 
market shooter who knows the haunts and 
habits of practically every covey for miles 
around. goes at his cursed work and exter- 
minates the remainder. The few old 
cocks left and a badly frightened hen or 
two get together along about Christmas- 
time and take an account of stock. They 
find it bad enough at the best, and when the 
heavy rains of late May and early June 
drown the few broods which the survivors 
of the year before have by much patience 
and diligence brought into the glad sunlight 
of spring, the parent birds, with a per- 
sistence that deserves the admiration of the 
most stolid, try once more to raise their 
little families around the edges of the fast- 
growing fields of wheat. If successful in 
thislast maternal duty,the broods are but half 
grown in late August, and it is then that the 
farmer lad or the “hired man” invariably 
rides with a loaded shotgun on his mower 
or binder with which to provide the break- 
fast table with a toothsome fry. 
This is responsible for the rapid extinction 
of the prairie chicken. Market shooters 
there are, to be sure, any number of them, 
but as but few of this class go after the birds 
until the open season begins, even the most 
persistent hunting would not have the same 
effect as the slaughter of the immature 
RECREATION 
birds by those on whose lands they are 
hatched and who believe that they have a 
God-given right to them and the “public 
be damned.” ‘The merest tyro of a farm 
lad, armed with a four-dollar single breech- 
loader and no dog, can with a season or two 
of practice do more deadly work on several] 
coveys of prairie chickens than a wagon- 
load of Gilberts, Crosbys and their kind, 
led by the best brace of setters or pointers 
that ever sniffed the morning ozone of a 
Western prairie, could ever do. He gets in 
his work at most any old time, while the 
man from town or distant parts dare do 
nothing else but wait until the law says he 
may shoot and at which time the birds are 
full grown, strong of wing and already 
familiar with the sound of a gun and the 
sight of man. 
The history of the pinnated grouse is a 
pathetic one. The destruction of the birds 
and the extinction of the buffalo are not 
analogous by any means. The American 
bison and man never were made to occupy 
the same territory; and as the rich, grass- 
covered prairies that were once the feeding 
grounds of the buffalo have since proven to 
be the most productive wheat and corn 
lands on earth, it was but natural that 
sooner or later the buffalo would have to 
go. Not so with the prairie chicken. He 
EON LAT a | 
ee ee ee 

By Roy B. Hindmarsh, Lincoln, Neb. 
CHICKEN-SHOOTING TO-DAY—AN EARLY MORNING POINT ON THE PRAIRIE, BEFORE THE BIRDS TOOK 
REFUGE IN THE CORN 
