THE VANISHING PRAIRIE HEN 
loves civilization. The true pinnated grouse 
is never found except where man has broken 
the sod, sown the wheat and dotted the 
prairies with groves of trees. From far 
away Long Island, across the Jersey pines, 
through Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, 
Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, [linois, 
Iowa and across the Missouri into Kansas, 
Nebraska and the Dakotas has this beauti- 
ful bird followed the toiling and hardy 
pioneer. ‘Whither thougoest, I willgo;. .. 
thy people shall be my people.’’ With the ex- 
ception of the few migratory and uncertain 
flocks of wildfowl which each fall sped 
across the country or tarried awhile for a rest 
and the few seeds floating on the lakes and 
sloughs of the pioneer’s home, the prairie 
chicken was the sole reminder of the many 
varieties of game birds that he knew and 
loved in his early Eastern home. The 
‘“booming” of the male birds on a bright 
spring morning in early April was the first 
welcome: sound of spring, the sure fore- 
runner of those days when the plowman 
goes afield, and the young broods to fly 
before the yellow-haired scion, astride a 
horse at sunset, rounding up the scattered 
cows and yearlings, the most home-like 
feature the urchin knew of the land so 
strange and different from that his infancy 
knew. 
It was half a century since the last 
survivors of the pinnated grouse in Long 
Island and northern New Jersey met the 
fate that since has come to their descendants 
in the States of the Middle West. Thirty 
years ago the prime of the shooting and 
pursuit of them was in western Iowa. 
Fifteen years later it drifted to Kansas, 
Nebraska and the Dakotas. At the present 
time good hunting of prairie chickens is 
confined to a limited district in Nebraska 
and parts of the Dakotas. ; 
What is a correct definition of ‘good. 
hunting” on prairie chickens? If an old 
hand at the business may be permitted to 
give it he will put it at, say, fifty birds per 
gun. Anyhow, there was a time when 
nothing less than that would satisfy him. 
Capt. A. H. Bogardus tells in his book, 
“Field, Cover and Trap Shooting,” that he 
and Miles Johnson, on a ten days’ hunt in 
McLean County, IIl., in 1872, killed 600 
prairie chickens, shooting but mornings and 
249 
evenings. This was but thirty birds per 
gun per day; and, while nothing less than 
wicked slaughter, so plentiful were the birds 
in Illinois and Iowa at that time that their 
extermination seemed impossible. In later 
years, between 1870 and 1880, thirty to 
fifty birds per gun was a common occurrence 
any time between August 15 and September 
1 in northern and western Iowa. That any 
have survived in that State seems incredible, 
yet so hardy are the grouse family that 
large flocks of prairie chickens are seen 
frequently during the winter in the immense 
corn fields of southwestern Iowa, though a 
fair day’s sport on them during the open 
season is unknown. A few years since, 
when the hunting of prairie chickens in 
South Dakota was at its best, a market 
hunter and his son got after a large pack 
of a hundred or more prairie chickens in 
late November. To the uninitiated, it is well 
enough to explain that the birds begin to 
assemble in large coveys about the middle 
of October, if much hunted and scattered 
a week or twoearlier. In localities where 
the birds are really scarce the number which 
will gather into what Westerners term a 
“pack” is really remarkable, every grouse 
in the country seemingly having joined his 
fellows. The two hunters referred to chased 
the pack for miles witha pair of fleet. bron- 
chos and a light wagon, flushing them three 
times before the birds would lie to the dogs. 
They eventually got them down in some tall 
prairie grass and well scattered. When they 
counted the dead birds they had sixty-five. 
It is unnecessary to state that both men 
were dead shots, but, altogether, it was the 
most remarkable, jand at the same time 
most merciless, slaughter of the beautiful 
pride of the prairies that has ever come to 
the writer’s notice. It is mentioned here to 
partly illustrate what the prairie chicken 
has had to contend with and to show what 
royal sport the pastime of hunting them 
affords under the best of conditions. 
The prairie chicken has no show for his 
life, compared with his cousins, the ruffed 
grouse, the sharptail and the sage hen; and 
in comparison the quail, woodcock, snipe 
and their kindred of the woods and swamps 
are almost immune. The prairie chicken 
builds its nest, from choice, within call of the 
settler’s home, in some grassy edge rank 
