AFTER RUFFED GROUSE. 



BY E. J. MYERS. 



"A sportsman after my own heart," said 

 you, Coquina, in speaking of Allan Brooks, 

 and so say I. His spirit pours through his 

 fingers into the pictures that adorn Recre- 

 ation, and his words are no less graphic 

 than the crayon or the pigments that por- 

 tray the game fowl his soul delights in. 

 Many reminiscences are awakened by the 

 picture on page 176 of March Recreation. 



There's a proud, strutful, vainglorious 

 bird whose names are as varied as the 

 game qualities which have endeared him 

 to the sportsman whenever and wherever 

 the echo of his call has been heard. 



From the temperate zone to the Arctic cir- 

 cle, in both hemispheres, he has his habitat. 

 Be it amid the White Barrens, than which 

 in midwinter no bleaker, drearier nor more 

 terrible storm-wrecked stretch exists, or 

 from the scrub oak reaches and dales of the 

 Alleghanies to beyond the limitless prairies 

 and mountain ranges of the far West, he 

 manifests alike the qualities that make the 

 sportsman place him above any feathered 

 thing that makes a game bag complete 

 though it have but a single bird. Well and 

 wisely has he been chosen as the sign man- 

 ual of the L. A. S. 



A bird or 2 that makes adequate compen- 

 sation for a long, hard day's hunt that 

 otherwise were spent with fatigue and dis- 

 appointment. A something that rises like 

 a rocket somewhere from ground or bough 

 or branch, a wraith flitting spectrally 

 through the trees, ever an elusive thing, out 

 of the dusky shadows across the sunbeam, 

 beating its way through aisles of bough 

 and branch and thence into the dimmest 

 leafy byways, mocking and deriding hurt- 

 ling shot, then vanishing. That is the 

 ruffed grouse ! 



Form and speed Nature hath given with 

 no parsimonious hand, and plumage and 

 color which that great Mother changes with 

 the habitat, so that the environment of 

 the grouse yieldeth him refuge save when 

 he himself forgetteth caution. On the bar- 

 rens and the moors where lichen, shrub and 

 moss, alike with the weather beaten rocks 

 and boulders, bear the gray and dun garb 

 which the rugged winter and brief and 

 scarce-smiling spring and summer spread, 

 a something of motley blend of gray, 

 brown, red and black, indistinguishable as 

 it crouches, takes movement, rises with 

 a drum and b-r-r-r and is gone. That was 

 the ptarmigan in the far North, the moor- 

 fowl farther Southward ,the ruffed grouse 

 in the Middle States, pinnated grouse in 



the West, cock of the plains, "cock o' the 

 woods" and so. on ! 



In the winter its color will change into 

 the perfect whiteness of unsullied snows 

 that lie from October to April, and that is 

 the garb of safety that Nature giveth the 

 ptarmigan. In the Middle States and on 

 the great prairies the colors are mottled 

 brown black, white and gray with splotches 

 of red. If you take a handful of oak, 

 birch, maple, sycamore and chestnut leaves 

 with sere straw, moss and bark, all weather 

 stained, and heap them together, the ruffed 

 grouse will lie hidden there, lost in the 

 commingle of autumn tints that blend to 

 perfect tone with the plumage of the bird. 

 The keenest eye oft fails, for the bird will 

 lie motionless and only experience teaches 

 how the grouse betrays itself amid the 

 great seas of heather, gorse or barren. 

 Time was when the pinnated grouse, mora 

 familiarly called prairie chicken, was so 

 abundant that save for a keen sense of 

 sport in the character and quality of the 

 shot, it was neither sport nor hunting to 

 find and kill. As in "Ole Kentuck," it was 

 left to the children to drive them away 

 or kill them with sticks. 



On Scottish highlands and on English 

 moors, in Norwegian forests or amid the 

 Selkirk ranges the tetranine family may be 

 found. Whatever be the name, for they are 

 legion, grouse, partridge, ptarmigan, moor- 

 fowl, capercailzie, what you will, the quali- 

 ties conjure with a magic that leaves a 

 sense of pain, of utter loss, of weird long- 

 ing that may follow days when no more 

 you will pursue the grouse into the hill- 

 side thickets, ravines and gulches, or on 

 isolated plateaus amid mountain ranges. 



Have you dropped to the ground while 

 hunting when you heard the booming or 

 love signal of the ruffed grouse, with all 

 farther thought of shot utterly gone, and 

 wormed your way to see this Romeo of the 

 Woods call the Juliet from the umbrageous 

 recesses to keep tryst with him upon some 

 open knoll where Titania might dance, or 

 upon some fallen moss grown monarch of 

 the forest where his shape and plumage 

 would be seen to fullest favor and not a 

 detail lost? The vain Adonis-of-the-Heath 

 spread his tail a-fan, ruffle his neck feath- 

 ers and puff his glands, drop his wing and 

 strut up and down while he lures and en- 

 tices by the tenderest ravishing notes the 

 hens to emerge, admire and worship! 



Weil, Allan Brooks, do you know this 

 picture, though I have not the gift to paint, 



173 



