12 GROUSE AND WILD TURKEYS OF UNITED STATES. 
extremely abundant tlirou^diout Ohio and Kentucky. It is now rare 
in both States. A part of the ground it has lost in the East it has 
gained by a westward and northward movement. It has followed 
the grain fields of the pioneers of the plains, and with the extension 
of grain culture into Minnesota and Manitoba it has become plentiful 
there. According to Doctor Hatch, it was by no means common when 
the white man first came to Minnesota, and he says that in Illinois as 
late as 1836 a hunter was extremely lucky if he could bag a dozen in 
a day. Some years later, with much less effort, one could have shot 
50 in a day, and there were records of 100 to a single gun." 
The former status of the bird in the East is well indicated by 
Audubon's classic observations at Henderson, Ky., in 1810. Audubon 
says : f' 
111 those days during the winter the Grous would enter the farm-yard and 
feed with the poultry, alight on the houses, or walk in the very streets of the 
villages. I recollect having caught several in a stable at Henderson, where they 
had followed some Wild Turkeys. In the course of the same winter, a friend 
of mine, who was fond of practicing rifle shooting, killed upwards of forty in one 
morning, but picked none of them up, so satiated with (irons was he. as well 
as every member of his family. My own servants preferred the fattest flitch 
of bacon to their flesh, and not unfrequently laid them aside as unfit for cook- 
ing. * * * They could not have been sold at more than one cent apiece. 
* * * So rare have they become in the markets of Philadelphia, New York, 
and Boston, that they sell at from five to ten dollars the pair. 
So far as the sportsman is concerned, the prairie hen is now extinct 
in Kentucky, and nowhere is the royal game bird even approximately 
so abundant as it formerly was in that State. There is little good 
chicken shooting east of the Mississippi. The best now to be had is 
in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Manitoba. For- 
tunately many people are actively interested in (lie protection and 
preservation of the prairie hen and excellent laws in its behalf already 
exi.st. There is a constantly growing sentiment in favor of nonresi- 
dent hunting licenses and a legal limit to the day's bag. while some 
States afford the bird absolute j)rotection for a period of years,'" and 
their example should be followed wherever it is growing scarce. 
The passage of nonexport laws in most of the States has been pro- 
ductive of much good. These State laws have been made effective 
by a recent Federal hiw — the Lacey Act — which })r()hil)its interstate 
commerce in game killed in violation of local laws. Through its 
operation the sale of the j^rairie hen was virtually stopped in 1002 and 
VM):\ in all the large cities of (he Fast. Absolute enforcement of this 
law and successful prohibition of local sales must be effected befoi-el 
a Birds of Minnesota, p. 16:5, 1892. 
ftOrnith. Biog. II, p. 4!)1, IKif). 
f Illinois. Louisiana, and Oregon protect i>rairie hens until 1901), and Michigan] 
and the Province of Ontario until 1910. 
