384 
graham’s magazine. 
can by any means, fair or unfair, be exterminated from 
among us, so long as the rock-ribbed mountains tower to¬ 
ward the skies, and the forests clothe them with foliage 
never sere. 
At this period they would afford rare sport, as at all 
other seasons they afford none ; and are, moreover, in far 
the best condition for the table, as the old birds are apt to 
be dry, unless hung up for several weeks before being 
cooked, which can, of course, only be done in winter, 
when the coldness of the weather prevents their becoming 
tainted, without absolutely freezing them. 
In my opinion, therefore, this, the only bird of American 
game, which might well exist apart from almost all pro¬ 
tection, is now so protected as to be almost rendered im¬ 
possible to the gun of the fair sportsman ; while for others, 
the tamest, the most easily killed, and the most rapidly 
decreasing of all our winged tribes, as the Woodcock, for 
example, the mock protection afforded to them is but an¬ 
other word for the license to slaughter them half-fledged 
and half-grown, while the second brood is yet in the black- 
down, and unable to exist without the parent’s care. 
I would myself desire to see the legitimate season for 
Ruffed Grouse-shooting made to commence with the first 
day of September, the young birds by that time, and in 
truth much earlier, being quite fit for the gun, and to cease 
on the fifteenth of December, or at Christmas at the latest, 
before the snows of winter admit of their being snared and 
trapped by thousands. 
Toward the middle of October, the old hens drive off 
the broods, or the young birds nowperfectl}' mature, stray 
from them of their own accord ; and thenceforth they are 
fouijd sometimes in little companies of two, three, or four, 
but far more often singly, in wild, difficult upland woods, 
through which they love to ramble deviously for miles, as 
they are led in search of their favorite food, or sometimes, 
as it would seem, by mere whim. On one occasion, many 
years since, when I was but a young sportsman on this 
side the Atlantic, I remember footing a small party of 
five birds, in a light snow, for above ten miles among the 
Wawayanda mountains, in Orange County, New York, 
without getting up to them ; although it was easily seen 
by their hurried and agitated tracks that for a great part 
of the distance, they were within hearing of me, and were 
running from my pursuit. I had no dogs with me. Had 
I been out with setters, the Grouse would have trailed 
them for miles, and unquestionably risen at last out of shot. 
With spaniels, or curs, trained to run in upon them, and 
pursue, yelping loudly, as the mode is in the backwoods 
where men do not shoot but gun, they would have taken 
to the trees, and would have sat close to the trunk with 
their bodies erect, and their necks elongated, and might 
have been killed easily, the only difficulty being that of 
perceiving them, a difficulty far more considerable than 
would be imagined to an unpracticed eye. To shoot birds 
sitting, however, whether on trees or on the ground, is 
not sport for a sportsman ; the only case where it is ever 
allowable , is to the woodsman on a tramp through the 
primitive and boundless forest, where his camp-kettle 
must be filled by the contents of his bag, and where to 
throw away a chance is, perhaps, in the end to go supper¬ 
less to bed. In such a case, while canoeing it last Autumn 
“with a goodly companye” up the northern rivers that 
debouche into Lake Huron, we shot many, while port¬ 
aging around cataracts or rapids on the Severn; and on 
one occasion a gentlemen of the party shot three birds, 
out of one small pine-tree, without any of them moving or 
appearing alarmed at the gun-shots. This has often been 
related as a constant and ordinary habit of the bird; and 
from that occurrence, I am induced to believe that when 
the bird is in its natural solitudes, unacquainted with man 
and his murderous weapons, such may be the case ; in 
the settlements, however it might have been when they 
were rare and sparse, this is the habit of the Ruffed- 
Grouse no longer. I have never in my life, save in the 
instance mentioned, observed any thing of the kind ; on 
the contrary, I have ever found them the wildest, the 
most wary, and, unless by some mere chance, the least 
approachable of all wild birds. 
During the latter autumn, they eschew flat, bushy 
tracts, and even swamps with heavy thicket, their in¬ 
stinct probably telling them that in such covert they 
are liable to be taken napping. If, however, one have the 
fortune to find them in such tracts, he is likely to have 
sport over setters; and in no other sort of ground do I 
deem that possible, as the law now stands. Once, many 
years since, sporting in the heavy thorn-brakes around 
Pine Brook, in New Jersey, I found them with a friend in 
low underwood, and we had great sport, bagging eight 
brace of Ruffed Grouse over points, in addition to some 
eighteen or twenty brace of Quail. 
In general, however, they frequent either open groves 
of tall, thrifty timber, with a carpet of wintergreens, 
cranberries and whortleberries, which constitute their 
favorite food ; or the steep mountain-ledges, under the 
interlaced branches of tall evergreen trees, among brakes 
of mountain rhododendron, or, as it is commonly called, 
though erroneously, laurel. In both these species of 
ground, all being clear below, the birds can hear and see 
the sportsman long before he can approach them, and 
take wing, for the most part, entirely out of gun-shot 
range. If, however, they are surprised unawares, they 
have a singular tact of dodging behind the first hush, or 
massive trunk, and flying off in a right line, keeping the ob¬ 
stacle directly between the sportsman and themselves, so 
as to frustrate all his efforts to obtain a shot; this I have 
seen done so often as to satisfy me that it is the result, not 
of chance, but of a deliberate instinct. 
The Ruffed Grouse rises, at first, when surprised, with 
a heavy whirring and laborious flutter, and if taken at that 
moment within range, is easily shot; he rises for the most 
part a little higher than the head of a tall man, and goes 
away swift and strong nearly in a horizontal line. If 
struck behind, he will carry away a heavy load of shot, 
and he has a trick of flying until his breath leaves him in 
the air, and then falls dead before he strikes the ground. 
Occasionally he towers up with the wind, and then setting 
his wings, skates down before it at a prodigious rate, 
without moving a feather; and if you get a shot at him, 
gentle reader, under such circumstances, crossing you at 
long range, be sure that you shoot two, or by ’r lady three 
feet ahead of him, or you may cut off his extreme tail- 
feathers, but of a surety kill him you shall not. 
The Ruffed Grouse usually flies in a perfectly right line, 
so that if you flush one without getting a shot, and can 
preserve his line exactly, you may find him, if he have not 
treed, which it is ten to one he has; wherefore I advise 
you not to follow him. The exception to this right line 
of flight, is when the ground is broken into ridges with 
parallel ravines, in which case the bird, on crossing a 
ridge at right angles, will rarely cross the ravine also, but 
will dive up or down, as the covert may invite. 
When birds lie in narrow ravines, filled with good 
covert, by throwing the guns forward on the brow of the 
ridges a hundred yards ahead of the dogs, which must be 
left behind with a person to hunt and restrain them, and 
letting the sportsmen carefully keep that distance in ad¬ 
vance, going very gingerly and silently, sport may be had ; 
and so I think only—especially over slow, mute, cocking 
spaniels, for as the birds, after running before the dogs, 
will be likely to take wing abreast of, or perhaps even be- 
