192 
WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 
Back in the days when they were plentiful I shot about 
two dozen sage grouse; and I found it the most thrilling 
grouse shooting that ever has come my way. The first 
time that a big flock exploded close in front of me, and 
leaped into the air, I was scared by the thunder of it, and 
dazed by the size and beauty of the birds. As they flew 
away from me, their big heavy bodies rocked from side to 
side like a boat in a rolling sea. 
The finest sight of upland game birds that I ever saw was 
a big flock of sage grouse on a level and rather open sage¬ 
brush flat in the valley of Little Dry Creek, Montana (1902), 
very near the old LU-bar ranch. For some reason the birds 
elected not to fly in a hurry. Perhaps they knew by wire¬ 
less that we were not going to shoot any of them. At least 
thirty birds, in full fall plumage, slowly and majestically 
stalked in open order over the short buffalo grass, very 
slightly obscured by the small and widely scattered clumps 
of sage-brush, calmly looking at us and showing off. Mr. 
Huffman and I gave them the grand hailing signal, and 
then sat on our horses within forty feet of the head of the 
flock, enjoying that remarkable sight. 
But alas! the pump gun has been abroad. In Dawson 
and Custer Counties there is now about one sage grouse to 
every twenty-five that were there in 1886, when we first 
went in. Like other American grouse, this bird always has 
been too unsuspicious of man, too tame, and too easily ap¬ 
proached for its own good. Often it takes wing reluctantly, 
and too late to escape. 
The sage grouse, like all other grouse save the pinnated, 
is in no sense a migratory bird, and therefore it is not pro¬ 
tected by the federal migratory bird treaty. Its fate de¬ 
pends solely upon the men and women of the states that it 
inhabits. It breeds wherever it lives, and the trampling 
hoofs of sheep and cattle, and the guns of the sheep-herders, 
and the coyotes, constantly make for its extermination. 
The sage grouse exists in the sage-brush country because 
it successfully feeds upon the leaves of the sage-brush (Ar- 
