612 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 16, 1910. 
while many men believe that over-shooting fur¬ 
nishes the best reason of all. None of these ex¬ 
planations appear to fit all cases. The birds may 
succumb to disease, but there appears to be no 
evidence that they do so. The. young chicks in 
traveling through the woods and swamps un¬ 
doubtedly occasionally pick up wood ticks which 
suck their blood, and occasionally a young and 
weakly bird may perish from this cause. Those 
who attribute the scarcity of grouse at any time 
to hard winters—to their being covered up and 
frozen in under the snow—cannot know much 
about grouse nature. The bird is found far up 
in the Arctic, where it is exposed to weather 
far more rigorous than it can ever experience 
in temperate climes, and if it had been so ten¬ 
der as to be killed by the winter, it would long 
ago have been exterminated in the mountains 
of Alaska and along the McKenzie River. It 
seems more probable that over-shooting must 
be one of the chief causes for these disap¬ 
pearances of grouse, not directly, perhaps, but 
because by constant attacks the breeding stock 
is kept down so low that when conditions arise 
even slightly unfavorable to the species, and a 
few birds are swept away, the breeding stock 
is so reduced that not enough birds are reared 
the next season to replenish the covers. 
The widest differences of opinion about this 
matter exist between sportsmen and naturalists 
of experience. So good a field naturalist as Nap. 
O. Comeau in his recent book entitled, “Life and 
Sport on the North Shore” says of the ruffed 
grouse: 
“In some years they are abundant for a time 
and then disappear. I have noticed that heavy 
sleet in winter will sometimes drive them away 
from certain tracts of country. Since 1905 they 
have been pretty scarce all over the country [the 
north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence], I 
think this must be due to some kind of con¬ 
tagious disease, something similar probably to 
the ‘grouse disease’ of Scotland. There is no 
other way of' explaining their scarcity over such 
an immense extent of territory. Where the 
country has opened up, and there are only 
patches of wood here and there, it would be 
reasonable to suppose that they might have been 
exterminated by over-shooting and snaring, but 
where there are thousands of miles of forests 
and not one in a hundred shot over, it cannot 
be put down to excessive shooting. As to natural 
enemies they do not seem to have been any 
more numerous here than elsewhere. Last sea¬ 
son (1908) I was over six weeks in the woods 
with two of my boys and we only saw six. 
From various points throughout the country, 
both inland and along the coast, I received the 
same reports—no grouse.” 
Though constantly pursued by man during the 
open season and exposed to'the attacks of a 
multitude of natural enemies, the ruffed grouse 
in many of our covers seems still almost to hold 
its own. There are seasons of abundance when 
the birds are more numerous than usual, and 
others of scarcity when sportsmen fear that they 
are about to disappear forever from particular 
localities, but they continue to exist and will 
long exist over much of the wooded country of 
the Eastern LTnited States. The cutting off of 
the forests constitutes the gravest danger to 
which they are exposed. Where this is done 
the birds disappear, but even after the heavy 
timber has been cut off a period of ten or twelve 
years often results in the reforestation of the 
tract, at first only with underbrush and saplings, 
but later with larger trees. Then the ruffed 
grouse tend to come back again. 
For the ruffed grouse is a timber dweller. It 
seldom frequents the open land, except that it 
may venture out a little way from the edge of 
swamp or forest to pick up the grain in a culti¬ 
vated field or to eat the blackberries, huckleberries 
or wild grapes which ripen in some opening at 
the edge of the woods. For the most part, how¬ 
ever, it is found in cover, sometimes quite open, 
among tall tree trunks of great size, or again 
in the most tangled swamp, among thickets of 
alder, blackberry, cat brier and grape vines. 
Wherever found—in a country that has been 
much gunned—it is well able to take care of 
itself. By much training it has acquired a 
great variety of tricks and stratagems which it 
practices to the utter discomfiture of many gun¬ 
ners. It may rise far ahead of the dog and 
out of shot and fly straight up a mountainside 
out of sight, so that it is impossible to mark 
it down; or if for some good reason of its 
own it continues to lie, it will very likely let 
man and dog pass it, and then when the man 
is tangled up in difficult brush and is trying to 
push his way ahead, the partridge with thunder¬ 
ous roar will rise behind him and disappear be¬ 
fore he can free himself from his fetters and 
bring the gun to his shoulder. Very commonly 
the partridge runs rapidly ahead of the dog, 
sometimes in a straightaway course, apparently 
to make sure that it will be well out of gun¬ 
shot before it rises, or again it may run 
straight away, and then bending off to right or 
left may come around nearly to its trail again 
so that its pursuers will pass it. This is the 
precise trick played by the moose and sometimes 
by deer and bear when the conditions are favor¬ 
able for tracking them. A favorite device is 
to rise behind a tree trunk, a clump of brush, 
a great rock or even a stone wall and to keep 
this barrier between itself and the gunner until 
safely out of range. 
The flight of the grouse is very swift, and 
though when well under way usually flying 
straight, yet often it rises on a curve so that 
one may easily shoot behind it. Although often 
rising from the ground with a thunderous roar 
of wings which may upset the nerves of its 
pursuer, the grouse does not always do this. 
Frequently it takes wing as quietly as the small¬ 
est bird, so that unless the shooter happens to 
be looking in the bird’s direction he may not 
be aware that it has flown. Sometimes, too, it 
will merely hop up into a tree and remain there, 
standing close to the trunk or to some branch 
stiff, straight and motionless and looking like 
a stub of wood. An old partridge may be 
counted on to do some unexpected thing. It 
deals in surprises. Its grace and beauty and the 
readiness with which it adapts itself to chang¬ 
ing conditions as well as the difficult places that 
it inhabits, and the charm of its surroundings, 
unite to command the gunner’s admiration. 
Although where constantly shot at it practices 
a variety of such strategems, yet in regions sel¬ 
dom penetrated by man and where it has not 
been pursued, it is absolutely gentle and un¬ 
afraid, and if startled from the ground flies no 
further than to a low branch of a tree where 
it may sit with outstretched neck and erect crest, 
while half a dozen shots are fired at it from 
pistol or rifle. If, however, a ball should strike 
the branch on which it is resting or if a twig 
cut from above it drops down and touches the 
bird, it darts away with the swift flight with 
which we are all so familiar. If in a park or 
in private grounds the grouse are left undis¬ 
turbed, they may often be seen walking about 
and feeding, paying little attention to men who 
may pass near them, recognizing that no danger 
is to be apprehended from them. In such situa¬ 
tions they may sometimes merely walk a yard 
or two from the trail, and stand there watching 
with an appearance of interest the intruder from 
whose path they have moved. 
In his interesting work on “Life and Sport on 
the North Shore of the St. Lawrence River,” 
Mr. Nap. O. Comeau says: 
“Ruffed grouse shooting in this section is not 
sport, and is not regarded as such by the resi¬ 
dents, for the reason that neither the people nor 
the birds have been educated to it. I can count 
on less than the fingers of one hand all the men 
I know on this shore that will deliberately flush 
a grouse to shoot it on the wing. As for the 
birds themselves, unless they happen to be in 
an open spot, they will not fly any distance. In 
the woods, which are pretty dense here, when 
flushed they simply rise off the ground, perch¬ 
ing in the nearest tree and stretching their necks 
to see you walking under them. If it happens 
that a covey is started they will frequently be 
all killed without any of the others around tak¬ 
ing flight. Many a time when in the woods trap¬ 
ping we would not waste a shot on them, but 
simply go to work and cut down a small sap¬ 
ling, tie a noose or string at one ehd, slip it 
over their head and pull them off the branch. 
At other times for amusement we would go out 
with a bow and a blunt-headed arrow and whack 
them off the trees at twenty feet range, which 
is about the usual one that they are shot at here. 
“What a contrast to the educated ones! Some 
years ago I received an invitation from C. 
Beatty, of Plattsburg, Lake Champlain, to go 
and have a few days of mixed shooting with 
him. It was late in September, but most of the 
leaves were still on the trees. The first day we 
had a grand duck shoot on Mississquoi Bay and 
after that an outing for woodcock. The last 
day had been reserved for partridge and gray 
squirrels. We had breakfast at daylight and 
were off. We had not far to go to reach our 
ground—patches of hard wood trees with a good 
deal of underbrush. We soon heard some whir¬ 
ring off at our approach, but could not even get 
a glimpse of them. After a time I got a cross¬ 
ing shot at one over fifty yards away which I 
bagged, and that was the only bird we got. But 
we surely heard a dozen or more rising. I was 
simply astonished that such a bird could be so 
shy. When I came back here and told the 
natives about my experience they thought I was 
pulling the long bow. I believe it will be many 
years before our birds get so highly educated.” 
A man went to the Custom House with half 
of a dollar note and a dog. He said the other 
half was inside the dog and he wanted the Gov¬ 
ernment to give him a new bill for the half out¬ 
side. He was advised to go to Washington to 
present his case. Upon figuring it up he found 
this would cost him $10.75. He had dropped the 
bill and both he and the dog had grabbed it—the 
dog playfully and the man seriously.—Herald. 
