V. OF / Vn3A.frA -OflAjilPAlSN 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 4 , 1909. 
896 • 
Ruffed Grouse Can Be Drummed In. 
This is not a claim of a discovery, but the 
acknowledgment of a fact—in spite of hitherto 
great unbelief. From my boyhood, and all 
over the country from Maine to Oregon, I 
have heard of people who claimed to be able 
to call in partridges, and I have always promptly 
catalogued them as particularly obnoxious 
specimens of the tribe Munchausen. As a 
matter of fact I have freely applied to them 
the shorter and uglier term, and, through resi¬ 
dence in the far West, I have acquired pro¬ 
ficiency in the use of a vocabulary ample enough 
to do them elaborate and complete justice. 
The desire to make a full and complete 
apology to all whom I have so wronged, the 
hope that it may stimulate further and more 
scientific inquiry into the habits of these birds, 
and, if may be, bring out the true explanation 
of their fall drumming and responding, are the 
more dignified motives prompting .this letter. 
The really impelling motive, I suspect, is the 
latent hope that, after all these painful years, I 
may get a “rise” out of Mr. S. T. Hammond 
(“Shadow”). 
The ruffed grouse has occupied much more 
of my time and attention during the last few 
years than it was possible for me to give to 
him before weird patterns were inlaid in silver 
upon the copper of my crown. I have studied 
him spring and fall; in the dense forest of his 
deepest trust and in more settled districts, 
where he abides in fixed conviction that none 
are gentle men. I therefore assert without fear 
of successful contradiction that there exists no 
single law or rule of conduct applicable to him 
that has not its exception save only these two: 
(1) That he never acts twice alike, and, (2) 
that he is always to be found in all kinds of 
weather, just where one happens to find him; 
which is just as apt to be right under one’s 
foot in the ooze of an alder swamp as up on 
some hardwood ridge, which, under prevailing 
conditions, may look much more promising. 
Just when I have thought I knew it all after a 
few experiences with young birds or a “foolish” 
one or so, some wise, wary and wild old fel¬ 
low would come along and convince me that I 
was hopelessly wrong and I would have to begin 
all over again. Altogether I have been pretty 
thoroughly chastened, have grave doubts of the 
value of what little I think I know, and am 
inclined to be tolerant of Munchausens. 
Some time ago I came across a fellow shoot¬ 
ing partridges over a pointer, and getting more 
on the wing than I was getting in any old way 
with the aid of a clever little cocker, who 
loved his work and never tired of it—the dog 
deserves the “who,” too, Mr. Editor, don’t 
cross that out. Right there I determined to 
reform. So I chained the cocker, followed a 
pointer and discovered that the State of Maine 
had buncoed me into paying it for $15.00 worth 
of permission to hunt* that I didn’t need. I 
hunted and the birds had the fun. I soon 
realized my awful cruelty to the cocker and un¬ 
chained him. 
Later I fell under the spell of Hammond’s 
“My Friend, the Partridge.” That and his 
“Hitting vs. Missing” so persuaded me of the 
ease and grace with which it could be done, that 
I resolved firmly to get my birds only on the 
*The Maine law reads, “to hunt, kill or take,” etc. 
wing. Well, I don't revere Hammond any the 
less, but I have learned to love him with lips 
compressed. 
Last fall (1908), through dogged persistency, 
I got a lot of birds in the Dead River region 
in Maine. But for every bird I bagged, five 
others that I didn’t get, dragged and mauled 
me through undergrowth, windfall, thicket and 
swamp about one hundred miles per bird es¬ 
caped. The last bird I fired at on the wing 
put me out of business for the deer shooting 
by causing me to rupture a tendon in my ankle 
as I cork-screwed around to get the gun on 
him—and didn’t. So I went back to first 
principles and finished out the season, hunting 
birds down on the old farm, by lying con¬ 
cealed in some evergreen growth at the edge 
of an old orchard, where I had discovered the 
partridges were feeding on the apples. It was 
great fun to watch them come sneaking in to¬ 
ward sundown, but it was fearsomely cold and 
patient work, and I slaughtered them when I 
could. My very last shot of the season was a 
clean miss fired up hill in a very poor light at 
a bird that had seen me first as I lay visibly 
shivering though flat on my stomach. I made 
up my mind then and there .to go after them 
this year with a fly-rod and nine-foot noosed 
leaders, with a “game-getter” and a 10-gauge 
ducking gun on the side. All of which lengthy 
preface is by way of admitting my dufferdom, 
so that I may not be humiliated by being 
called upon to prove it. 
In the April, 1909, number of one of your 
contemporaries, Dr. George W. Pulver ex¬ 
plained at length his somewhat elaborate 
method of drumming in partridges, by beating 
on his chest and uttering the word “boom” in 
a certain prescribed manner. This was the first 
■time I had ever seen a claim of the sort in cold 
type. Frankly, I thought he was “talking 
through his hat.” The matter was referred to 
Mr. John Burroughs and to my friend, Mr. S. 
T. Hammond. The latter somewhat bluntly 
replied to the effect that he had no doubt that 
many might be called, but that few, if any, 
would come. Mr. Burroughs said, “I have no 
doubt at all that grouse may be called if you 
can imitate their drumming,” but “there is 
where the rub comes.” 
I was about prepared to believe anything of 
this feathered flirter with the tempers of men, 
but I wanted to be shown. Since then I have 
been shown, have succeeded in drumming in 
birds myself, and have discovered that it is so 
simple that it is a wonder that the practice has 
not long obtained, honored and in general use, 
in dufferdom. I say it is simple advisedly, for 
I have suffered much and learned more to en¬ 
dure. Any cook will tell you it is a simple 
matter to poach an egg. Can you get one to 
do it and not serve you something that looks 
like a badly scalded sea nettle? Don’t ask me 
what they taste like. No vocabulary can pro¬ 
duce an adequate comparison. An egg at 
Old John’s Holly Tree Inn, Cambridge, Mass., 
was a poached egg “as is,” but elsewhere one 
will never find another. 
Certain persons are born without any imi¬ 
tative sense or ability, some without any sense 
of time, beat or rhythm, and others, poor souls, 
are absolutely tone deaf. If any such tries to 
drum in a partridge and there are other hunters 
about, he doubtless will be shot for his pains. 
But it will be clearly a case of post hoc, and 
not in the least propter quod. 
Soon after reading Dr. Pulver’s article, in an 
attempt to shake off its effect and a few minor 
troubles, I went trout fishing. I festooned the 
neighboring forest for a while with an iri¬ 
descent fringe of assorted leaders and flies, try¬ 
ing to locate the good places on totally un¬ 
familiar water. In time I began to have more 
than ordinary luck. The local Walton acknowl¬ 
edged my acquaintance while confiding to his 
cronies that his mission in life just then was to 
“do up that-long-legged lawyer” at fishing. 
He did it, too. Then, just to be good friends, 
he robbed me of all my possible laurels as a 
story teller. He had a story of a bear in the 
neighborhood mountains that no one could 
kill, because of its skillful practice of ripping 
up sods and stuffing them in the holes made by 
expanding bullets, and then playfully lighting 
out for other berry patches. On top of this 
came the sober details of various partridges 
that had come in to his call to be shot. I 
could not lose this story. It got on my nerves 
so that I lost half the trout that struck at my 
fly. I even absentmindedly put several beauties 
tenderly back in the stream instead of in my 
creel, first religiously breaking their necks. To 
make matters worse, I kept finding hen par¬ 
tridges and their nests in the woods. Finally, I 
made up my mind that I would try to drum in a 
partridge myself the first chance I got in the 
fall. Then I went on frownlessly fishing. Here, 
I thought, was at least one method I had not 
tried, and I argued that even if all men are 
liars, the trial would involve less paraphernalia 
than the campaign I had planned. 
Early in October of this year I found myself 
in the same general neighborhood. A shooting 
companion and dogs failed to meet me as we 
had planned. Somebody thought somebody 
else had telephoned me that the dogs couldn’t 
be had, and that the trip was off. As a result 
I found myself stranded at a crossroads rail¬ 
way station with nothing to do but look foolish 
and pack around a gun and a lot of duffle and 
ammunition. Then I thought of my friend of 
the spring time, who could tell the best-ever 
bear stories and could call partridges. Tele¬ 
graphing my absentee friend my destination, 
and that I had arranged for great shooting, I 
started to hike it over the hills to the home of 
the partridge caller. They told me when I 
started that it was about twelve miles. When 
I had gone fully six, they told me it was ten, 
and when I had gone -about ten miles more I 
was told it was eight miles further, and that 
last guess was about right. How far was it? 
Figure it out for yourself. 
I found my man and succeeded in piquing 
him into, a promise to show me how he called 
partridges. He made me promise I would not 
tell how he did it, and I’m not going to. He 
kept his promise, however, and showed me 
and killed his bird. The fact, however, that 
we sat back to back and that I knew nothing 
of the bird’s approach until I heard the crack 
of his gun, left me only half convinced that he 
had not hokus-pokused me with some sort of 
a prearranged “plant.” My skepticism grew 
when he declined to repeat the demonstration, 
giving as an excuse that he must devote the 
rest of the day to cutting some buckwheat al¬ 
ready too long neglected. 
