Feb. 15, 1908.] 
257 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The Ruffed Grouse Scarcity. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
My vacations spent in the Ticonderoga hills 
near Eagle Lake have for many years been dur¬ 
ing a part or the whole of July, August and Sep¬ 
tember each season, and as the only shooting 
allowed at that time was red squirrels, wood¬ 
chucks and porcupines, locally but erroneously 
called hedgehogs, I have been able to study the 
partridge. 
Eagle Lake and the surrounding wild forest 
country, stretchihg to the southward for twenty- 
five miles or more in a straight line 1 without -t 
human habitation, with its score or more of 
lakes, like Pharaoh, Pyramid, Putnam, Paradox, 
Gooseneck, Crane, Round, Otter and Rock, has 
neen of late years one of the best natural grouse 
covers in the southwestern Adirondack's. Potter 
and the neighboring mountains are covered from 
summer to late fall with most luxuriant supplies 
if huckleberries, blackberries and raspberries as 
>vell as great quantities of the red fruit of win- 
ergreen and running partridge vine. There are 
nany hills and. knolls covered with pines, white 
>irch and poplar trees, and the lakes, ponds and 
prooks are fringed with the favorite alder, white 
he numerous large swamps, thickly grown with 
lemlock and cedar, afford ideal locations for 
food and refuge during the winter months. 
I first began shooting grouse in this locality 
tbout six years ago when there was a period 
SOLID COMFORT. 
of great forest fires to the west and south, and 
is blackberries were unusually plentiful that 
/ear, the birds came'in flocks to the shores and 
fills about the lake, and were as tame as 
chickens, showing that they had been bred in 
■olitary places. 
On one occasion our dog started up a covey 
of more than twenty full grown birds within 
hirty feet from the road.over which a large 
our-in-hand mail stage had just passed. A few 
lays later a local shot and I killed in the timber, 
till-hunting and with an untrained mongrel ter- 
'ier, twenty-three large grouse, including two out 
>f a flock that ran across the road by a little 
'rook at nightfall. 
About three years ago birds began to decrease 
long the lake shore and hills adjoining, although 
he food supply was as usual, and no spring or 
ummer shooting had been permitted. The 
•roods seemed to be scarcer and smaller, and 
t was only late in the fall that the luscious 
crries along the roadside and in shaded places 
eemed to bring down the abundant flocks from 
he back country. As late as September, 1906, 
saw and heard more than fifty full grown par- 
ridges on a single trip from the lake over a 
muntain trail to a farm down by Lake Cham- 
lain, twelve miles. At about the time of de- 
rease in the number of our summer coveys by 
ie lake the mink suddenly appeared in great 
umbers. The fish had been nearly exterminated 
> the shallow waters and had retired to sunken 
lands near the lake channel. This drove these 
irry vermin to the haunts and nesting places 
f the grouse and hares, and the nightly cry of 
icse young quadrupeds was frequently heard. 
Mink were everywhere, and the hills and cov- 
ts for at least half a mile from the lake seemed 
ive with them. T once noted a light brown 
°lher and four nearly full grown, almost black 
'’ting ones all together, not twenty feet from 
y thicket, four being on a single flat stone by 
the roadside. There were also many weasels. 
I had a theory that these mink were the de¬ 
stroyers of many nests and young birds that 
year, but lately the high price of five dollars a 
pelt cut down the number so effectively that I 
did not see a single mink in that section, although 
I watched eagerly for them. But the mink in¬ 
vasion was, of course, only local, accidental and 
quickly remedied by the demand for fur. 
The true cause of our great shortage in grouse 
I announce with a certain amount of caution, 
because no writer has even hinted at it, and my 
own investigations have not been as thorough as 
I would have liked. One thing is certain, the 
hedgehog peril has fallen upon our entire county 
like a pestilence. Corn and grain fields on the 
hill farms have been so devastated by these pests 
during the last few years that the Essex county 
supervisors have at last been forced to offer 
twenty-five cents for each scalp and pair of ears 
brought to them. They are particularly fond of 
sweet apples and it was no unusual occurrence 
for a farmer to find all his best trees ruined in 
a single night. 
Early in September I was spending a night at 
an old farm house in Ticonderoga when five 
“porkeys” attacked a small sweet apple tree 
hanging over the summer lean-to kitchen about 
bed time, and although I had not my favorite 
treeing dog along, succeeded in accounting for 
five in a few minutes with the aid of an old 
musket hastily pressed into service. 
Unfortunately the hedgehog dens are all along 
the warm rocky hillsides sloping toward the 
south and east, and about laying time these heavy 
brutes sally forth at night ravenously hungry, 
quartering back and forth upon every square 
foot of territory, looking for food. Camps are 
invaded, porches and floors destroyed, all barrels 
and boxes and wooden pails consumed. 
In this quest for food before any vegetation 
has appeared, except the trailing arbutus and 
“Mayflower’’ (wood violet), is it reasonable to 
believe that a neat nest under the low hemlock 
bush has escaped their investigating and mis¬ 
chievous search? This is a time when farmers 
are busy with spring planting and no city sports¬ 
men are on hand to investigate. Hence the 
lack of information. 
In conversation with several whilom farmers' 
sons from our section, now New York business 
men, I learn that the hedgehog has always de¬ 
stroyed the eggs of poultry and turkeys during 
hatching time, even as bad as the hated skunk. 
One cottager on Eagle Lake shot and killed 
no fewer than ten hedgehogs last season and I, 
with pistol and lantern, accounted for a dozen 
more. Some weighed fully twenty pounds. 
So scarce were the birds that I knew almost 
the exact number in two coveys that survived 
between the lodge and hotel, a distance of one 
mile. I believed them to be all old ones, so 
wild and strong were they, but one day I caught 
a bird napping just back of the lodge and she 
proved to be a spring pullet, 4he only young 
grouse I saw from July to October, and the only 
bird bagged. There were more woodcock than 
I have ever seen before. The season opened 
and continued very cold and backward, snow fell 
about the last of May in many parts. The mos¬ 
quitoes, punkies, flies and gnats lasted until Sep¬ 
tember, and after sundown life in the swamps 
and by the lake shore was simply unbearable. 
Finding no birds coming down I looked for them 
on the high tablelands and found where a small 
covey had evidently spent the entire summer. 
They were all strong old birds. Some college 
men exploring a similar bit of country ran into 
a flock of more than fifty grouse. Those seemed 
to be all the birds left in the vicinity. The sea¬ 
son was a failure in the way of wild fruits. 
Peter Flint. 
