454 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[March 21, 1908. 
The Ruffed Grouse. 
Worcester, Mass., Feb. 29 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: I have been greatly interested and en¬ 
tertained by reading in your magazine the ac¬ 
counts from different sources of the apparent 
scarcity of the partridge, the best of our game 
birds. Best because we find them the most re¬ 
sourceful in circumventing us when we go afield 
with dog and gun in the crisp, cool days of the 
two grandest months of the year, October and 
November; best because when we have brought 
one to bag after hard work with dog and gun, 
we have reached the height of the upland shoot¬ 
er’s ambition; best because it is the most widely 
distributed of the non-migratory birds of the 
northern half of the U*ited States and therefore 
affords the greatest amount of enjoyment to the 
largest number of lovers of upland shooting. 
If we come home at night with five or six and 
perhaps more on occasion, we may carry the 
memory of the day in our minds until the next 
season opens, and it smoothes away many of the 
rough places in our every day, humdrum life 
during the ten months of close season. 
But to come back to the point; there seems to 
be a veritable partridge panic going over the 
country. The bottom seems to have dropped out 
of the partridge covers and taken this much 
sought bird with them. We hear the same story 
from North, South, East and West. With but lit¬ 
tle variation and with a few pleasing exceptions, 
it is the same old story: “being exterminated,” 
“rapidly disappearing,” “can start but three or 
four birds in a day’s tramp,” “wood ticks,” 
“poor breeding season,” anything for a reason 
or a guess, and my guess may be as good as the 
next fellow’s. 
I like S. T. Hammond’s remarks on the sub¬ 
ject in the December 21 number of Forest and 
Stream, as they correspond to my experience in 
a large measure and over a long term of years. 
What is good enough for him is good enough 
for me so far as giving any one specific reason 
for a scarcity any given year, and of this year 
in particular, when everyone seems to have gone 
“crazy as a partridge” on the subject. 
The article in December 28 number by M. 
Chill was optimistic and to the point. That the 
partridge was scarce in some covers I know 
from my own experience, and where I could 
start birds enough in a day’s hunt in the fall of 
1906 to satisfy any reasonable person, this year 
there were not enough to pay for the tramp. 
I hunted from half-past nine until about four 
©’clock in this section one day last fall and never 
started a bird. In 1906, on the last day of the 
opei*' season, in these same covers, I started four 
partridge up to three o’clock in the afternoon. 
What became of them? I leave the wise ones to 
tell; I don’t know. 
In covers not over two miles from these of 
which I have just spoken, hunting with a friend, 
we started on Nov. 11, 1907, twenty-three to 
twenty-five birds, all partridge. That ought to 
be satisfactory to any man that can shoot a little 
bit, when you know that it was a walk-out shoot 
each time, and that we began about four miles 
out and were not over eight miles from a city 
of 150,000 people at any time. These trips cover 
from twenty to twenty-two miles by the pedo¬ 
meter, and are made in a country that is hunted 
every day in the open season and by every Tom, 
Dick and Harry that can shoot a gun, but the 
birds are there now and will be for some time. 
I have been trying to exterminate them for 
twenty-five or more years in these same covers 
and I have had some pretty good help at times, 
and can trot a little myself after I get warmed 
up. 
On account of snow in this country of which 
I have just been speaking, I, with a friend, went 
to Southbridge the next to the last day of the 
open season, into a country I had never hunted 
before This town is on the borders of Connec¬ 
ticut and eighteen or twenty miles southwest 
from Worcester and there had been no snow 
there. We started at least twenty-five partridge 
and had we known the covers and the corners 
where the birds use, our bag would have been 
larger than it was, but we got some and that was 
enough. 
I pick up a Sunday paper giving the news 
from the county towns and ond item from 
Southbridge says, So and so and a friend, neither 
of whom I knew, hunted the covers about the 
town Saturday and only found three or four 
birds and did not kill one. Where did they go 
and how did they hunt? The birds were there. 
Again, H. H. Kimball says of friends of his 
who hunted in Dana, they could neither find nor 
kill any birds. Pretty good country that, for par¬ 
tridge and Mr. Kimball cannot kill them off up 
there by shooting. There are too many pines and 
too much knee action going up and down those 
small mountains. I have been in that country 
and know some sections of it very well. The 
towns of Barre and Petersham lie just east of 
Dana, and I know of forty-eight birds being 
started in one day by one dog and two men, both 
friends of mine, one of whom I have hunted 
with a great many times and whose word 1 
would believe as soon as that of a member of 
my own family. Another personal friend hunt¬ 
ing in the same locality started forty-one or 
forty-two partridge in a day’s hunt. Still an¬ 
other friend, and one with whom I have hunted 
more than with any other this season, was in 
the same country for a day’s hunt and started 
thirty partridge. 
It was one of those glorious Indian summer 
days that the poets write of when everyone 
wants to be out of doors, but which is the bane 
of the partridge hunter. The birds were on tip¬ 
toe, did not lie well and they only brought back 
five. Does this look like extermination? 
In 1881 one of the best partridge shots in this 
section hunted for five weeks in Rutland and 
only started five or six partridge during that 
time, killing three of them and a whole “back- 
load of woodcock.” He was selling his birds and 
getting good money for woodcock. In 1883, this 
same man with his two brothers and a friend, 
who was not a partridge but a woodcock shot, 
hunted in the same country for nine days and 
killed one hundred and forty-six partridge. How 
do you account for it? The wonder is not what 
becomes of them, but where do they all come 
from ? 
The year 1886 was a repetition of 1881 and 
again in 1888, birds were so plenty that it was 
not much work to make a good bag under al¬ 
most any conditions. This thing has been going 
on ever since I first knew what a partridge was, 
and I have heard the older gunners talk it over 
since I was a boy, and that was a good many 
years ago. 
These periods of up and down come more or 
less regularly, and game laws and shooting off 
the birds does not seem to have much effect on 
changing them. The year 1903 was the last pre¬ 
vious year in which everyone in this section was 
kicking about the scarcity of partridge. I think 
they were not so scarce as this year; at least 
they were more evenly distributed. 
I took one of the kickers out on the nth day 
of November of that year and we brought in 
four partridge and two quail; not so many as we 
ought, for in consulting my shooting diary, in 
which I keep a record of my hunting trips, I 
find this note: “Started twenty partridge; first 
time I have been after them (had hunted wood¬ 
cock up to that time) and considering the wet 
spring, found more than I expected; shot the 
poorest of any day this fall; ought to have 
killed nine or ten birds.” I was doing the inside 
work with the dog that day and trying to give 
the other fellow a good time, but he killed only- 
one bird all day and I was a bit off myself, a 
thing which happens to most any shooter occas¬ 
ionally during the season, but which we hesitate 
to speak about, being prone to play the “big 
Injun” and tell of our good shooting rather 
than how they got by. This friend acknowledged 
that there were more birds than he had any idea 
there were. 
There was the same agitation for some new 
law or laws that is going on at the present time 
-—shorter season, bag limit, gun license, close 
season for a term of years, etc. We already had 
the no-sale law, which as a law is a grand thing, 
but in its working is the biggest farce, in its 
application to the sale of birds, in the statutes 
to-day; but more of that some other time. 
There was lots of agitation in this city and at 
one of the meetings held by a number of bird 
hunters, I heard a gray-headed veteran say that 
he did not think that all our talk or any laws 
we might enact would have much effect on the 
bird crop, but did advise us to pray for a good 
breeding season the next spring and the par¬ 
tridge would do the rest. So it proved, for they 
began to pick up again and in 1905 and 1906 they 
were back again and doing the same old tricks 
in the same old way, in the same old covers. 
At another meeting of sportsmen held that 
winter, I heard the late Hon. J. H. Walker tell 
of an experience which is apropos of this year. 
It was when July woodcock shooting was al¬ 
lowed in this State and he with a friend was in 
what was considered as good woodcock cover as 
was to be found in this section. They found and 
killed some woodcock, but the partridge were so 
plentiful and bothered them and their dogs so 
much that they left the cover in disgust, vowing 
to even things up when the season opened on the 
real bird. When that time came they visited this 
same cover and the best they could do was to 
find one poor, little, half-grown partridge cov¬ 
ered with wood-ticks, and not only this cover 
but others visited were the same. 
They were “exterminated” for sure that time, 
but like the cat, they came back and they have 
been going and coming ever since; sometimes 
more and sometimes less, and in spite of all the 
pessimism in most of the articles which I have 
read, given a good breading season next spring, 
in a country where they can take refuge from 
the gunners, from the heavy snows and extreme 
cold, in the only safe refuge and home the par¬ 
tridge knows, the pine forest, there will next 
year or the year following be enough birds to 
