Many authors consider that indiscriminate trapping has taken much 
too large a toll of these birds. Yet we employed some 50 trappers that 
netted several thousand birds from the same areas over a period of four 
years without appreciably diminishing the take per man hour. Certainly 
heavy hunting or trapping will substantially reduce numbers in any 
locality but so widespread and abundant is this species in favorable 
habitat that quick replenishment, through rapid breeding and from adja- 
cent coverts, is the rule. 
As a pet -- Throughout India and West Pakistan we were seldom with- 
out one or more tame gray francolins about the house. In our experience 
they make ideal, intelligent pets with the often rare added advantage 
that they are teachable and can often be trusted not to try to escape 
when outside their cages. Our "Titur" from Karachi returned with us by 
air to the States and was then carried some 12,000 miles by car and plane 
to many southern and southwestern States for demonstration purposes. He 
behaved perfectly around the conference table, though exhibiting an 
understandable preference for bald heads as resting places when flushed. 
He would call, when whistled at, and return to his cage when the door 
was opened. 
Gray francolins are often carried by desert nomads, in wicker cages 
fastened to the backs of camels, horses or donkeys or clutched in the 
fist of one of the innumerable small fry that ride while their parents 
walk. Many shepherds on the desert make it a practice to catch and 
raise one or more grays often carrying them in small cane cages for 
months at a time while tending their flocks. Captive birds are reported 
to breed, sometimes laying up to 25 eggs. The young, when raised, are 
often liberated to wander about the house and dooryard. 
Relationship to Other Game Birds 
With regard to the gray francolin, the possibilities of competition 
with native game species, in the event of a successful introduction of 
these birds into the United States, is the same as that indicated for 
black francolin on pages 39 to 41. 
Among themselves gray francolins are more aggressive and pugnacious 
than are blacks but their awareness of territorial boundaries and of sex 
does not appear to extend to their relationship with other game species. 
A few,to many,gray francolins are consistently met with in almost all 
types of black francolin habitats except where precipitation exceeds 50 
inches a year and the cover is resultantly dense. In all West Pakistan 
and India I do not recall a single hunt in predominantly black francolin 
habitat in which at least a few grays were not brought to bag. In the 
checkerboard of scrub and cultivation, characteristic of much range of 
both species, one often cannot predict which bird will be flushed and 
our trappers were constantly catching both species out of the same field 
of grain, sugarcane or of tamarisk or other brush adjacent to them. In 
these situations, as elsewhere, there was no indication that the two 
species were to the slightest degree incompatible. The same seems to be 
the case where francolin and red junglefowl ranges overlap. 
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