
JUNGLEFOWL IN GENERAL 
Southern Asia is the home of many remarkable game birds. 
Among the larger species, the most abundant and widely distributed 
is the junglefowl. Of adaptable habits, wary, and agile of wing, 
this denizen of forest, scrub, and adjacent croplands has maintained 
its numbers for centuries with remarkable tenacity against the combined 
inroads of guns, nets, snares, and egg-collecting villagers. 
The junglefowl, progenitors of the domestic chicken, are 
members of the genus Gallus in the pheasant family. Four distinct 
species have been recognized, of which the gray junglefowl, Gallus 
sonneratii, whose neck hackles exite the interest of fly tiers, is 
limited to southern India. The more spectacularly colored red junglefowl 
(Gallus gallus) representing five subspecies ranges over 3,900 miles 
from northwestern India eastward through Assam, Burma, Thailand, and 
Malaya to Indo-China, the extreme south of China, Hainan, Sumatra, and 
Java. 
All the junglefowls are woodland birds, some preferring heavily 
forested areas with dense clumps of undergrowth, others more open scrub 
and second-growth. Like the ruffed grouse, however, they are most 
abundant where there is some interspersion of dense growth with moderately 
open, brushy areas, roads, trails, eroded patches or fields. Moderate 
to fairly heavily grazed woodlands are utilized provided food and cover 
are present. 
Climates vary from fairly dry in central India to hot and 
humid in southeastern Asia. Most of the subspecies occur where winters 
are warm, though the Indian red junglefowl, (murghii), along the lower 
flanks of the Himalayas, is no stranger to snow or to temperatures 
somewhat below freezing. 
Topographically, the Indian junglefowl is found commonly on 
rough, hill, or mountainous terrain. Flat lands also are not. avoided, 
although, in India, most of these have been cleared for cultivation in 
recent years. 
In the United States there is much habitat, particularly 
east of the Mississippi, in parts of western Washington, Oregon, and 
California, and in Hawaii, which is rather similar to the native coverts 
occupied by junglefowl in India. In eastern United States, winter 
temperatures and snow might limit successful introductions to the south 
of an irregular line drawn from northeastern Texas through central 
Arkansas, western Tennessee, northern Georgia and South Carolina, eastern 
North Carolina, and extreme southeastern Virginia. (See Fig. 1). 
