An important influence in the up¬
ward trend of grouse in North Caro¬
lina has been the establishment of live
national forest* and national parks in
the mountains. The park* and forest*
have taken over thousands of formerly
tilled fields, many of which have now
grown up with plant* that provide ex¬
cellent grouse food. Fire protection re
suiting from the federal activities
halted the deuruction of grouse nests
Along with these federal activities
the abandonment of hundreds of hill¬
side farms by
farming, has further improved the feed
situation. Whether this upward trend
will continue after all these old fields
have completely grown back into ma¬
ture timber is problematical, but for
the next few years we should be able
to look for generally good grouse crops.
The history of grouse is most in¬
teresting. Skulls and bones of grouse
have been found in cave* in Pennsyl¬
vania. Maryland. Tennessee and Cali¬
fornia, associated with the Hones of a
crocodilian, an extinct eland and three
species of giant peccaries, as well a*
with a variety of Other bones of
of the Pleistocene period:
World about 25.000 years ago In-
dun* found the bird, to their liking,
while from his first coming the white
man's writing have referred enthusi¬
astically to the grou*c
In 1632 Thomas Morion, adven¬
turer and Indian trader, referred to
them; in 1672 Nicholas Denys, French
representative in Nova Scotia, re¬
ported that grouse Utils were being
used as fans in France. In the 1750's
John Bertram wrote to linglund that
"their flesh is while and good" and
recounted some of the habit* of the
bird. He also sent a specimen, which
was described in detail by Edward*, a
British naturalist: and on the basis of
the Edwards account. I.inncaus in¬
cluded the specie* in his Syueina Na¬
turae. which book is the
ЫЫе
of
wrote: "The groove far
as an article of food, every
nd bird except the wild tur¬
key." and Henry Thorcau waxed
poetic about them:
“Scare up parti idgcs t grouse) feed¬
ing about the green .pnngy places un¬
der the edge of llic hill*. See them
skim or scale away . . . hear their
distant drumming ... as if the earth's
The Grouse
Jltsre all. ml North Caro¬
lina's great bird.
£
К»
TOM ALEXANDER
poise now beats audibly . . . meet a
furtndge with her brood in the
they still arc sure to thrive
like true natives of the soil, whatever
revolutions occur.”
While papa grouse is a ventriloquist,
thiowing his drumming sound a de¬
ceiving distance in the wrong direction,
papa and mama both arc Houdini*
with superb disappearing acts. Welch
.me of their bullet-like flights off
through the woods, and you arc sure
you saw just where that bird landed.
Gun ready, you sneak up to the very
spot where you saw him light, and the
probabilities are be will get up a hun¬
dred feel ahead of you. having sailed
that far beyond where you sawr him
light On the other hand, he may just
a* well have stopped short. You walk
right by where be is squatting, almost
stepping on him. and as soon as your
hack is to him off he goes, right back
in the direction he came from.
I am convinced, as arc many others
who know this bird, that he knows
just what a gun is and how far it will
shoot, even if he is a this-year's bird
and has never before been shot at.
He’s like a crow in this respect. All
hunters know the remarkable way a
crow has of knowing whether or not a
man is carrying a gun and how far it
will carry. Well, a grouse is just as
smart about it. Walk up toward one
standing in a trail. If you do not have
a gun he will often stand there saucily
and indifferently until you get within
maybe 25 feet of him, and then to add
in*ult upon insult maybe be will w«rf*
off through the bushes instead of fly¬
ing. But have a gun in your hand,
and he has flown off before you arc
ar .* hm
you have passed beyond him, though
you may p,.s* within five feet of him.
Then, wow! he’s off with a roar di¬
rectly to your rear and out of sight
before you can swing around to shoot!
Another habit i* to sit quietly so long
a* you keep moving, even though you
pa*v clone to him; but if you nop for
any reason, it Seem* to .
to believing you
к
even though you may never have sus¬
pected he was there. Then he gets up.
and, brother, what a start vou get!
It it hard to believe that this woo¬
ded u I game bird could ever have had
a bounty placed on hi* head because
of the damage he did. but about the
middle of the last century when apple
orchards were being widely estab¬
lished in New I ngliind. grouse ate so
many apple buds that a bounty of 25
cent* a (tend was placed on them. As
lute us 1924 damage claims were paid
in the State of New Hampshire in the
amount of $26,800.72, mostly for
apple orchard damage. Even within
the past ten years Massachusetts has
paid claim* for damage to apple or¬
chards I have never heard of damage
to apple orchard* in North Carolina,
but if I thought that grouse would be
attracted to an orchard I'd plant my
•bole ranch in apple*.
In early Colonial days grouse must
have been far more plentiful than they
arc now, for they were trapped, lured.
Minrcd and shot by the thousands for
market in New York and New Eng¬
land. The price ranged during the
marketing years from a low of 8 cents
apiece one year in Maine to $7 a pair
in Washington in 1918. Some of the
larger New York and Boston hotels
retained their own grouse hunters, and
the bird* were taken in all seasons of
the year, some hunters turning in as
many as a thousand grouse in a year.
Now. thunk goodness, they are a game
bird throughout their range in the
state*, and no sale is permitted.
This bud, which seemingly ha*
Maybe be is feeding in -or
in a sort of open place and neither of
you secs the other until you are close
to him. He knows instantly that if
he gets up there you will have a good
shot at him in that opening. In thi*
case, instead of hastily rising lie freezes
there in the protective coloring until
protected in our southern
region, living by hi* own wits
rough, high mountains and thriving,
и
in my opinion so far superior
ю
open-land ringnecks and to the
Scottish moor grouse, or even to the
*h>w quail of the flatwoods, that I
wonder why wealthy sportsmen
haven’t gone a lot further in buying
up. Mivking and protecting grousc-
(Conilmietl on page
Ю)
THE STATE. January IS. 1955
