The prairie chicken or pinnated grouse is one of America’s most splendid game birds. There are still some prairie chickens to be found in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and some of the other Middle Western States, but the best shooting is now to be had in Minnesota, Montana, the Dakotas, and the Northwest.
The dividing up of large farms into smaller ones and the converting of prairie lands into corn fields has had much to do with the decrease of prairie chickens in the Middle Western States for the prairie chicken does not follow civilization but retreats from it.
They thrive best where there are large tracts of prairie with corn and oat fields adjoining. Although their are a upland birds which mostly love to frequent meadows where there is long, coarse grass for cover, very often bordering ponds.
The prairie chicken can endure extremely cold weather and does not migrate at the approach of winter.
During the early part of the season, the hunting is done mostly in stubble-fields morning and evening over dogs. Later on in October and November, they frequent the ripened corn-fields and are not very easy to bag in the standing corn.
I have always found them very regular and methodical in their habits, visiting certain fields daily at about the same hour. In wild hunter many hunting expert told their story that this prairie chicken is the best food items ever so. In different reason this species are mostly found in western Gulf of Mexico and many others location in small scale.
The birds are much stronger on the wing late in the season than they are earlier, because by late Fall the young birds have become fully grown, and fly much swifter than they do in September and early October.
