NEW YORK STATE 
 
 
RAISES RUFFED GROUSE 
 
      Advance News of 1931 Accomplishments With This Native Bird, Presented
To 
                    Our Readers Before Reported At Game Conference 
 
               By A. A. ALLEN, Ph.D., Professor of Ornithology at Cornell
University 
 
 
HEN          George  Edwards. a 
      leading Zoologist of the eigh- 
      teenth century, wrote in 1754 
that the Ruffed Grouse cannot be 
made tame; that "Many have, to 
their disappointment, attempted it by 
rearing them under hens," he little 
realized how often in future years 
his statement would be challenged 
and how many times discouraged 
game breeders would finally conclude 
that he was probably right after all. 
He did not know that 165 years later 
a Cornell Professor of inquiring mind, 
deluded by this fascinating bird, was 
to accept the challenge and proceed 
to spend ten years of his life in an 
effort to prove that Edwards was 
wrong and that Ruffed Grouse really 
could be "made tame" and reared in 
captivity. He could not have guessed 
that 177 years later, more than a 
dozen different breeders of game 
birds of experience and backed by the 
Conservation Commissions of half a 
dozen different states would be work- 
ing feverishly to be the first to solve 
the problem. But here it is 1931 and 
interest in the Ruffed Grouse prob- 
lem has not abated one whit. 
  At the American Game Conference 
to be held in the Hotel Pennsylvania, 
 
 
Four Months Old and His Feet Have Never 
Touched Ground, But the Wire Floor Does Not 
       Seem to Cramp His Style 
December 1 and 2, Conservationists 
from all over the country will con- 
vene, and one of the first questions 
to be asked will be "What news from 
the Grouse rearing fraternity; what 
progress for 1931 ?" The previous day 
the various research workers will 
have convened and talked over their 
difficulties and their successes of this 
year and will have adjourned with 
 
 
the satisfied feeling that the problem 
is almost solved. There will be reports 
from veterans of the old school like 
Harry Torrey of the East Sandwich 
Game Farm in Massachusetts who 
has been experimenting with Grouse 
for the past nineteen years and who 
still clings to the  time-honored 
method of rearing them with bantam 
foster-mothers. And there will be re- 
ports from Dr. Thomas E. Winecoff 
of the Pennsylvania Game Commis- 
sion and from Donald Turrill of the 
Rolling Rock Club in Pennsylvania; 
from Fred C. Ott, who experimented 
this year with Grouse at Lees-McRae 
College, North Carolina; from Gar- 
diner Bump in charge of the Grouse 
Control Bureau of the New York 
S t a t e Conservation Commission; 
from Chas. 0. Handley and W. B. 
Coleman of Virginia; all of whom are 
devotees of the modern sanitary 
brooder method of rearing Grouse 
which Coleman has developed so well 
for Quail. Certainly there should be 
some new developments when all 
these Grouse specialists get together 
and begin sawing wood. Perhaps we 
should wait with this story of what 
has been done in New York State 
this year until after this discussion at 
 
 
Professor Allen and the Grouse Brooders Designed and Used by Him in 1931

                                 8 
 
 
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