My friend Pat.

[Jeff]

Howard Shelly was a wildlife film maker for Michigan outdoors when I was a kid, anybody growing up in michigan when I did knows this voice. This film probably contributed to my fondness for the bird. I don't think it was the time when I was about 5 years old, first time ever to go hunting with my dad, and being quietly horrified watching him ring the neck of a downed Partridge. That has never left me. This is a better memory.  The film was made way before this airing on this later show.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Neat vids. I'd have to quit hunting if all the game was like that. I had several deer last year and in years past I never could shoot even though they were legal and I wanted/needed the meat.

 I used to catch various wild animals by hand, especially raccoons, and they would be very vicious  when I caught them and again when I released them. In several cases I'd turn them loose then have to run away from them as they were mad at being locked up. I never had the heart to shoot them after I had caught/"conquered" them while if I had shot them when I first found them it would have been no problem.

[beenthere]

 first time ever to go hunting with my dad, and being quietly horrified watching him ring the neck of a downed Partridge.

Was the same way my Dad and Uncles would finish off a downed pheasant. Learned when I was later hunting on my own, that a bird will lay low after being shot down and could unexpectedly take flight. So a show stopper was to quick grab it and dispatch it with a "neck ringing". Discourages them from flying away then. 

[KEC]

This brings back a couple of Ruffed Grouse memories. In the 70's I was motoring down a back road (badly crowned) in the Tug Hill area with a full trailer load of hardwood logs, grossing ~90,000lbs. Up over a knoll and there's a grouse in the middle of the road. Sorry, little bird, but there's no way to safely avoid you, so I straddled him/her. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him fly out from under the trailer, unscathed. Another time, I was driving on I-81 when cars up ahead were stopping. A hen grouse with chicks was in the middle of the highway and she was challenging any vehicle that got near her babies. Finally, the hen and some chicks went off the highway on one side and the other chicks went off the other and traffic resumed. I don't know if they got safely re-united; I hope so. Saw one behind the house yesterday. They've become scarce here is recent years.  I think biologists say  they suspect disease may be a factor. Funny how one will sometimes act tame. I have seen that, but not for a long time.

[KEC]

The origional "Fools Hen" was the Heath Hen which occurred along the Atlantic coastal lowlands. They were so unwary that hungry colonists would kill them with sticks. Between over-hunting and habitat destruction they became extinct. There is some good reading about them on Wikipedia.