160 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



about flushing birds, and was a fine retriever. But I love to hunt 

 alone, with nothing to distract my attention from the beauties of the 

 autumn woods, to watch and study the interesting habits of the other 

 wild creatures, to learn the haunts of the wily grouse and match my 

 wits against his. Then, if I can, unaided, outwit this wizard of the 

 woodland glades, learn to beat him at his many clever tricks, I feel 

 that I have earned my prize. Well he knows the trick of putting 

 the trunk of a big tree or a thick tangle of leaves and branches be- 

 tween the hunter and himself in his headlong flight; or running off 

 to one side, he will rise behind the gunner and get away safely ; per- 

 haps he will alight in the thick top of a pine tree and slip away on 

 the farther side of it on silent wings, giving the hunter an unexpected 

 and difficult shot. Usually, if we miss, we can watch his distant flight 

 to mark him clown and flush him again ; but he may run a long dis- 

 tance or fly out across an opening to another bit of cover and escape. 

 Occasionally we get a pleasant surprise by killing a bird we could 

 not see, shooting in the direction it has taken behind thick brush. Or 

 we may think we have made a clean miss, as we see the bird keep on 

 and on rising up and up into the sky until it appears as a small speck ; 

 but if we watch it, we may see it drop like a stone, shot in the head ; 

 then we need a good dog to find it. There is no bird that so tests the 

 skill, patience, and endurance of a good wing-shot as the ruffed 

 grouse and no shooting that calls for so much experience and intelli- 

 gent study. There are very few who can make a respectable ratio of 

 birds killed to shots fired ; if one takes his shots as they come, there 

 are very few that can put a bird in the pocket for every three empty 

 shells. One must know where to look for his birds and study their 

 food habits in the localities he hunts. One of the surest places to 

 find them in my section is where an old apple orchard has been aban- 

 doned and overgrown with grapevines, briers, and birches, or where 

 old apple trees grow along the edges of the woods, or where tangled 

 thickets of berry-bearing shrubs, junipers, cedars, pines, and other 

 forest growths are encroaching on deserted pasture lands. When the 

 beechnut crop is good they may be found in sheltered spots on the 

 sunny side of the woods or brushy hillsides. In the mountains far- 

 ther south they frequent the rhododendron clumps, the ravines lined 

 with laurel thickets, or the dense undergrowth along the streams, 

 where shooting is difficult. In closing this chapter I am tempted to 

 quote the appreciative words of one who has substituted the camera 

 for the gun; Edmund J. Sawyer (1923) says: 



And now there is little enough satisfaction in the reflection that that gun shot 

 many a grouse, albeit all of them on the wing and not one over a dog. I have, 

 after all, never taken a Grouse except through the immense advantage of my 

 infernal powder and lead. I never outwitted him fairly ; I have never held his 

 Jimp form in my hand without feeling the rebuke of his matchless wings. I 



