166 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
found—in a country that has been much gunned—it is 
well able to take care of itself. By much training it 
has acquired a great variety of tricks and stratagems 
which it practices to the utter discomfiture of many 
gunners. It may rise far ahead of the dog and out 
of shot and fly straight up a mountainside out of sight, 
so that it is impossible to mark it down; or if for some 
good reason of its own it continues to lie, it will very 
likely let man and dog pass it, and then when the man 
is tangled up in difficult brush and is trying to push 
his way ahead, the partridge with thunderous roar will 
rise behind him and disappear before he can free him- 
self from his fetters and bring the gun to his shoulder. 
Very commonly the partridge runs rapidly ahead of the 
dog, sometimes in a straightaway course, apparently 
to make sure that it will be well out of gunshot before 
it rises, or, again, it may run straight away, and then, 
bending off to right or left, may come around nearly 
to its trail again so that its pursuers will pass it. This 
is the precise trick played by the moose and sometimes 
by deer and bear when the conditions are favorable for 
tracking them. A favorite device is to rise behind a 
tree trunk, a clump of brush, a great rock or even a 
stone wall, and to keep this barrier between itself and 
the gunner until safely out of range. 
The flight of the grouse is very swift, and though 
when well under way usually flying straight, yet often 
it rises on a curve, so that one may easily shoot behind 
it. Although often rising from the ground with a 
thunderous roar of wings, which may upset the nerves 
