340 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
In cover, some of the shooting is easy and some 
of it very difficult, though hardly ranking in difficulty 
with ruffed grouse shooting. The quail is neither so 
wary nor so wild as the ruffed grouse. Shooting in 
some parts of the pine woods is almost as easy shoot- 
ing as shooting in the open, the ground being bare 
except for its covering of dry pine needles. The 
smooth trunks of the pine trees, standing several yards 
apart, and free from limbs for thirty or forty feet. offer 
no serious obstacle to the shooting. In other sections 
of the pine woods, where the growth of the trees is 
more stunted, and the limbs grow from near the 
ground up, the difficulty of the shooting is second to 
none, and in some sections is almost prohibitive. 
Again, there are sections wherein the quails live 
on the open prairie, as in parts of Arkansas, and, the 
shooting being strictly open, it much resembles chicken 
shooting, excepting the difference in the size and speed 
of the two birds, the quail being much the quicker to 
get away at the start. The quail makes its flight in 
the open prairie, alighting near any little bit of shrub- 
bery, be it no more than a bush or two of sumach, 
which, by the way, grows here and there on the prairie 
in Arkansas. In the woods, when pursued, it fre- 
quently takes to the tree-tops for safety, where it is 
hidden indeed. On warm days, or when there has 
been a long spell of pleasant weather, it is far less 
wild than when the weather has been stormy, or when 
there has been a sudden change from warm to cold. 
Such changes add to the difficulty of the shooting. 
