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QUAIL SHOOTING 345 
will promptly cross out from one side to the other, 
missing the scent, and accomplishing nothing useful. 
He does not know what is required of him. But once 
he catches the idea, he soon improves on it, following 
carefully along the bottom of the ditch and pointing 
the scattered birds here and there, every few yards 
apart, in ones and twos, the shooter having a good 
opportunity from his position on the outside to kill as 
the birds fly out. 
The shooting along ditches is not so easy as one 
might imagine. Sometimes the birds run swiftly sev- 
eral hundred yards or more in the ditch, and may then 
run out and across to other ditches, giving a trail which 
may try the most experienced dogs to follow. 
If the birds happen to be near a cotton or corn field, 
where the ground is bare, and there are no ditches for 
concealment, they may run so fast and far that the 
dog may never approach near enough to them to secure 
a point, and the shooter who is inexperienced in this 
work will be likely to think that his dog is surely 
deceiving him. 
When near the woods, or switch-cane, the birds 
often take shelter therein, and when in the latter cover 
it is well to abandon further pursuit of them. 
In the sugar country, where there may be corn fields 
here and there among the broad levels of the sugar- 
cane, the character of the shooting again changes. 
Many birds will be found in and around the corn fields, 
and then it is very pretty shooting. 
It may not be amiss to mention, for the benefit of 
