386 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
evitably there was a miss now and then, when a walk- 
ing bird would unexpectedly stop, or would move its 
head to one side just as the trigger was drawn; but 
as I say, we used to be able to cut the heads off four 
out of five. 
In the same way, when a brood of dusky grouse flew 
into a tree, and stood there unfrightened by the report 
of the rifle, a number of them could be secured, pains 
being taken always to shoot the lowest bird—in def- 
erence to an aged tradition—in order that others might 
not be alarmed by a fluttering body falling close to 
them. 
One of the best morning shootings that I ever had 
at dusky grouse was in northwestern Montana, on 
one of the high benches that overlook the St. Mary’s 
Lakes. It was a rounded knoll—an old lateral mo- 
raine—a mile or two long, once overgrown by aspens, 
which had been killed by fire and had now fallen and 
rotted. A new growth of aspens, just starting, reached 
only about up to the knee. Among these little aspens 
grew huckleberries, and the ground was more or less 
carpeted with the vines of the bearberry—the smoking 
weed called “larbe,” perhaps a corruption of the trap- 
per French word ’herbe. On these berries several 
broods .of grouse were feeding, and after camp had 
been made near the upper end of the knoll I took my 
shotgun and walked back over the ground where sev- 
eral birds had been started. 
It was not long before, with a thunderous roar, a 
full-grown bird rose but a few yards before me, and, 
