SHOOTING THE WOODS GROUSE 387 
scaling off on the fresh breeze that was blowing down 
the lakes, was thirty or forty yards off before the heel- 
plate touched my shoulder. Luckily, I held on the 
bird, and the center of the load hit it so that it fell quite 
dead. At the report two more rose near me, and this 
time I brought my gun to bear a little more quickly, 
and killed the second one. Two or three more rose at 
this report and flew down the lake, but they did not 
fly the whole length of the knoll, and I marked them 
down. 
It was evident that if this lasted I was going to have 
good shooting, and so it proved. I went on, more 
slowly and carefully, and tried to pick my shots. As 
I had no dog, only the birds immediately in my way 
got up, except that sometimes, when a shot was fired, 
several rose ahead or to the right and left, and most 
of these pitched off down the hill, and, scaling off on 
the wind, reached cover in the thick aspens of the 
lower ground, where I knew it would be useless to 
follow them. 
Before I had reached the lower end of the knoll I 
had more birds than I could carry, and I was not sorry 
to see my companion coming after me on horseback 
to relieve mc of the load. The shooting that he had 
heard had notified him of the sport that I was having, 
and he rightly concluded that I would need help. I 
was interested to notice, as he came toward me, that 
he put up a number of grouse, though his route was 
not far from the one I had followed. 
When we had tied our birds on his horse it was 
