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SHOOTING THE WOODS GROUSE 389 
bird is worthy of higher commendation than the dusky 
grouse. This is especially true when the birds on 
the lower plateaus are feeding on the tiny red huckle- 
berry that grows in such profusion in the pine woods. 
While the females are down in the lower ground, 
attending to nest building, hatching, and the rearing 
of their young, the old males and the barren females 
resort to the higher land, often being found on the 
mountain sides far above timber line. From such 
places they are often startled by the goat or sheep 
hunter, and pitching down from these great heights 
take long flights, at last bringing up down among the 
timber, and flying so far that no one knows just exactly 
where they go. 
Nowhere, so far as my limited experience goes, 1s 
the dusky grouse pursued in so systematic and sports- 
manlike a manner as on Vancouver Island, near the 
beautiful city of Victoria. My shooting of them there 
dates back many years, and it may be that in recent 
years the sportsmen of other parts of the Pacific coast 
have taken to shooting this splendid bird over dogs, as 
in old times they did near Victoria. 
What good shooting there was at Victoria twenty- 
five years ago, and how varied the bags used to be! 
There were the pheasants rising like an explosion of 
fireworks, sometimes from under your very feet, and 
seeming—after you had ineffectively fired both bar- 
rels in the air in your fright—to wave at you in de- 
rision long brown tails that you almost felt you could 
grasp by reaching out the hand. There were blue 
