144 AMERICAK GAME BIRD SHOOTING, 



started after them as soon as we picked np the dead, and 

 were among them again in less than five minutes. 



While peering about for them, I saw a magnificent 

 male drop on the ground, not forty feet away and stare 

 at us with such an expression of mingled inquisitiveuess 

 and confidence that 1 was loth to shoot him, for his mien 

 was stately, and his eyes glowed with a liquid brilliancy. 

 The dog having espied him, rushed at him, and before I 

 knew what I was about I fired at him when he began to 

 ply his pinions, and brought him down with force enough, 

 apparently, to knock a hole in the earth. I then directed 

 my attention to the birds in the trees, and managed to 

 rout them gradually, and get a shot on the wing as they 

 flew away at a high altitude, but my success was not 

 very great, owing to the density of the forest, which soon 

 concealed them from view. 



Smith was in his glory when he got wing shots, for he 

 poured out bad puns so rapidly that I fancied he killed 

 more birds with them than he did with his gun. We 

 had fine sport all the afternoon, but the only species of 

 the Tetrao family we met was the dusky grouse, and we 

 saw a hundred or more of these along the low lands 

 that skirted the base of the higher hills. Their i)rofu- 

 sion was readily acconnted for by the absence of all pop- 

 ulation in the country, except a few wandering Indians, 

 and they cannot lessen them much in such an extensive 

 and pathless region. They commie more havoc among 

 the eggs than among the birds, for they can readily find 

 these on the ground during the nesting period; and as 

 they eat them even when they are addled, and prefer 

 them when the chicks are developed, a person may im- 

 agine how many they can destroy in a season. When I 

 had secured ten brace of grouse, which I did by four 

 o'clock, I returned to camp alone, as Smith wished to 

 make his bag as large as possible, in order, as he said, 

 "to just blow about it" when he returned to his Eastern 



