196 AMEKICAK GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 



in one way, but highly pleased in another, for we had 

 bagged over fifty brace of ptarmigans, and a black bear. 

 The only fault we found with the birds from a sports- 

 man's standjjoint was, that they would not flush well, 

 were too tamo, and preferred skulking in thickets to 

 running in the open. We shot two brace with our re- 

 volvers one slightly foggy morning, as they seemed so 

 loth to flee from us that it would have been mere butch- 

 ery to have used our guns. The number of ptarmigans 

 on the snow-clad chains of the West is nothing compared 

 to what it is in Alaska and some portions of British 

 Columbia, for any ordinary shot can bag from twenty 

 to thirty brace in a day during the months of August 

 and September in these countries. Alaska is specially 

 famous for its wbite-tails, and as the willow and rock 

 ptarmigans are almost equally common, the birds may 

 be found from the coast valleys to the hoary-headed 

 mountains. I have heard that the birds are unusually 

 abundant in the northern parts of Idaho and Montana, 

 and denizens of the haunts of the mountain goat in the 

 Snowy Range. I travelled through this Eange in 1874, 

 but I met only a few of them, although dusky grouse 

 were quite common. While I was wandering about 

 one day in Montana, I saw a pack of ptarmigans on 

 the edge of a pine forest, which was so densely strewn 

 with fallen trees and leaves that I found it rather 

 difficult to pick my way through it in places. Wishing 

 to flush the birds and get a shot at the same time, I de- 

 cided to startle them by jumping suddenly in their midst 

 from a large prostrate tree, behind which they were try- 

 ing to conceal themselves. I therefore cocked both bar- 

 rels of the gun noiselessly, crawled up to the huge log, 

 and bounding on it, shouted at them. The next thing I 

 knew was that I was buried m the tree, that both barrels 

 of my gun had been fired accidentally, that millions of 

 ants seemed to be running up inside my trousers and 



