Grouse. 8 1 



a good many score of them scattered in bunches among 

 the cedars, and as I walked along I put up a covey or a 

 single bird every two or three hundred yards. They were 

 always started when I was close up to them, and the 

 nature of the place made them offer excellent shots as they 

 went off, while when killed they dropped down on the 

 snow-covered canyon bottom where they could be easily 

 recovered on my walk home. When the sharp-tails had 

 once left the canyon they scattered among the broken 

 buttes. I tried to creep up to one or two, but they were 

 fully as wild and watchful as deer, and would not let me 

 come within a hundred yards of them ; so I turned back, 

 climbed down into the canyon, and walked homeward 

 through it, picking up nine birds on the way, the result of 

 a little over an hour's shooting. Most of them were dead 

 outright ; and the two or three who had been only 

 wounded were easily followed by the tracks they made in 

 the tell-tale snow. 



Most of the prairie fowl I have killed, however, have 

 not been obtained in the course of a day or an afternoon 

 regularly spent after them for the sake of the sport, but 

 have simply been shot with whatever weapon came handy, 

 because we actually needed them for immediate use. On 

 more than one occasion I would have gone supperless or 

 dinnerless had it not been for some of these grouse ; and 

 one such instance I will give. 



One November, about the middle of the month, we 

 had driven in a beef herd (which we wished to ship to the 

 cattle yards), round the old cantonment building, in which 

 a few years ago troops had been stationed to guard 



