144 NOVA SCOTIA, 



the sportsman gets at 25 yards, he gets three at lesser 

 ranges, and often has to cut down his bird at 10 yards dis- 

 tance. A fatal error made by beginners, is to let the birds 

 get too far. Shoot whenever you see a feather, is the 

 maxim of the cock shooter. I have often seen the Ameri- 

 can cock, when flushed by a spaniel, struggle up through a 

 thick bush, top it, and then drop like a stone at the other 

 side. When they alight in this way, the tail is spread out 

 like a fan, the bird's attitude on these occasions, and the 

 expression of the large melancholy and half-scared eye is 

 very pretty. The same bird may be flushed a dozen times 

 in the beginning of the season before it is brought to bag, 

 and each time he is harder to find than the time before ; 

 the old scent is puzzling, and cocking dogs cannot be too 

 close-hunting, painstaking, and diligent. 



Eight or ten brace of cock, with perhaps a brace of 

 ruffed grouse and a couple of snipe, is considered a very 

 good bag for two guns in a day's shooting in Nova Scotia. 

 This is not large, but I repeat that large bags cannot be 

 made in Nova Scotia, and the size of the bag is not quite 

 a fair measure of the day's sport. In the first place as 

 regards the actual shooting, if the cock shooter can show 

 one bird for every three empties, he need not complain. 

 Then in the cocking season, the Acadian woods are very 

 lovely, and the weather very charming. To a man of a 

 certain way of thinking a flavour is added to his day's 

 sport, by t;he thought that he owes his bag, small though 

 it may be, not to his well-filled purse nor yet to the favour 

 of a irieud, but solely to his own skilled labour, know- 

 ledge, and experience. I shall, perhaps, be set down as 

 " slow," when I say that I would infinitely prefer to shoot 



