96 FIELD SHOOTING. 



grass or weed or any other bit of cover they can 

 find for the purpose of concealment. With good 

 dogs you can then take them one after the other. 

 When a bevy has been flushed, and the birds have 

 scattered about and pitched down in this way, I 

 have often killed from six to ten before picking 

 any up. I was once shooting in Mason County, 

 Illinois, late in the fall, and flushed a very large 

 bevy of quail from a wheat-stubble. They scat- 

 tered and flew over into a piece of prairie-grass r 

 where they pitched down. I knew they would lie 

 very close, and so they did. They got up one 

 and two at a time, and out of the bevy I accounted 

 there and then for seven brace and a half. Quail 

 pack late in the fall, and in Mason County at that 

 time there were* bevies of thirty or forty in num- 

 ber. In damp or wet weather quail act in a dif- 

 ferent manner when flushed and scattered. At 

 such times, instead of lying where they pitch 

 down, they run a long distance. And then when 

 the dog has winded them, and is about to point, 

 or has pointed, they start and run on again. Under 

 such circumstances it is difficult to make a good 

 bag. It was mainly in such weather that the net- 

 ting of quail was carried on. This bad practice is 

 now unlawful. I saw great numbers caught with 



