QUAIL-SHOOTING IN THE WEST. 103 



out on your side of the hedge ? " Half the suc- 

 cess of sporting, outside of being a good shot, 

 depends upon the knowledge of such things as 

 this. There is another matter to be mentioned 

 here. The best dogs in the world are sometimes 

 unable to find and put up all the birds in a 

 bevy of quail. I have often been out with men 

 who had first-rate dogs, and have, to their 

 amazement, given them absolute and irrefragable 

 proof of this fact. They have been not a little 

 annoyed at first when they saw me put up quail 

 which their dogs had been unable to find after 

 the bevy was gone. But it was no fault of the 

 dogs, nor were they unable to detect the quail 

 because the latter withheld their scent, as some 

 have argued they have power to do. I do not 

 believe they possess any such power. It is not 

 a question of no scent, but of too much. The bevy 

 have been lying there and running all over the 

 ground, so that it is covered and tainted with 

 scent to such a degree that the noses of the dogs 

 become full of it, and that is why they cannot 

 find and put up one or two birds which lie close 

 in their hiding-places and decline to move. I 

 will now relate a notable instance of this sort of 

 thing which occurred last fall. It was near Selma, 



