94 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



not prove such a bad substitute for a cold and tired 

 man. 



Next morning I sallied out at break of day with 

 the rifle, for I was pretty hungry. As soon as I 

 stepped from the hut I could hear the prairie fowl 

 crowing and calling to one another from the tall 

 trees. There were many score many hundreds 

 would perhaps be more accurate scattered through 

 the wood. Evidently they had been attracted by 

 the good cover and by the thick growth of choke- 

 cherries and wild plums. As the dawn brightened 

 the sharp-tails kept up incessantly their hoarse cluck- 

 ing, and small parties began to fly down from their 

 roosts to the berry bushes. While perched up 

 among the bare limbs of the trees, sharply outlined 

 against the sky, they were very conspicuous. Gen- 

 erally they crouched close down, with the head 

 drawn in to the body and the feathers ruffled, but 

 when alarmed or restless they stood up straight with 

 their necks stretched out, looking very awkward. 

 Later in the day they would have been wild and 

 hard to approach, but I kept out of their sight, and 

 sometimes got two or three shots at the same bird 

 before it flew off. They offered beautiful marks, 

 and I could generally get a rest for my rifle, while 

 in the gray morning, before sunrise, I was not very 

 conspicuous myself, and could get up close beneath 

 where they were ; so I did not have much trouble in 

 killing five, almost all of them shot very nearly 

 where the neck joins the body, one having the head 

 fairly cut off. Salt, like tea, I had carried with 



