Grouse of the Northern Cattle Plains 95 



me, and it was not long before two of the birds, 

 plucked and cleaned, were split open and roasting 

 before the fire. And to me they seemed most de- 

 licious food, although, even in November, the sharp- 

 tails, while keeping their game flavor, have begun 

 to be dry and tough, most unlike the tender and 

 juicy young of August and September. 



The best day's work I ever did after sharp-tails 

 was in the course of the wagon trip, already men- 

 tioned, which my brother and I made through the 

 fertile farming country to the eastward. We had 

 stopped over night with a Norwegian settler who 

 had taken and adapted to a farmhouse an old log 

 trading-post of one of the fur companies, lying in 

 the timber which fringed a river, and so stoutly built 

 as to have successfully withstood the assaults of 

 time. We were traveling in a light covered wagon, 

 in which we could drive anywhere over the prairie. 

 Our dogs would have made an Eastern sportsman 

 blush, for when roughing it in the West we have 

 to put up with any kind of mongrel makeshift, and 

 the best dog gets pretty well battered after a season 

 or two. I never had a better duck retriever than 

 a little yellow cur, with hardly a trace of hunting 

 blood in his veins. On this occasion we had a stiff- 

 jointed old pointer with a stub tail, and a wild 

 young setter pup, tireless and ranging very free (a 

 Western dog on the prairies should cover five times 

 the ground necessary for an Eastern one to get 

 over), but very imperfectly trained. 



Half of the secret of success on a shooting trip 



