OF WILD ANIAMLS 181 



foolishly stop on the other side of the field, or in the next acre of 

 brush, in full view of the hunters and dogs, who find it great 

 fun to hustle after them and in fifteen minutes put them up 

 again. Thus it is easy for a hunting party to "follow up" a 

 covey until the last bird of it has been bagged. 



Just before the five-year close season on quail went into 

 effect in Iowa, this incident occurred : 



On a farm of four hundred acres in the southern part of 

 the state, two gunners killed so nearly up to their bag limit of 

 fifty birds per day that in ten days they went away with 400 

 quail. The foolish birds obstinately refused to leave the 

 farm which had been their home and shelter. Day after day 

 the chase with dogs and men, and the fusillade of shots, went 

 briskly on. As a matter of fact, that outfit easily could have 

 gone on until every quail on that farm had fallen. 



It is indeed strange that the very bird which practices such 

 fine and successful strategy in leading an intruder away from 

 its helpless young, by playing wounded, should fail so seriously 

 when before the guns. A hunted quail covey should learn to 

 post a sentry to watch for danger and give the alarm in time for 

 a safe flight. 



But I know one quail species that is a glorious exception. 

 It is Gambel's quail, of southern Arizona. I saw a good wing 

 shot, Mr. John M. Phillips, hunt that quail (without dogs) 

 until he was hot and red, and come in with more wrath than 

 birds. He said, with an injured air: 



"The little beggars won't rise! I don't want to shoot them 

 on the ground, and the minute they rise above the creosote 

 bushes they drop right down into them again, and go on run- 

 ning." 



It was even so. They simply will not rise and fly away, as 

 Bob White does, giving the sportsmen a chance to kill them, 

 but when forced to fly up clear of the bushes they at once drop 

 back again* 



*A very few quail-killers of the East who oppose long close seasons contend that quail coveys 

 "breed better" when they are shot to pieces every year and "scattered." but we observed that 

 the quail of the Sonoran Desert managed to survive and breed and perpetuate themselves 

 numerously without the benevolent cooperation of the "pump-gun" and the automatic shotgun. 



