68 UPLAND SHOOTING. 



find the second one, but when he tries to find where that 

 fell, he is even more exasperated than before at the 

 bewildering sameness of all the shrubbery. He declares 

 there is no use in hunting these quail without a dog, for- 

 getting that the heaviest bags ever made are made on 

 precisely such ground without any dog an experienced 

 hand retrieving almost every bird as quickly, almost, as it 

 was shot, and all birds being shot singly and on the wing; 

 forgetting, also, that if he had a dog he would soon have 

 his nose nearly worthless by letting him run too long in 

 dry air and hot sun without water instead of keeping him 

 at heel until really needed. 



He loses just time enough in looking for these birds to 

 let the scattered fiock run together again some 300 

 yards away, where they are making the hill-side ring 

 with their clear call, and can perhaps be seen darting here 

 and there through openings in the brush. Until this 

 flock is broken and scattered, he will have no shooting 

 worthy of the name, but only boundless vexation; and 

 he has lost just time enough to have to begin all over 

 again. Just before he gets within shooting distance of the 

 flock again, a bird starts from a bush almost at his feet, 

 runs a few yards along the ground, almost as swiftly as if 

 on the wing, then bursts into flight, with a clear chirp, 

 chirp, chirp, and goes wheeling off toward a ravine on the 

 left. The temptation is irresistible. Bang! goes the gun, 

 and the bird whirls downward out of a cloud of feathers, 

 and, with a tremendous roar, over 1,000 birds rise 

 from the slope beyond. Running to the place where the 

 bird fell, our friend finds a few feathers on the edge of 

 the ravine, but looks in vain for the bird. Suddenly there 

 is a violent fluttering near the bottom of the ravine; he 

 runs down, and finds it bouncing and gyrating in its death- 

 struggles, eluding all his efforts to seize it until it is a 

 dozen feet or more farther down the hill. By the time 



