136 HUNTING TRIPS 



ground where I could easily find them again, 

 and as it would have been a great and useless 

 labor to have gone down for them, I left 

 them where they were and walked on along 

 the crest. Before I had gone a hundred 

 yards I had put up another sharp-tail from 

 a cedar and killed him in fine style as he 

 sailed off below me. The snow and bad 

 weather seemed to make the prairie fowl 

 disinclined to move. There must have been 

 a good many score of them scattered in 

 bunches among the cedars, and as I walked 

 along I put up a covey or a single bird every 

 two or three hundred yards. They were 

 always started when I was close up to them, 

 and the nature of the place made them offer 

 excellent shots as they went off, while when 

 killed they dropped down on the snow-cov- 

 ered canyon bottom where they could be 

 easily recovered on my walk home. When 

 the sharp- tails had once left the canyon they 

 scattered among the broken buttes. I tried 

 to creep up to one or two, but they were fully 

 as wild and watchful as deer, and would not 



