OUTDOORS 



dershirt. The perspiration pours down from 

 you in streams. It is a regular out-doors 

 Turkish bath, and the work in boring into 

 the dense thickets, stumbling over fallen logs, 

 and kicking through vines and tangled under- 

 brush enlarges a man's vocabulary. Frank 

 Forester's favorite sport was shooting " tim- 

 ber-doodles," and New York State was for- 

 merly the " happy hunting-ground " for these 

 birds. In some of the eastern and middle 

 states, together with two or three of the 

 southern states, fair woodcock shooting can 

 still be had in favored localities. In Canada, 

 by reason of greater attention to the game- 

 laws, the shooting has not gone back so rap- 

 idly as it has in the United States. 



The flight of the bird is eccentric, swift, 

 and puzzling to the average shooter. Some- 

 times a woodcock rises straight up through 

 the trees; at other times he is up and over a 

 clump of bushes like a ray of light flashed 

 through a shutter; and again he will rise, 

 dodge around a tree, and with one long, 

 quick swerve, be out of gunshot. His flight 

 has not the whir of a quail or the ruffed 

 grouse, nor the sudden start a jack-snipe 



