46 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS, 



The upland shooter of America does not, cannot, select his 

 stands, or easy walking ground, for getting shots and killing 

 game, leaving it to his gamekeeper or beaters to hunt his dogs, 

 and flush his birds in the thicket, so that they shall fly out before 

 his face — still less does he, like the deer shooter, remain listless 

 and silent at his stand, until his guide, a practical woodman, 

 shall find the quarry and hunt it toward him, so that, per- 

 chance, without walking fifty yards or making the slightest 

 exertion, he gets his point-blank shot, and thinks it a great 

 matter to have killed a big helpless animal, as big as a jackass, 

 and as timid as a calf, literally in the intervals between eating 

 bread and cheese and drinking brown stout, as he sits on a moss- 

 covered log to leeward of the runaway. 



No, through the thickest alder swamp, the deepest and most 

 boggy marsh, among tussocks knee-high, and fallen trees, and in- 

 terlacing vines and cat-briars — along the sharp limestone ledges 

 and through the almost impervious growth of the rhododendron 

 overcanopied by juniper and hemlock — over mile after mile of 

 broad, bare hill-side stubbles — through black morasses, intersected 

 by broad drains — trusting to his own sure foot and even stride, he 

 must toil on after his game, the wildest, fleetest, wariest, and 

 sharpest-flying of all the fowls of the air, depending on his own 

 knowledge of their seasons and their habits to launch his trusty 

 dogs into their proper haunts, at their proper hours ; on his 

 management of those dogs to flush them fairly within shot, and 

 on his own eye and hand of instinct to give a good account of 

 them, when flushed within distance. 



The perfection to which some men have carried this art is 

 almost incredible — the certainty with which they will find game 

 on the same tract of land, with another party who shall find none 

 — the unerring instinct with which they will read the slightest 

 signs of the weather, and comprehend the smallest indications 

 of the whereabouts of their game — the readiness with which 

 they will draw conclusions and positive deductions from signs 

 which to others seem light as air — the facility with which they 

 understand their dogs, and their dogs them — and lastly, their 



