302 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



when the mornings are cold and frosty, and the middle of 

 the days mild and warm. The birds will then lie suffi- 

 ciently well to afford great sport. They will not, it is 

 true, allow dogs to draw or road close up to them, but 

 their scent is so strong that a good pointer will stand firm 

 at twenty yards' distance. And firmly and stanchly 

 he must be taught to stand, if one would have sport. 

 The slow, poking dog, that roads on till he is close in with 

 his game, will not do a moment for this work. One must 

 have fleet, high-couraged, wide-ranging dogs, that will 

 point as stiffly as rocks the instant they strike the scent. 

 Setters would doubtless be better than pointers for this 

 sport, and Russian setters the best of all, as their speed, 

 courage, endurance, and dauntless perseverance, as well as 

 their hardness of foot, give them vastly the superiority, 

 but for one fatal deficiency their inability to exist, much 

 less hunt without water. 



In many of the best grouse districts it is even neces- 

 sary, as it is in the vicinity of St. Louis, to carry out 

 water in wagons for the use of the dogs. This no setters 

 could endure. Their sufferings are painful to behold, 

 when they cannot both drink and bathe at least every half 

 hour in hot weather ; and if they be unable to do so, 

 they speedily lose their powers of scenting, and if un- 

 relieved, would soon die. 



For dry prairie lands, therefore, during that part of the 

 season in which grouse can be shot to the dog at all for 

 after November, when the cold weather fairly sets in, they 

 cannot ordinarily be approached within rifle range high- 



