PINNATED GROUSE. 235 



so early in the season that the birds are invariably 

 not full grown, incapable of more than short flights, 

 and the heat is so intense that both Ponto and 

 Juno have had enough quartering and pointing in a 

 couple of hours to satisfy them for that day ; so that, 

 if the sportsman has the constitution of a locomotive, 

 with the disregard to heat that is credited to the sala- 

 mander, if desirous of further replenishing his volu- 

 minous skirt pockets, he has to perform not only his 

 own part of the programme, but that of his now half- 

 foundered canines. It has long been a great desire 

 of mine to see one more month granted for these 

 splendid birds to enjoy, uninterrupted, their family 

 cares a lengthening of the close season which would, 

 not only in many ways be advantageous to both 

 pursuer and pursued, but can have no possible objec- 

 tions, on the other hand, to be urged against it. 



The best prairie-chicken shooting I have ever had 

 was in the month of October; and although September 

 had been both wet and boisterous, yet the birds had 

 not packed, and lay well. Day after day I killed from 

 twenty brace upwards, and this in the northern 

 portion of Illinois, with a fourteen-bore, light-made, 

 twenty- six-inch-barrelled gun. I have little hesitation 

 in saying, that if I had had a ten-bore, which I now 

 always use for general shooting in America, my score 



