644 



North American Grouse. 



boy perpetually match their wits against each other, — the one in 

 trapping and the other in avoiding being trapped. Master Barefoot 

 finds a drumming-log, and at once whips out his jack-knife and, 

 bending down a neighboring hickory sapling, sets a twitch-up, with 

 a slip-noose at the end, made of a string pulled out of one of his 

 capacious pockets. The twitch-up being well watched, is sure to 

 catch the bird or drive it away. As Barefoot grows older, he learns 

 to set running snares of horse-hair or silk in the paths in the woods, 

 and he will walk miles to attend them when he is too sick to go 

 half a mile to school. At length, he grows to be a young man, 

 "some farmer, some poacher," making a precarious living by sell- 

 ing game he has trapped or shot in season and out, and killing 

 more birds than all the minks, owls, and foxes in the country 

 side. 



There is a curious habit in the ruffed grouse of taking to 

 the trees when pursued by a small dog, and when a number of 

 them flit into one tree, they will sit and be shot at until they are 

 all successively killed, providing, always, that the lowest is killed 

 first, and the dog keeps up his barking. For this chase a little 

 red dog is preferred, and doubtless the birds are accustomed thus 

 to save themselves wh^n pursued by foxes, and they see no differ- 

 ence in their canine pursuer, and are more in fear of him than of 

 the gun, whose character they do not know so well. 



