340 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



In cover, some of the shooting is easy and some 

 of it very difficult, though hardly ranking in difficulty 

 with ruffed grouse shooting. The quail is neither so 

 wary nor so wild as the ruffed grouse. Shooting in 

 some parts of the pine woods is almost as easy shoot- 

 ing as shooting in the open, the ground being bare 

 except for its covering of dry pine needles. The 

 smooth trunks of the pine trees, standing several yards 

 apart, and free from limbs for thirty or forty feet, offer 

 no serious obstacle to the shooting. In other sections 

 of the pine woods, where the growth of the trees is 

 more stunted, and the limbs grow from near the 

 ground up, the difficulty of the shooting is second to 

 none, and in some sections is almost prohibitive. 



Again, there are sections wherein the quails live 

 on the open prairie, as in parts of Arkansas, and, the 

 shooting being strictly open, it much resembles chicken 

 shooting, excepting the difference in the size and speed 

 of the two birds, the quail being much the quicker to 

 get away at the start. The quail makes its flight in 

 the open prairie, alighting near any little bit of shrub- 

 bery, be it no more than a bush or two of sumach, 

 which, by the way, grows here and there on the prairie 

 in Arkansas. In the woods, when pursued, it fre- 

 quently takes to the tree-tops for safety, where it is 

 hidden indeed. On warm days, or when there has 

 been a long spell of pleasant weather, it is far less 

 wild than when the weather has been stormy, or when 

 there has been a sudden change from warm to cold. 

 Such changes add to the difficulty of the shooting. 



