QUAIL SHOOTING 349 



till fall approaches, when there is a repetition of all 

 the fears and troubles and dangers of preceding years. 

 He who can average three kills out of six shots, 

 cover and open, is an excellent marksman. The shooter 

 may make a run of ten or twenty straight kills, but 

 soon there are sure to come misses if he does not pick 

 his shots. In winter the shooting is much more diffi- 

 cult than in the fall. Of course, the man who never 

 misses is of the parlor, not of the field. 



The home of the greater number of the American 

 quails of the extreme southwest or on the Pacific coast 

 is in a country of great aridity. Moreover, much of 

 the vegetation of that country consists of thorny and 

 spiny plants, of which many are cactus, yucca or 

 mesquite. It is evident that over much of this country 

 the use of dogs in shooting these birds would be diffi- 

 cult, if not impracticable. For much of the year the 

 ground is so dry that no scent would lie, and a dog, 

 unless trained for that particular work, would be at 

 a great disadvantage. Moreover, in the swift traveling 

 performed by hunting dogs, as they are trained in the 

 South for field trial work, a dog, in a very short time, 

 would inevitably become crippled by the spines of the 

 cactus, which he could not help constantly running 

 over or into. If to these difficulties we add the fact 

 that the quails seldom or never lie to a dog, but run as 

 hard as they can at the first intimation of danger, 

 endeavoring to get into the thick brush, through which 

 they can thread their way faster than any animal can 



