SHOOTING THE WOODS GROUSE 



387 



scaling off on the fresh breeze that was blowing down 

 the lakes, was thirty or forty yards off before the heel- 

 plate touched my shoulder. Luckily, I held on the 

 bird, and the center of the load hit it so that it fell quite 

 dead. At the report two more rose near me, and this 

 time I brought my gun to bear a little more quickly, 

 and killed the second one. Two or three more rose at 

 this report and flew down the lake, but they did not 

 fly the whole length of the knoll, and I marked them 

 down. 



It was evident that if this lasted I was going to have 

 good shooting, and so it proved. I went on, more 

 slowly and carefully, and tried to pick my shots. As 

 I had no dog, smly the birds immediately in my way 

 got up, except that sometimes, when a shot was fired, 

 several rose ahead or to the right and left, and most 

 of these pitched off down the hill, and, scaling off on 

 the wind, reached cover in the thick aspens of the 

 lower ground, where I knew it would be useless to 

 follow them. 



Before I had reached the lower end of the knoll I 

 had more birds than I could carry, and I was not sorry 

 to see my companion coming after me on horseback 

 to relieve me of the load. The shooting that he had 

 heard had notified him O'f the sport that I was having, 

 and he rightly concluded that I would need help. I 

 was interested to notice, as he came toward me, that 

 he put up a number of grouse, though his route was 

 not far from the one I had followed. 



When we had tied our birds on his horse it was 



