Sketches in the East and IVest 1(^2 



for the big circuit of trials. Perhaps it is in 

 August, when the more amateur-Hke owners and 

 trainers are to take a fling at the nearest state 

 trials — maybe Virginia or Alabama or New York 

 or Connecticut. Wherever it is, the rules are 

 about the same, and the competition will be stiff 

 enough to call for the best dog you can turn out. 

 And the best Derby dog is simply the dog 

 which, with experience and stricter training, will 

 be the best shooting dog. It is the pup with a 

 nose to locate surely, ambition to carry it fast, 

 and style to please the eye. You may hear of 

 good shooting dogs as if they were something 

 totally different from field trial dogs, but the 

 better the shooting dog, the nearer it is to being 

 a field trial winner. I never quite understood 

 of what a grouse or snipe or woodcock dog is 

 compounded. I never saw a dog kept exclusively 

 for snipe or grouse ; and but one kept primarily 

 for woodcock, that one being a black-and-white 

 setter owned by a market hunter on the best 

 woodcock ground in the world. The sportsmen 

 whom I have met shoot snipe and ruffed grouse 

 over their dogs when they can find the game, 

 but they take that kind of luck as it comes. To 

 choose a dog for ruffed grouse and hunt only for 

 grouse would be in any country I have seen a 

 queer use of time. In New England it may be 

 different, but surely not different in any state 



