I 



104 Jl'/LD/'VU'L SHOOTING L\ THE WESTERS STATES. 



is scratched — they will keep out water, but, on the 

 other hand, they prevent the perspiration from 

 escaping, and so submit your limbs to a protracted 

 Turkish oath, which is not only weakening, but 

 unquestionably very unhealthy. If you have to 

 drive a considerable distance to regain home after 

 your day's pleasure is over, put on dry clothes at 

 your trap. If this cannot be accomplished, consider it a 

 sacred '^•ity that you owe j'ourself,to permit nothing to 

 intertt. 'with an immediate and thorough change being 

 effected the moment you regain shelter. By attending 

 strictly to these simple precepts, although many used 

 to affirm that I courted rheumatism, I have escaped 

 its influences so far, although well on in middle age, 

 and have never missed, when practicable, whatever 

 the state of the weather might be, a day's " ducking " 

 or snipe-shooting upon the Western prairies. 



Having progressed so far, I will imagine that the 

 neophyte is provided with gun, retriever, and costume 

 suitable for his work, and that he is upon the (t^%^^ 

 of a Western river — there called a creek — sluggish in 

 its flow, with water tolerably stained with decayed 

 vegetation. In the stream, by the margin, a wide 

 growth of lily-pads and rushes exists, the whole shut 

 in by clumps .of sumach, osier, water- maple, and 

 dwarf poplar. Behind this brush fringe, and between 

 it and the upright bank, will be found a path, not a 

 very good one, in truth, still of sufficient merit to 

 materially assist the sportsman's progress. It has 

 been formed by the otters, minks, musk-rats, and 

 raccoons that haunt ail such places. The name of 

 this watercourse is the Little Sioux (for I am not 

 sketching an imaginary picture), which, after a very 

 tortuous course, joii. the Red River. 



The season of the year is early autumn, too soon 

 by several weeks for the arrival of the immense 

 migratory herds of duck that will find their way here 

 later on. Still, for all that, " a good sprinkling of 



