94 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
and, quick as thought, sent his arrow twanging through 
the air. I watched to see how near it would come to 
the object aimed at, and was surprised to see it strike the 
bird and bring it down headlong. I looked sharply at 
the warrior to note if he displayed any exultation at 
making such a shot, but I could detect none, as his face 
was as stolid as a piece of stone. Being desirous of 
knowing the distance at which such an extraordinary 
shot was made, I asked the savage to go for his arrow 
and stand there, and when he announced that he had 
found it, I walked towards it, and concluded, as near as 
I could measure by paces, that he had hit a fast-flying 
bird at a distance of fifty yards. 
This seemed so remarkable to me that I subsequently 
made inquiries to learn if Indians were, as a rule, so pro- 
ficient with the bow, and from all I heard I should de- 
cide that they were not, and that the shot was purely 
accidental. I should fancy this was the case on another 
ground also, and that was the disinclination of the war- 
rior to sell the arrow, on account of, as I afterwards 
learned, its ‘“‘ medicine” power, as he supposed it was 
unusually fortunate. I gave him the bird he had killed 
as a souvenir of the occasion, and he took it with as much 
eagerness as I ever saw an Indian display. When he left 
us we resumed work and trudged all day through stubble- 
fields, along the margins of wooded streams and ravines, 
and over broken ground, where we knew the birds were 
to be found, and when we returned homeward in the 
evening we found we had killed one hundred sharp-tails, 
or an average of ten brace to each gun. 
This was by no means an unusually large bag, however, 
for I heard of instances where it was more than doubled; 
and a man was pointed out to me who was known to 
have killed two thousand birds in a few weeks—if I re- 
member rightly it was six weeks—but then he traversed 
a moderate section of country in search of them. I have 
