144 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
started after them as soon as we picked up the dead, and 
were among them again in less than five minutes. 
While peering about for them, I saw a magnificent 
male drop on the ground, not forty feet away and stare 
at us with such an expression of mingled inquisitiveness 
and confidence that I was loth to shoot him, for his mien 
was stately, and his eyes glowed with a liquid brilliancy. 
The dog having espied him, rushed at him, and before I 
knew what I was about I fired at him when he began to 
ply his pinions, and brought him down with force enough, 
apparently, to knock a hole in the earth. I then directed 
my attention to the birds in the trees, and managed to 
rout them gradually, and get a shot on the wing as they 
flew away at a high altitude, but my success was not 
very great, owing to the density of the forest, which soon 
concealed them from view. 
Smith was in his glory when he got wing shots, for he 
poured out bad puns so rapidly that I fancied he killed 
more birds with them than he did with his gun. We 
had fine sport all the afternoon, but the only species of 
the Tetrao family we met was the dusky grouse, and we 
saw a hundred or more of these along the low lands 
that skirted the base of the higher hills. Their profu- 
sion was readily accounted for by the absence of all pop- 
ulation in the country, except a few wandering Indians, 
and they cannot lessen them much in such an extensive 
and pathless region. They commit more havoc among 
the eggs than among the birds, for they can readily find 
these on the ground during the nesting period; and as 
they eat them even when they are addled, and prefer 
them when the chicks are developed, a person may im- 
agine how many they can destroy ina season. When I 
had secured ten brace of grouse, which I did by four 
o’clock, I returned to camp alone, as Smith wished to 
make his bag as large as possible, in order, as he said, 
“to just blow about it” when he returned to his Eastern . 
