196 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
in one way, but highly pleased in another, for we had 
bagged over fifty brace of ptarmigans, and a black bear. 
The only fault we found with the birds from a sports- 
man’s standpoint was, that they would not flush well, 
were too tame, and preferred skulking in thickets to 
running in the open. We shot two brace with our re- 
volvers one slightly foggy morning, as they seemed so 
loth to flee from us that it would have been mere butch- 
ery to have used our guns. The number of ptarmigans 
on the snow-clad chains of the West is nothing compared 
to what it is in Alaska and some portions of British 
Columbia, for any ordinary shot can bag from twenty 
to thirty brace in a day during the months of August 
and September in these countries. Alaska is specially 
famous fer its white-tails, and as the willow and rock 
ptarmigans are almost equally common, the birds may 
be found from the coast valleys to the hoary-headed 
mountains. I have heard that the birds are unusually 
abundant in the northern parts of Idaho and Montana, 
and denizens of the haunts of the mountain goat in the 
Snowy Range. I travelled through this Range in 1874, 
but I met only a few of them, although dusky grouse 
were quite common. While I was wandering about 
one day in Montana, I saw a pack of ptarmigans on 
the edge of a pine forest, which was so densely strewn 
with fallen trees and leaves that I found it rather 
difficult to pick my way through it in places. Wishing 
to flush the birds and get a shot at the same time, I de- 
cided to startle them by jumping suddenly in their midst 
from a large prostrate tree, behind which they were try- 
ing to conceal themselves. I therefore cocked both bar- 
rels of the gun noiselessly, crawled up to the huge log, 
and bounding on it, shouted at them. The next thing I 
knew was that I was buried 1n the tree, that both barrels 
of my gun had been fired accidentally, that millions of 
ants seemed to be running up inside my trousers and 
