290 TTPLAXD SHOOTING. 



grouse, and snipe will, A^-itll a trifling experience, become 

 proficient in the pursuit of prairie chickens. The three 

 requisites heretofore mentioned — speed, staunchness, and 

 endurance — are the golden virtues which, when possessed 

 by and found in a dog, make him perfect for this branch 

 of sport. There is no s]port where greater freedom can 

 and must be allowed the dog than this. 



On our Western prairies, the range is, one might say, 

 unlimited; there are places where for miles and miles the 

 soil is unbroken and unfenced, and where the wild grass 

 grows in thickest profusion, the monotony of the waving 

 fields being broken here and there by the brown stubbles 

 of grain or the yellow corn-fields; the territory is appar- 

 ently endless, for the eye follows the grass until the blue 

 sky seems to sink down and , meet it, while the drifting 

 white clouds float on its very tips. In such a place as 

 this, the hunters drive along in their wagons, getting out 

 to shoot when the birds are found. Away speed the dogs, 

 the young with impetuous bounds, the older ones with 

 that long, swinging lope which tells us of tlie reserved 

 strength, to be tested in a few hours, when to the piercing 

 rays of the summer sun all the inhabitants of the parched 

 earth must succumb. The dogs should be worked by 

 hand, for the length and breadth of their range preclude 

 the thought of directing them by voice. With heads 

 high in air and tails beating their sturdy sides, they go 

 ahead, then cross and recross, beating back and forth in 

 their several journeys, covering every point that seems 

 favorable for hiding the secreted birds; then, in the midst 

 of their rapid run, a faint scent is wafted to them in 

 delicate indistinctness, but it suffices for their experienced 

 nose, and, quick as thought, the bounding machines of 

 life are checked and transformed to motionless figures as 

 rigid as steel. And now is the time to test their staunch- 

 ness, for the hunters are perhaps a quarter, perhaps half 



