302 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
when the mornings are cold and frosty, and the middle of 
the days mild and warm. The birds will then lie suffi- 
ciently well to afford great sport. They will not, it is 
‘true, allow dogs to draw or road close up to them, but 
their scent is so strong that a good pointer will stand firm 
at twenty yards’ distance. And firmly and stanchly 
he must be taught to stand, if one would have sport. 
The slow, poking dog, that roads on till he is close in with 
his game, will not do a moment for this work. One must 
have fleet, high-couraged, wide-ranging dogs, that will 
point as stiffly as rocks the instant they strike the scent. 
Setters would doubtless be better than pointers for this 
sport, and Russian setters the best of all, as their speed, 
courage, endurance, and dauntless perseverance, as well as 
their hardness of foot, give them vastly the superiority, 
but for one fatal deficiency-—their inability to exist, much 
less hunt without water. 
In many of the best grouse districts it is even neces- 
sary, as it is in the vicinity of St. Louis, to carry out 
water in wagons for the use of the dogs. This no setters 
could endure. Their sufferings are painful to behold, 
when they cannot both drink and bathe at least every half 
hour in hot weather; and if they be unable to do so, 
they speedily lose their powers of scenting, and if un- 
relieved, would soon die. 
For dry prairie lands, therefore, during that part of the 
season in which grouse can be shot to the dog at all—for 
after November, when the cold weather fairly sets in, they 
cannot ordinarily be approached within rifle range—high- 
