140 Next to the Ground 



times made them so tame they would come 

 up all winter to feed with the chickens, though 

 they always ran away in the spring. 



It was in bringing such birds home that 

 Joe found out another curious trick of theirs. 

 Some of them fell as though dead, and lay limp 

 and flaccid so long as he held them fast. But 

 if he walked or rode with the seemingly dead 

 bird thrust loosely in his pocket or lying upon 

 his open palm, the minute he came close to 

 thick cover the dead came to life — there was 

 a flutter, a stiffening, a flash of limping wings 



— then a bird out of sight — and generally 

 past even High-Low's finding. 



Partridge shooting is more than mere sport, 



— a liberal education in sureness of eye and 

 brain and hand. Unless they work together, 

 and so swiftly the working appears to be sim- 

 ultaneous, it is very near a waste of good 

 powder to fire a gun. When the covey whirs 

 up, a cloud of wings, the man who hesitates 

 is lost. He who takes slow aim is in much 

 the same case. You must see whether the 

 birds fly to right or left, mark their speed, and 

 shoot, not at them but where your eye assures 

 you they will be in the next two seconds. 

 Sometimes this is as much as ten yards ahead. 

 With birds going straight away, the gunner of 

 course lets drive right at them. Commonly 

 they scatter like the fragments of a bursting 



