406 Quail and Grouse of the Pacific Coast 



scarcely a ray of sunlight filters through to the 

 carpet of needles beneath. What is the use of 

 going into such stuff, where you almost have to 

 crawl, and cannot swing the gun on either side 

 without striking a tree ? Surely a bird would be 

 out of sight in ten feet of upward rise. Of 

 course, and even in less than that. Bbbbbbbb 

 goes an uproarious wing, and before the gun is 

 halfway to your shoulder, a flash of reddish brown 

 is out of sight in the tangle of twigs and branches 

 above. But as you raise the gun you drop on 

 one knee, and dimly along the iron rib you catch 

 the line of the game's disappearance where a 

 fading streak of fancied brown still glimmers 

 in imagination's eye. But to the expert in brush 

 the eye of fancy is often good enough, and at the 

 report of the gun a whirl of brown and white with 

 mottled breast curves downward through the 

 shower of twigs and drift of circling feathers. 



In a heavy mass of huckleberry bushes you hear 

 another roar of wings, but you know that the 

 former trick of dropping on one knee will not 

 now avail, for the lower you drop the more sure 

 you are to see nothing. And you cannot rise on 

 tiptoe to see over the brush, for the bird knows 

 too much to rise above it enough to let you see 

 him. You have to shoot almost by the sound, 

 with the slight aid from a faint glimpse, perhaps, 

 of hazy wings as they cross some small opening. 



