388 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
found that I had already ten, which I estimated to aver- 
age not far from three pounds apiece in weight. Just 
at the end of the knoll, and as we were about to turn 
back to go to camp, a grouse jumped up before me, 
at the foot of a clump of aspens, and dived into them, 
precisely as a ruffed grouse would pitch into a piece 
of underbrush. Just as I should have snapped at a 
ruffed grouse, so I snapped at this bird, and a moment 
later a loud splash in the water, and a muffled drum- 
ming, told that the shot had reached him just as he 
was about to cross the river. My companion went 
down, and riding out into the water, picked up the 
eleventh bird. 
A little later, on the way home, another grouse 
sprang from some low aspens at some distance in front 
of me and pitched into a growth of pines, and this 
one I snapped at, again, but not with the success of the 
former shot, for the bird passed through the pines and 
flew a long way to a little island, where he seemed to 
go down. : 
If I had had a dog and a good shooting pony I 
could undoubtedly have killed forty or fifty birds in 
this one place; but forty or fifty would have been in- 
excusable slaughter, since there were but two of us 
in the camp, and we could not have used anything like 
that number of birds. As it was, those that I got that 
day lasted us for quite a long time, and most delicious 
food they were. The white, juicy flesh, sweet, and well 
flavored from the diet of berries on which the bird 
had been fed, was most delicate. Properly cooked, no 
