THE GAME BREEDER 



137 



HUNTING TRIPS OF A RANCHMAN. 



(The following quotations are from the admirable book, "Hunting Trips of a Ranch- 

 man," by Theodore Roosevelt. They are good examples of his style when writing about sport.) 



Grouse. 



On this occasion we had a stiff-jointed 

 old pointer with a stub tail, and a wild 

 young setter pup, tireless and ranging 

 very free (a western dog on the prairies 

 should cover five times the ground neces- 

 sary for an eastern one to get over) but 

 very imperfectly trained. 



Half of the secret of success on a 

 shooting trip lies in getting up early and 

 working all day ; and this at least we had 

 learned, for we were off as soon as 

 there was light enough by which to drive. 

 The ground, of course, was absolutely 

 fenceless, houses being many miles apart. 

 Through the prairie, with its tall grass, 

 in which the sharp-tails lay at night and 

 during the day, were scattered gre'at 

 grain fields, their feeding grounds in the 

 morning and evening. 



Our plan was to drive from one field 

 to another, getting out at each and let- 

 ting the dogs hunt it over. The birds 

 were in small coveys and lay fairly well 

 to the dogs, though they rose much far- 

 ther off from us in the grain fields than 

 they did later in the day when we flushed 

 them from the tall grass of the prairie 

 (I call it tall grass in contradistinction 

 to the short bunch grass of the cattle 

 plains to the westward). Old stub-tail, 

 though slow, was very staunch and care- 

 ful, never flushing a bird, while the pup- 

 py, from pure heedlessness, and with the 

 best intentions, would sometimes bounce 

 into the middle of a covey before he 

 knew of their presence. On the other 

 hand, he covered twice the ground that 

 the pointer did. The actual killing of the 

 birds was a good deal like quail shooting 

 in the East, except that it was easier, the 

 marks being much larger. When we 

 came to a field we would beat through it 

 a hundred yards apart, the dogs ranging 

 in in long diagonals. When either the 

 setter or the pointer came to a stand the 

 other generally backed him. If the covey 



was near enough both of us, otherwise 

 whichever was closest, walked cautiously 

 up. The grouse generally flushed before 

 we came, up to the dog, rising alto- 

 gether, so as to give only a right and 

 left. 



When the morning was well advanced 

 the grouse left the stubble fields and flew 

 into the adjoining prairie. We marked 

 down several covies into one spot, where 

 the ground was rolling and there were 

 here and there a few bushes in the hol- 

 lows. Carefully hunting over this, we 

 found two or three covies and had ex- 

 cellent sport out of each. The sharp- 

 tails in these places lay very close and 

 we had to walk them up, when they rose 

 one at a time, and thus allowed us shot 

 after shot, whereas, as already said, ear- 

 lier in the day we merely got a quick 

 right and left at each covey. At least 

 half of the time we were shooting in 

 our rubber overcoats, as the weather was 

 cloudy and there were frequent flurries 

 of rain. 



We rested a couple of hours at noon 

 for lunch and the afternoon's sport was 

 simply a repetition of the morning's ex- 

 cept that we had but one dog to work 

 with ; for shortly after mid-day the stub- 

 tail pointer, for his sins, encountered a 

 skunk, with which he waged prompt and 

 valiant battle — thereby rendering him- 

 self for the balance of the time wholly 

 useless as a servant and highly offensive 

 as a companion. 



The setter pup did well, ranging very 

 freely, but naturally got tired and care- 

 less, flushing his birds half the time ; and 

 we had to stop when we still had a good 

 hour of daylight left. Nevertheless we 

 had in our wagon, when we came in at 

 night, a hundred and five grouse, of 

 which sixty-two had fallen to my broth- 

 er's gun and forty-three to mine. We 

 would have done much better with more 

 serviceable dogs ; besides I was suffering 



