CAPERCAILLIE SHOOTING 
then three hens rose from a thicket about forty yards distant, and flew 
noisily away. The next day I stalked the second cock, and watched it for 
a long time. The ground was also very favourable for silent approach, so 
much so that I got within twenty yards of it before allowing it to escape, 
as I did not wish to kill it. Three days later I stalked a third cock on the 
edge of the Buffalo Park at Rohallion. Here the ground was far more 
difficult, and full of fallen debris ; nevertheless I got within forty yards 
of the male, who had just left his tree, and was still displaying on the top 
of a stone wall. I think I could also have killed this bird had I wished 
to do so. This small experience of stalking the Capercaillie in spring con- 
vinced me that in Scotland, at any rate, there was no great difficulty 
in getting within shot of one’s quarry, provided care and patience were 
exercised, and this was due to the fact that the yielding heather and moss 
of Highland woods were all in favour of the sportsman. Two subsequent 
visits to the Carpathian highlands of Galicia, however, convinced me 
that in that country the stalker must both have unusual luck as well as 
skill and local knowledge to shoot the bird in spring, for the woods there 
are vast, dry, and very high. The ground, too, as in Russia, is covered with 
swamps and broken dry sticks, to tread on one of which is generally 
disastrous. 
In the Carpathians and Hungary, but not, I believe, in Bohemia, the 
male Capercaillie shows off in the evening as well as in the morning. 
Prince Demidoff, who has stalked many Capercaillie in spring, tells me 
that in a certain wood south of St Petersburg large assemblies of Caper- 
caillie sometimes occur in the spring. On one occasion (the owner of the 
place related to him) over eighty males were showing at one and the 
same time, and it was impossible to stalk a single bird, owing to their 
numbers. 
At the time I wrote my last work on “ The Natural History of British 
Game Birds ” (1908), I had never heard the male Capercaillie attempt 
any song in the autumn, but I felt sure that it did not differ from the 
Blackcock in this respect, and received a communication from Prince 
Furstenberg to the effect that it was by no means rare for the male to 
sing in autumn. It was therefore a great pleasure to hear the song one 
October morning in 1910 as I was snatching a hurried breakfast in my hut 
in the Carpathians. Peeping out of the door I could just make out the form 
of a cock caper seated on the top of a dead spruce. He was evidently 
suspicious, for he could hear the men moving about in the “ koliba ” 
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