THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
close by, and did not stay long. The notes did not seem to me so loud 
or so varied as the spring call, but I could see that his actions were 
the same. 
In the evening the cock moves towards his “ spel ” tree about sunset, 
and after he has fed. Here he utters a different cry like the notes Ack- 
ack-ee-ach, something like the noise of a person being sick. The bird 
repeats this over and over again, long after all other creatures have gone 
to rest. 
In Norway it is sometimes necessary to replenish the pot, and where 
ryper are absent or scarce some sport may be found by using a trained 
setter or even an elk -hound to hunt Capercaillie when on feed in the evening. 
The elk-hound, when the large game is scarce, will often, to one’s great 
annoyance, take the sportsman up to Capercaillie, but the same kind of 
dog, specially trained to follow capers, is a valuable animal, superior to 
a setter, who is apt to be both wild and noisy in the woods. I have shot a 
few capers in this manner with an elk -hound held in leash, and have always 
been more interested in the skill and nose of the little hound than in this 
particular form of shooting. Walking home in the evening, when there 
was no chance of disturbing elk, I have twice shot cock Capercaillie with 
the Mannlicher rifle, and this form of sport, and a very high-class one it 
is, is much practised both in Norway and Sweden in the winter. One 
Christian Fiskum, my hunter in the Namsen valley in 1899, and said to 
be a wonderful rifle shot, told me that he spent every winter in stalking 
Capercaillie with the rifle. On the steep slopes of the Namsen valley a 
pack of Capercaillie can be spied on the snow -laden trees two or three 
miles away, and Christian would soon run to them on his “ ski.” The last 
approach has to be carefully made, and at 100 yards Christian would 
sometimes kill two and three birds out of a pack before the rest took wing. 
His method is always to select the bird that is nearest the ground, and 
as this falls it does not alarm the others. The next lowest is then selected 
and killed, but if by any chance a lower bird has been overlooked, that 
is easy to do in the dense foliage, the noise created by the bird last shot 
always alarmed the unseen bird below, who at once takes to flight and 
scares all the others. Christian has several times killed as many as four 
out of one flock, but this is unusual. This hunter kills as many as 100 to 
150 every winter, and sends them frozen in a sledge to market. 
To British sportsmen the prospect of increased opportunities of shooting 
the Capercaillie, in Scotland at least, are very favourable, and everything 
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