524 
“Good Hunting” 
time from “ideal cover” into underbrush 
too thick to shoot in; while other nooks 
and corners, once commonplace, are now 
in their turn acquiring the look of those 
thrillingly correct backgrounds to A. B. 
Frost’s shooting-pictures. 
We’ve been at it so long, indeed, that 
we work together as a team as well as any 
pair of dogs we’ve ever shot over — better, 
in some respects, for we aren’t jealous of 
each other’s successes, as they often are; 
we don’t try to bluff about our failures, as 
they have been known to do. And when 
the day’s sport is over and all four of us 
are taking our well-earned rest by the fire, 
the dogs sometimes snarl and have to be 
separated; we, as it happens, have never 
yet fought — even over politics or religion, 
though we differ in both sufficiently to 
make conversation. And so, since time 
and occupations now allow us to meet but 
rarely during the rest of the year, the an- 
nual oiling up of guns means more than 
companionable indulgence in our favorite 
sport. It means the reunion of two old 
friends who know each other’s ways and 
like them. 
As for the place where I enjoy these 
blessings, doubtless it was not designed 
originally for a game preserve, but it would 
be hard to find a better location for one 
within such easy reach of town. The 
broad acres, remote from the railroad, in- 
convenient for poachers, and completely 
hidden from the highway by several miles 
of woods, lie tucked away upon a sunny, 
sequestered neck of land between a small 
river, in which there are sometimes trout 
in the spring, and a great bay, in which 
there are always ducks in the fall. The 
land is no longer used for farming, and one 
might suppose it had been laid out express- 
ly for quail, as we in the North incor- 
rectly term the Bob White, known as par- 
tridge in the South and recognized as the 
king of American game-birds in all sec- 
tions. Each of the many fields is en- 
closed, not by fences (which are more or 
less dangerous to climb with a loaded gun, 
and a nuisance in any case), but by deep 
borders of trees of ancient planting, like 
the bauks of English estates. These, lo- 
cally called “hedges,” though that has 
always seemed to me a frivolous term for 
such dignified oaks, make perfect cover. 
When the dogs locate a covey in the open 
and we have flushed and shot at the birds 
on the rise, they scatter, after the manner 
of quail, for the nearest hedge, but, also 
after the manner of quail, they seldom fly 
beyond the first one they come to. So, 
bidding the dogs keep close, we care- 
fully work down the length of the hedge, 
putting up singles and doubles. The 
undergrowth is thick enough to make 
the birds lie close, and the trees are not 
too thick for shooting. But you must 
shoot quick. It makes a good sporting 
chance. 
After a day or two of this our legs give 
out, for after all ours are only human legs, 
and we have but two apiece. Of late 
years we have observed — with amuse- 
ment, if not with alarm — a growing tend- 
ency to take the car when going “down 
neck” to “Injun Point,” “Little Boat 
Place,” “Big Boat Place,” or any of the 
remote portions of the estate. Indeed, as 
there are usually openings through the 
hedges, and all of the fields are level and 
most of them unploughed, we sometimes 
stay in the car, plunging and bumping 
about through the long grass, until the 
dogs strike a scent. Then we jump out, 
shouting “steady” and “careful,” flush 
the covey and follow where they lead. It 
is something like the method of shooting 
quail in the South, only there it is done on 
horseback. Cross-country riding by mo- 
tor is, so far as I know, a new sport of our 
own invention. 
When we have had enough quail-shoot- 
ing, or even before that point is reached, 
we chain up the dogs, by this time also 
fagged, and, arising before dawn, set sail 
by starlight in a “scooter,” laden with 
duck decoys, for one of the low-lying 
points which the salt meadows thrust like 
fingers into the bay. There, luxuriously 
resting at full length upon the soft mud 
and sedge, with rubber blankets and hip- 
boots intervening for our comfort, we 
listen to the soporific breezes in the rushes, 
or to each other’s ideas for correcting the 
universe — which also, at times, has a so- 
porific effect — until a bunch of broadbill, 
redhead, or black ducks comes hurtling in 
over the decoys. Then we neglect the 
rest of the universe entirely. 
That, of course, is just what we are 
there for— -to forget. No other means, 
as the late President Cleveland used to 
