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WILD NORWAY. 
But this is not grouse-shooting. The glory of 
grouse-shooting lies in its pride of power over bird and 
beast alike; in the mutual sympathy and interdepend¬ 
ence between man and dog which it calls into play ; 
in the sportsman’s personal skill and mastership in 
directing his dogs. 
Self-hunting, on the other hand, is merely blind 
work, and every one who loves and understands the 
hunting-dog knows that, without his assistance, the 
gunner (work as hard as he likes) must leave nine- 
tenths of the game behind him. "Watch him, with his 
beaters, all stamping out that heathery knoll where 
they have just marked-in a covey. Beneath the 
bilberries and creeping-willows squat a dozen grouse, 
literally among their feet. The men know the birds 
are there, somewhere, for they were accurately marked; 
but not a feather can they flush, and nothing remains 
but to start and hunt afresh for another covey. The 
gunner then gets his right-and-left; and the same 
melancholy fiasco is repeated —■plus having probably lost 
one of his grouse—a runner. 
Let me give two or three instances of typical days 
among the grouse in South and Central Norway, illus¬ 
trative of the makeshift methods to which Norwegian 
law has reduced the foreign sportsman :— 
August 18 th .—The first three days were too wet and 
stormy to go on the hill, but it cleared yesterday at 
noon, and this morning we were on. the fell-ridge, one 
thousand four hundred feet above our quarters, by 9 
a.m. We had no dogs, but six beaters, mostly boys, 
whom we disposed thus—two in centre between the 
two guns, with two on either flank. The orders w r ere 
o 1 
