46 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
The upland shooter of America does not, cannot, select his 
stands, or easy walking ground, for getting shots and killing 
game, leaving it to his gamekeeper or beaters to hunt his dogs, 
and flush his birds in the thicket, so that they shall fly out before 
his face—still less does he, like the deer shooter, remain listless 
and silent at his stand, until his guide, a practical woodman, 
shall find the quarry and hunt it toward him, so that, per¬ 
chance, without walking fifty yards or- making the slightest 
exertion, he gets his point-blank shot, and thinks it a great 
matter to have killed a big helpless animal, as big as a jackass, 
and as timid as a calf, literally in the intervals between eating 
bread and cheese and drinking brown stout, as he sits on a moss- 
covered log to leeward of the runaway. 
No, through the thickest alder swamp, the deepest and most 
boggy marsh, among tussocks knee-high, and fallen trees, and in¬ 
terlacing vines and cat-briars—along the sharp limestone ledges 
and through the almost impervious growth of the rhododendron 
overcanopied by juniper and hemlock—over mile after mile of 
broad, bare hill-side stubbles—through black morasses, intersected 
by broad drains—trusting to his own sure foot and even stride, he 
must toil on after his game, the wildest, fleetest, wariest, and 
sharpest-flying of all the fowls of the air, depending on his own 
knowledge of their seasons ancktheir habits to launch his trusty 
dogs into their proper haunts, at their proper hours ; on his 
management of those dogs to flush them fairly within shot, and 
on his own eye and hand of instinct to give a good account of 
them, when flushed within distance. 
The perfection to which some men have carried this art is 
almost incredible—the certainty with which they will find game 
on the same tract of land, with another party who shall find none 
—the unerring instinct with which they will read the slightest 
signs of the weather, and comprehend the smallest indications 
of the whereabouts of their game—the readiness with which 
they will draw conclusions and positive deductions from signs 
which to others seem light as air—the facility with which they 
understand their dogs, and their dogs them—and lastly, their 
