UPLAND SHOOTING. 
233 
on the pleasant and exciting pursuit of this beautiful little bird. 
From the greater difficulty of finding and killing Quail, it 
follows of course that a greater combination of qualities in the 
dog with which we hunt them is required. 
For Snipe or Woodcock shooting, the latter especially, 
which is pursued in very close covert for the most part, we 
require only a dog with good hunting qualities, under excellent 
command, broke to hunt extremely close to his master, and 
never to go beyond the range of his sight. Indeed if he do not 
hang upon the stale scents, and potter where birds have been 
but are not, a dog for Woodcock shooting can hardly be too 
slow or too steady. 
Now all these qualities are essential likewise to the Quail 
dog, and without these qualities the sportsman can have no 
success when he has attained the first object of his morning’s 
work, the driving and scattering his birds from open grain or 
grass fields into covert wherein they will lie hard, and rise 
singly, »which constitute the only circumstances under which, 
north of the Delaware and Potomac, it is possible to bag many 
Quail. 
Yet this is far from all that we require in a Quail dog; for 
as we are compelled to seek for our birds in the open feeding 
grounds, while they are running in the early morning, and as 
our day’s sport mainly depends on finding a considerable num¬ 
ber of birds during that short time, which ends at the latest, by 
ten o’clock in the morning, and earlier in warm, sunny days, it 
follows that the more ground we can get over in a given time, 
the greater the chance of success. 
We require therefore that our brace of dogs while beating 
open ground should have dash and speed enough to run almost 
like foxhounds on a breast-high scent, heads up and stems 
down, quartering the field from fence to fence in opposite direc¬ 
tions and crossing each other midway—that they should be so 
staunch and steady as to allow the shooter to come up to them 
from five or six hundred yards’ distance, without breaking their 
point—and lastly that they should be under command so perfect 
