Sept. 22, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
455 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Catiada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
Quail Shooting in Southern Maryland. 
Quail hunting brings many crack shots from 
Washington and Baltimore into southern Mary¬ 
land each year, where the shooting is usually 
good and the birds sleek and fat. Despite the 
scouring of pastures, swamps and thickets by 
dog and master each year the game is still 
plentiful. Feeding the birds, which is systemat¬ 
ically done in winter by many of the farmers of 
the Maryland counties, seems to have the effect 
of increasing the number of quail, and huntsmen, 
who are fortunate enough to obtain a permit to 
roam over the farms of Prince George’s and St. 
Mary’s counties, rarely fail of securing a good 
bag of game. 
The game laws are now strict in these coun¬ 
ties, the season for quail opening on Nov. 1, 
at the same time with ducks and geese in the 
Potomac, Patuxent and along the bay. So that 
if the hunt carries the gunner near a stream or 
inlet he may add a mallard, a woodcock or snipe 
to his shoot for the day. Farmers are more 
chary than formerly about letting gunners upon 
their farms, especially to shoot quail, as these 
birds are much prized as insect destroyers and 
feeders upon the seeds of noxious plants. ft 
sometimes requires the payment of a small fee 
to gain access to the woods and thickets or 
marshes where the best game is to be found. 
Pursuit of quail, woodcock, snipe and plover 
are the favorite forms of wing shooting in the 
lower Maryland counties, after the first week 
or two of rice-bird hunting in September. 
Snipe and plover may be shot after Sept. 15, 
woodcock and quail after Nov. 1. Some of the 
natives of Marlboro and smaller towns of Prince 
George’s county keep trained dogs and expect 
each autumn to pocket a snug sum showing the 
swell sports from the city where to find the 
game and flushing it to their guns. Some hunt¬ 
ers prefer their own dogs, but even then it is 
convenient to have a man along who knows the 
country, to help find the game and to salve over 
any friction that may arise in tresspassing upon 
farms where the owners may object and where 
the line fences are not well defined. 
Each armed with a 12-guage shotgun and carry¬ 
ing a supply of ammunition consisting of shells 
loaded with three drams of smokeless powder, 
the writer and another Washingtonian spent 
three days shooting quail in Prince George’s 
county. We were accompanied by a young man 
and his dog and covered about fifty miles, stop¬ 
ping two nights at farm houses where we were 
hospitably entertained. Under a special arrange¬ 
ment with the man who piloted the hunters, a 
horse and wagon came down the country each 
night from Marlboro, took into town the day’s 
killing and shipped it to our homes in Washing¬ 
ton. In the three days 105 birds were obtained, 
and considering that many were missed and that 
some shot could not be retrieved, the guide said 
the bag was all that could be expected of the 
two men who do not make pretentions to being 
expert shots. 
Shooting quail schools the hunter as severely 
as the capture of the wily black bass does the 
angler. Like the bass, the bird has peculiar 
habits with which one must be acquainted to 
find him and to hit him when flushed. Our guide 
seemed to know by instinct where the birds 
were at any given time. He was chary about 
imparting information on the subject, but it was 
clear to be seen that while not a scientific natur¬ 
alist this plain young farmer of Maryland, who 
turns his knowledge to account every fall, had 
made an exhaustive study of the habits of Bob 
White. The man and his dog found the birds 
skulking in the stubble, hiding in the thicket and 
hedgerow or roosting in the branches of low 
bushes near some stream. 
On a clear frosty morning the guide was up 
early and eager for a start, while the grass was 
yet white and stiff with the night's freezing. He 
would invaribly lead the way to a field of stubble 
or high grown pasture. In the ragweed and pigeon 
grass of old wheat or oat fields the dog was 
sure to point a covey. We had some good shots 
in a small buckwheat field a little after sunrise 
one morning. The conclusion to be arrived at 
from the actions of our guide in the morning 
was that the quail leave the warm thicket where 
they have spent the night huddled together for 
warmth and to avoid danger, and fly to some 
sun-exposed field, where the seeds of weeds and 
grass are plentiful. A quail shot at 9 o'clock 
in the morning will have a crop filled with near 
two ounces of the seeds of ragweed, pigeon 
grass, dock and a few insects, picked up seem¬ 
ingly to serve as appetizers. 
About 10 o’clock the guide would seek the 
thickets adjoining the meadows, small pieces of 
woods and the vicinity of streams or springs. 
He said the birds were then through feeding and 
sought some place to drink, preen in the sun¬ 
shine and wallow in the dirt. After about an 
hour’s work here, he would call the dog, find a 
cool place to rest and eat lunch, and would do 
nothing until after 2 o’clock in the afternoon, 
when the operations of the morning would be 
repeated in inverse order. When the sun was 
low, he would station the hunters in some 
thicket, and with his dog flush the birds in the 
field, when they would come pell mell right into 
the muzzles of our guns. Sometimes as many 
as three coveys would rise from a ten-acre field 
and come bearing down upon the gunners. These 
were exciting moments, and some of our best 
shots were made thus at the close of the day’s 
sport. 
Bob White is a tough bird and the humane 
hunter will try to hit him fairly and kill him out¬ 
right. This can be done only by an accurate 
trap shot, and even when hit, the wounded bird 
sometimes fly some distance before falling. One 
cock bird wounded in the neck, which seemed to 
have bled to death from a severed artery, flevv 
nearly a hundred yards after he was struck by 
the fatal shot. 
When a covey of quail is flushed the hunter 
must be quick of eye and hand. His finger can¬ 
not wait upon the trigger, nor is there time for 
fine sighting. The birds rise from the ground 
with a loud whirr of wings, scatter and fly like 
bullets away from the point of disturbance. 
Sometimes the covey will fly in a fairly con¬ 
densed flock into a thicket or into the timber 
near their feeding grounds, but oftener they 
scatter to every point of the compass and light 
singly over a wide radius. Each bird seems to 
have a pretty clear idea where he is going, and 
will fly swiftly to that point where he will 
alight, take to his legs and hide in the weeds 
and grass. 
The shot at an incoming bird or one on a 
cross flight are the most difficult. On the in¬ 
coming flight the hunter generally fires under 
the bird and on the cross flight behind him. 
When the game flies with the teriffic speed of a 
quail, allowance must be made for the velocity 
of the mark and the angle at which the shot is 
fired. A simple calculation given by our guide 
will show the fine judgment which must be 
exercised by the gunner if he would hit his bird. 
The velocity of No. 8 shot from a load of three 
drams of powder, he said, was about 900 feet 
a second. The quail flies at least 90 feet a sec¬ 
ond. Now, if the bird is flying directly across 
the line of sight at a distance of about 35 yards, 
the shot aimed directly at the bird would pass 
nearly ten feet behind. In a similar way the 
hunter may be deceived by the angle of rise as 
the bird approaches, and our guide cautioned 
us again and again to wait until the bird had 
flown by and was on what he termed the down¬ 
ward angle before firing. In fact, most of the 
birds shot at on the approach were missed. 
The most essential aid to quail shooting is 
a properly trained bird dog, one crafty in point¬ 
ing and willing to wait the order to rush in and 
flush. Indeed half the pleasure of our three 
days' hunt was in watching the maneuvers of the 
dog, which was seemingly almost as intelligent 
as his master. When it was possible the guide 
sent his dog into the field “up the wind.” That 
brought the scent of the birds down to the sen¬ 
sitive nostrils of the dog. Our instructions were 
that when the dog pointed, one of us was to 
command the dog by a sharp word of flush. It 
was one of the most remarkable things the 
hunter can witness to watch this old dog pick 
out a covey of quail in a field of ragweed where 
every bird was effectually concealed from the 
eyesight of the animal. 
At the word of his master the dog entered the 
field with his head held high, sniffing at every 
stop. He would take a wide circuit along the 
side of the field, stopping frequently and smel¬ 
ling the wind. All at once the dog would stop 
stock still, with head pointed toward the spot 
where the birds were feeding. The hunter 
comes up, and at the word, the dog dashes in, 
and up fly a dozen to twenty birds. A covey of 
quail is almost always two parent birds, and in 
this locality their offspring of two hatchings, one 
in May and the other in August. We ran across 
several coveys, in whic-h about half of twenty- 
five birds were full grown and the other half not 
more than half-mature. 
After the first flushing and the firing of both 
barrels at the flying birds, the guide came on 
the field. The gunner reloaded, and was joined 
by his companion. The two went to some bush 
or hummock nearby. The guide would then lie 
down about thirty yards off, concealed as much 
as possible and begin to whistle the peculiar 
note, calling the birds together when scattered. 
Many times this resulted in several of the birds 
rising on wing and flying toward the spot in 
answer to the call. At other times the call was 
answered by the birds as they ran through the 
long grass to join their supposed mate. Coming 
near the guide would show himself or send the 
dog to start up the running birds. These gen¬ 
erally were the smaller birds of the last hatch¬ 
ing, but we had some good shots by means of 
this ruse. 
The guide explained that there were two calls 
the gunner should learn, one the whistle of the 
female summoning her brood after being dis¬ 
turbed. and the other the call of the young ones 
to their mother. The notes are not much alike, 
and do not resemble the loud and defiant whistle 
of the male bird in the mating and nesting sea¬ 
son in early summer. This call is almost never 
heard in the autumn months. The advantage 
of mastering the bird calls is that the scattered 
flock can be brought to the hunter, at least until 
two good shots have been fired. By that ,time 
the birds are so frightened that they will not 
respond to the call, and we found coveys that 
could not be induced to respond to the whistle 
of the guide, though he seemed to form the note 
the same as at other times. 
One day the hunt had started early, and in 
the morning hours we had killed about thirty 
birds. The sun was warm, and our guide 
stopped rather earlier than usual beside a stream 
to eat our lunch and rest, while the quails were 
taking their mid-day siesta. That day the young 
farmer gave us the result of some of his observa¬ 
tions on the quail. 
“It’s ’onery to shoot them purty birds, the 
