Nov. 15, 1913- 
FOREST AND STREAM 
611 
seem to lose their bearings and to come for¬ 
ward tentatively and much slower than usual, 
without that valiant dash across the ride that 
so often carries a whole scut back to its burrow. 
But it was not till the third beat through the 
dank of the wood that there came from some¬ 
where in the treetops a burst and a rattle, and 
from the line of beaters a shout of “Forward!” 
All that one of the guns, stationed in a ride to 
the left, can see is a vision of a dark body 
fleeing over the pines below him toward a point 
where he knows another gun is standing; then 
come two barrels fired as fast as two can be 
fired, and after the second a pause—then a 
superb crash in the trees. The first caper has 
flown to his proper ending; after him (or, 
rather, her, for the great bird turns out to be 
a hen) three more capers swing forward to a 
keeper stationed away out on the right, ot 
which he brings down one and has no luck with 
the others—small blame to him in those narrow 
rides. And afterward comes another long beat 
which ends unsatisfactorily. The cock pheasants 
seem to have run out where there are none to 
stop them, and all the caper break back. The 
beat ends with the picking up, of a woodcock 
which, perhaps hit by a first barrel, or possibly 
finished off by a neighbor, falls dead suddenly 
and a little unexpectedly a long way behind the 
line of guns. 
THE RIVER BANK. 
The difficulty up to the present, however, 
has been not so much the breaking back of the 
caper, for the best of the caper shooting is to 
come in the afternoon, but to know what has 
become of the pheasants. The head keeper de¬ 
cides that most of them—they are all wild 
birds—must be along a high wooded bank, which 
runs by the little Versen, sheltered from the 
rough weather. The line of beaters goes back 
to the far side of the wood; two guns go back 
with them, one to walk just ahead of the line, 
and the other a hundred yards or so in front 
of him; and the third gun, with the keepers, 
lines the bank at the end of the wood. And 
the head keeper proves to be right. There are 
plenty of pheasants along the bank; the only 
difficulty is that they will not fly as they should 
over the guns. Some break back, others swing 
along to the side, a few of them so high as to 
offer the most exhilarating temptations to the 
guns walking by the river. One of them, though 
not a high bird, falls actually in the river, and 
is carried down stream, waving over the falls 
and boulders an uplifted tail, a protesting leg; 
a spaniel retrieves him a quarter of a mile below 
where he fell. But the prettiest piece of shoot¬ 
ing along this bank comes almost at the end, 
with three partridges which had been flushed 
as the forward guns went down to their places, 
and which rise again in front of the beaters to 
do what is from the guns’ point of view exactly 
the right thing; one swerves back to the gun in 
front of him, and the third goes straight for¬ 
ward to the guns at the end of the bank—all 
three to fall as partridges should. 
CAPER, ROE, PHEASANTS. 
And after lunch comes beating the hill on 
the other side of the road for caper—caper 
mixed with roe deer, pheasants, pigeons and 
rabbits. Nobody wants to shoot the roe, for 
of all graceful woodland creatures a roe gets 
the gun to look the other way quickest; but 
there are foresters and farmers to be thought of 
even before roe, and the afternoon as a fact 
lessens the number on the hill by three—a doe 
and two bucks. But the caper shooting is the 
real thing. In the afternoon the beats through 
the pines and firs are shorter than they had 
been in the morning, and every beat through 
the afternoon adds its own feature and incident 
to the day—first the thrill and rattle of the 
great bird leaving his treetop, then the guessing 
which way he goes, then the snap at the out¬ 
stretched head and dark wings silhouetted 
against the sky, and, following that, silence or a 
thud through breaking larch branches. Once a 
bird came high over two of the guns, and four 
barrels seemed hardly to touch him; but the 
third gun on higher ground saw what the 
others could not see for the trees, and the bird 
went down dead perhaps a hundred and fifty 
yards in the covert behind. Once a hen caper 
was flushed on the highest plateau of the hill 
among short spruces which drifted down layers 
of snow in a wind that felt as if it had blown a 
hundred years over ice—“the wind that blows 
between the worlds.” Down she swung over 
the pines, and a gun cracked at her; she swung 
on, and then a branch broke; there was a call, 
and the keeper knew where to pick her up next 
beat. 
THE GREAT BIRD. 
But the best beat was the last of the day. 
The hill had been beaten up toward the far side, 
and now it was to be taken back over the guns 
stationed from half way down the slope to the 
bottom, so that the caper would fly over the 
valley to another hill behind the guns. And it 
was not only the fact that the caper came high, 
which made the shooting difficult. You had to 
stand—there was nowhere else to stand—on the 
very steep side of a hill covered with bracken 
heather, and holes, all deep in snow. If a bird 
came hustling out of the trees and you did not 
get him with your first barrel—a thing which 
happened more often than not—you either fired 
your second barrel in extreme peril, or you fell 
down the hill. It was past four o’clock, and 
though the snow threw up a light against the 
pines, the pines were very tall and dark, and 
the capers were very dark and silent as they 
came through the tops of the pines. Perhaps if 
you could get a good place to stand, and a 
good light on the birds and trees, and a good 
open space of sky above you, it would not 
matter so much that capers fly fast and high. 
But the really valuable testimony to the diffi¬ 
culty of shooting caper under the conditions of 
that particular beat is the fact that all (I think) 
of the pheasants which came out over the guns 
were killed, besides a roe and a woodcock; but 
of the caper words were spoken which are not 
spoken of the dead. The vision remains with 
me of a gray and yellow evening sky, a high 
hill of larch and pine half a mile away, and of 
great black birds on level wings floating out 
toward the sunset. The sunset was gray that 
evening, as gray as the sunrise had been red. 
But if we followed the advice of the sage and 
had kept our beds, we should have lost a day 
among snow and pines and great game birds 
which sets itself apart to be marked with its own 
red letter in the shooting calendar. 
In changing address, the old as well as the 
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