172 FOREST AND STREAM 
firing a shot, but this does not distress me, pro¬ 
vided that I have the excitement of pursuit— 
and, nowadays, one should be very moderate in 
his anticipations of sport. 
We are fond of all sorts of fishing, but fly 
fishing for trout has been beloved. It is a pas¬ 
sion that grows with the years and we can never 
become indifferent to it, as we are always learn¬ 
ing something that is interesting. As a sport it 
is possessed of infinite variety, but to get the 
best of it I fancy that we must confine ourselves 
to the use of the artificial fly. If the fish are not 
rising freely and we resort to bait of any kind 
we lose faith and may never discover the utter¬ 
most possibilities in the artificial insect. There 
is always something to puzzle over and think 
about, and one solitary trout may defy us 
throughout a whole season. 
At last we deceive him by using the finest 
tackle, after the greatest circumspection in ap¬ 
proaching his well known haunt. And then! 
Why then he smashes our tackle and retains the 
fly as a souvenir. It does not worry him at all; 
he is only a little more difficult than before, and 
may live for several years, although many fisher¬ 
men know 'him well. 
Trout are often hungry and at times easily 
taken, but we love to think of them as always 
shy and well fed. In streams that are alive with 
larva and flies they are in good condition very 
early, but these are usually in the lowlands. The 
mountain rivers are much later. 
It is not difficult to keep up a good stock of 
trout if we have the pure cold water and the 
food, but game is different, another matter. Our 
prospects for fly fishing are better than for shoot¬ 
ing, but I trust that we may continue to have a 
little all around sport. 
Luck in Shooting 
By W. R. Gilbert. 
F EW men who shoot regularly can have failed 
to meet men who, as they themselves will 
tell you “never get any luck.” Now from 
more years’ experience than I care to own up to, 
I am convinced that these unfortunates have al¬ 
most invariably only themselves to blame for 
their want of success, and I base my conviction 
solely on my own personal observations. Their 
bad luck, is in most instances, the direct outcome 
•of want of discretion, coupled in some cases with 
want of common sense. 
That complete silence in the field constitutes 
•one of the great secrets of success, when birds 
are being walked up, is a truism. Yet how many 
among the hosts one knows, or the managers of 
shootings are there, who insist firmly that 
Silence shall be maintained, not only while the 
shooting is in progress, but also while guns are 
moving from place to place? For that matter 
how many are there that set a good example in 
keeping perfect silence? 
The majority of shooters think they do, most 
likely, and would be annoyed if told that they 
do not. 
At no time should silence be more insisted upon 
than when a bird is lost, especially if it is in any 
kind of cover. The sound of the shots will al¬ 
ready have set upon the qui vive all the birds 
in the neighborhood, and a Single shout will set 
them running as fast as their legs will carry 
them, till they are out of range, when most likely 
they will rise. Yet When a bird is down, is pre¬ 
cisely the time that many men choose for talk¬ 
ing—it may be to exchange remarks with the 
nearest gun; it may be to yell for more car¬ 
tridges; it may be, and often is, to bellow at a re¬ 
fractory dog. 
“Can’t get near birds to-day! no luck at all 
with them” is a remark one often hears at lunch, 
when during the morning, talking has been going 
on at frequent intervals. Shooting over land, 
within easy distances, equally stocked with birds, 
with a strictly silent party, I have often seen 
twice as many birds killed. On such occasions 
the first set of guns has declared that the other 
lot “had all the luck.” They had, but then they 
went the right way to work to ensure it. 
Take pheasant shooting in covert in England 
the same remarks apply. Dozens of times I have 
seen the majority of the birds break away at the 
■one or two points where the guns in waiting had 
remained from the beginning of the beat not only 
•silent, but also quite still. Pheasants are extraor¬ 
dinary birds in some respects. Thus, let a sin¬ 
gle pheasant, while a covert is being beaten, catch 
a glimpse of a man moving about in a ride, and 
then let that bird turn tail and run back whence 
he came, and during the rest of that beat, at any 
rate, the individual thus discovered will get hard¬ 
ly any shooting In fact there is but one thing 
to do, when pheasants are seen running toward 
you, through the undergrowth, and that is to re¬ 
main so absolutely motionless and silent that they 
are duped into believing that what they first took 
to be a man standing there, is not a man at all. 
Move ever so lightly and the chances are that 
the pheasant will run back into the covert and 
spread the alarm. 
“From a period” as the lawyers say “so far 
back that the memory of man runneth not to the 
contrary” authorities upon shooting and all that 
appertains to it have inveighed against the prac¬ 
tice of going too quickly over the ground, and 
not thoroughly beating out the corners. Yet the 
habit is as prevalent to-day as it ever was. 
To beat out the ground thoroughly, with some 
men, means to them a loss of precious minutes 
whereas in many of those neglected spots, birds 
may have run, and are lying dose 'in the hope 
that they may not be forced to take wing until 
the danger is past. Again there may be a low 
lying bit of rush, which holds a couple of mal¬ 
lards, which would have given a glorious right 
and left. Often you hear such men as they turn 
around at the sound of t’he ducks getting up ioo 
yards behind them, from nearly the very ground 
they had raced over, exclaim “Look at that 
now!” They go on to “confound their luck,” 
wondering how in the world it is they keep on 
walking over birds. 
Another frequent cause of misfortune, especi¬ 
ally in duck shooting, is neglect to take into con¬ 
sideration the general lie of the land, the quar¬ 
ter from which the wind is blowing, the where¬ 
abouts of the sun, if it happens to be shining. 
Plenty of men, even men of wide experience, 
go shooting without giving wind or sun a thought 
and on account of this birds are either made 
aware of their presence, or if flushed fly right 
into the eye of the sun, and then once more will 
come the lame excuse at the close of the day “no 
luck.” There are many similar points that make 
for failure, some of which will now perhaps sug¬ 
gest themselves to serve to strengthen my con¬ 
tention that in shooting, as in much else, “want 
of luck” is but another phrase for “want of ele¬ 
mentary intelligence.” 
February 7, 1914. 
A DAY WITH GUN AND GROUSE. 
Hendersonville, N. C., Jan. 13, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
We have had a very delightful autumn, and 
the beginning of winter was also all that one 
could wish, but to-day (January 3) we have 
some six or eight inches of snow on the ground, 
and the wind is now sharp, and strong from the 
north. Shooting has been good, though I have 
had little time to be out with dog and gun. 
However, since my last letter I have had some 
good sport in Transylvania County, stopping 
with a young farmer friend who drove me in 
his buggy to some excellent quail shooting cover 
We shot a part of two days, killing thirty-four 
birds, and my little 16 guage Fox did good 
work. 
I really find no difference in the killing quali¬ 
ties between 12 and 16, and the 16 is so much 
lighter, and somewhat quicker to handle in 
swamps and timber, where snap shooting is 
absolutely necessary. We were somewhat handi¬ 
capped oy a large stream—Little river—over 
which the birds always flew when flashed any¬ 
where near it. 
1 have shot no grouse yet; but shot at one 
and I hold just a little grudge "agin it,” but 
hope yet to even up matters with him, or one or 
more of his “set.” It happened thus: A young 
man out with me in the mountains near Lake 
Foxaway saw three grouse fly down into a very 
rough gorge, and undertook to go down one 
side, and I the other while my Irish setter 
Nellie, Jr., was to do her part. 
It was steep, and one of the birds came out 
with a full head of steam and (this is a habit 
they have) flew about ten feet over my 
head. 
It was the kind of shot one must make after 
the bird passes one. 
I attempted it very promptly, and rolled com¬ 
pletely over, but caught before slipping far, 
steadied myself for the next, as I failed to get 
a shot at the first on account of my slipping 
off my feet on the steep incline. Out came the 
second one at direct right angle to me and, 
about eighteen or twenty yards ahead. Giving 
the necessary lead, I promptly pressed the 
trigger, but even as I did so that grouse shot 
off at a sharp angle to the right and my charge 
of shot passed harmlessly behind him. Had he 
gone one foot farther on his hasty flight, as the 
first one did, he would have made close connec¬ 
tion with my charge of 7% shot. 
Though holding a grudge, it is but a slight 
one, because he was so sharp and knowing he 
beat me, I must admire him for it. 
And this is one of the reasons I am so fond 
of hunting these birds. I't is not all meat that 
I go for, and I would rather tramp over rough 
and beautiful mountains all day for one or two 
of these fine birds than have thirty quail in the 
open field. 
Already the season is nearly over, but I have 
an invitation from a farmer in this county to 
go to his place for a quail shoot, and this I 
hope to do. I also hope to bag a grouse or two 
before January 15th closes the season. Then for 
spring and the trout, and I think I have located 
some good rainbow trout fishing. I don’t know, 
but hope to find out. 
May 1914 be your very best year. 
Most truly yours, 
ERNEST L. EWBANK, 
Advertising is but another form of salesman¬ 
ship—salesmanship on paper. 
