Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1912. 
( VOL. LXXVUI.—No. 5 . 
'< No. 127 Fran'tlin St., New York. 
W ELL, William, what’s the program to¬ 
day?” I cried as I stopped the machine 
at Church’s door. 
Church lifted his setter, Count, into the ton¬ 
neau, slid his repeater in afterward, 
climbed into the front seat beside me, 
and said: ‘1 guess we’ll start in at 
the woodcock ground at the lake, then 
try the swamp hole near Abeh’s, hunt 
Powell’s lot, then the Packer place, and 
finish up at Ford’s swamp.” 
This seemed a good layout to me, and 
in about ten minutes we stopped at a 
pair of bars that let us into the wood¬ 
cock ground. Birches and maples with 
occasional patches of laurel and high 
huckleberry bushes formed the cover 
along the eastern shore of Gardner’s 
Lake, and if the longbills were not 
there, we were quite sure of finding 
one in the alder run nearby. We 
hunted the south side of the “edge” 
without success, though Count kept try¬ 
ing to work to the north of us. We 
thought we’d see what interested him 
so much, and let him have his way while 
we followed. Count made game and 
started trailing, while Church and I got 
ready for business. Suddenly with 
twittering wings a woodcock flushed 
wild in front of Church and he fired, 
but missed, as the bird was nearly out 
•of range. We marked the direction of 
its flight and followed after, but found 
nothing of it. 
As we reached a woods road near 
the bar-way, we flushed a partridge and 
saw where it went down a short way 
into the woods on the other side of the 
road. There was a stone wall at the 
edge of the cover near where we had 
marked the bird down, and I climbed 
over into the open lot on the further 
side in hopes that I would get a shot 
when the bird flushed. Church and 
Count crossed the road and struck into 
the maples after the game. In a few 
minutes William sang out: “I’ve got 
a point!” and a second later I heard 
the partridge get up. I stood watching 
and soon saw the bird going through the tree- 
tops and nearly out of gun shot. I was afraid 
if I waited for it to cross an open space in 
front of me that I would lose my chance, so I 
fired through the maples. The partridge never 
changed its course, but kept straight on and 
Church’s Double 
By HORATIO BIGELOW 
would have given me a fine shot in the opening, 
but it had crossed before I could get on it with 
my second barrel. 
We turned back and looked for more wood- 
GOT HIM. 
From a photograph by G. P. Baughman. 
cock. Count pointed on the edge of the birches 
and Church walked in, flushing a longbill. The 
cover was so thick, however, that a shot was 
impossible, and we followed up the bird. We 
were more successful this time than with the 
first bird, and Count soon came to a stiff point 
that showed the woodcock was right under his 
nose. Church flushed and the bird twisted 
through the trees ahead of me. I saw enough 
of him to get him over the end of my gun, and 
he dropped like a wet rag. Count re¬ 
trieved and we circled to the right. 
Not a hundred yards away we had an¬ 
other point. The dog stood, or rather 
squatted directly in front of me, head 
turned slightly to one side. I walked 
ahead, and was lucky enough to drop 
woodcock number two, with much the 
.same kind of a shot I had had on the 
last one. 
As we had quartered this section 
pretty thoroughly, we swung around 
through the alder run near the lake, 
and then through the last corner of the 
“birch edge” which we had not yet dis¬ 
turbed. Church had hardly hied Count 
into the cover when another dog—a 
lemon-and-white pointer—burst out of 
the bushes in front, and stood there 
looking at us for a minute. Then a 
whistle sounded and the dog darted 
back. An instant later we heard some 
one say: “There used to be woodcock 
along this edge last year,” and the 
pointer came into view again followed 
by Bob Congdon, of New London, and 
another hunter. To their greeting. 
“What luck?” I answered, “Not much; 
we flushed a partridge over there,” as 
I pointed to the cover we had been 
through, and as they moved on I whis¬ 
pered to Church, “Let’s leave; I think 
we’ve cleaned up this piece.” In con¬ 
firmation of the truth of this remark I 
know that we did not hear a shot from 
the other party, though Powell’s, our 
next objective, was only a mile distant. 
On our way we stopped in at Abell’s 
to see if young Elmer would join us, 
but his hunting license had run out the 
day before, so he could not go. How¬ 
ever, I had an extra gun in the car 
and turned it over to Thompson, the 
chauffeur, to see if he could kill a bird. 
Church took Count into the swamp 
hole opposite Abell’s to try and find a 
partridge, while Thompson and I stationed our¬ 
selves in the road between the swamp hole and 
Powell’s. It was nearly a certainty that if 
Church flushed a bird, it would go across the 
road, and we waited in anticipation, until finally 
Count scrambled over the wall into the road 
