Forest and Stream 
^ a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 1912. 
VOL. LXXVIIL—No. 11. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
A Day With Bobwhite 
W E had previously arranged everything, so 
when we met at six o’clock a. m. we 
were ready to climb in behind a speedy 
trotter, and drive to my old homestead for just 
one day’s sport with the bobwhite of Southern 
Illinois. We had traveled about a mile from 
town, and were flying along chatting of the way 
we would declare war on the feathered tribe, 
when I suddenly found myself scrambling in the 
bottom of the buggy with the pup. Spot, owing 
to a sudden jerk Tom had given the reins, 
caused by the excitement of seeing a fine covey 
running along on the ground by the wayside. 
It took me about five seconds to recover from 
my tumble, and snatching my i6-gauge, I 
alighted in readiness for the first shot. I fired 
twice, and—oh, well. I’m not counted any too 
handy with firearms anyway. Tom, who had 
been watching from the buggy, relieved my 
shamed conscience by informing me that my 
last barrel had disabled half the "running-gear” 
of the right quartering bird. I was almost 
positive I had registered two clean misses, but 
on carefully watching, was highly pleased to see 
my first bird collapse, after flying about a hun¬ 
dred yards. 
The covey flew to a posted field, so we drove 
on, and on arriving at our destination, found 
an invigorating farmer’s breakfast, ■ “such as 
nobody but mother can cook,” awaiting us, and 
to which we of course did ample justice. 
Breakfast over, father’s plans carefully noted, 
and the responding of Dick, father’s pointer, to 
a shrill whistle, we were off. After an unevent¬ 
ful walk of about a mile through fields barren 
of game, we encountered a lonely cottontail 
which coaxed a load from dad’s 20-gauge and 
one from Tom’s 12, and spurned his chances of 
escaping my 16 by turning directly opposite 
and escaping, none the worse for his experience. 
Dick worked the field with an evident desire 
to start the fireworks, and finally came to a 
pretty stand at the edge of a cornfield along¬ 
side. We circled and came in from behind in 
order to drive them to open cover, then flushed 
a small covey and fired five shots, but aside 
from one unfortunate that chanced to be in the 
path of a 20-gauge load, the whole covey came 
to earth in the adjoining open field. There 
Dick and the pup Spot got in some pretty work 
on several pretty points on singles. “Could you 
hit one on the ground?” dad asked, after watch¬ 
ing me fire both barrels at a single. I did not 
like this, because I was anxious to prove that 
his 20-gauge was too light, so replied. “Never 
mind. I’ll show your little baby up before we 
By FRED E. MARTIN 
go in.” My anxiety for this very thing, I 
thought, was the principal cause for my con¬ 
stant missing. 
We crossed a small field and entered a little 
hollow, where we failed to find anything, al¬ 
though we had previously flushed two large 
coveys. Next was a cornfield and we were 
wondering why we couldn’t find any more game 
PROUD OF HIS WORK. 
From a photograph by G. P. Baughman. 
over such excellent hunting grounds, when we 
noticed that Dick had disappeared, and after 
several futile attempts to locate him, I dropped 
back over a little knoll we had just missed, and 
there I found him stiffened and his head to one 
side, as though he had stopped very suddenly, 
and on looking at what seemed to be the object 
of his gaze, saw two quail within two feet of 
his nose. I called to father and Tom, but on 
telling them there were only two birds, they 
shouted back, “You get them,” as Spot was 
working on something and they would follow 
her. I flushed and dropped both, one a 
straightaway, the other a right-quarterer, but 
only winged the last one. In my anxiety to 
prevent its escape I forgot to reload my gun, 
and on going after the bird, Dick and I rushed 
headlong into the finest covey we had yet seen, 
and there I stood with an unloaded gun. In 
my perplexity over the surprise, I even lost 
my winged bird. It seemed as though luck was 
against me. 
Toward noon a half snow and half rain set 
in, making it extremely disagreeable. I watched 
the covey I had unintentionally disturbed, and 
made sure of the place where they came to earth 
in a nice open meadow about an eighth of a 
mile distant. Father and Tom called Spot off 
one of her numerous “fake” points, and we fol¬ 
lowed the covey, but strange to say, we were 
unsuccessful in finding more than a few scatter¬ 
ing ones that evidently thought their chances 
good for escape, but we bagged some of them. 
As we had been out since breakfast with 
nothing to eat, we began to think of the din¬ 
ing table, so we started in that direction. How¬ 
ever, we were due for a few more thrills and 
very peculiar actions on bobwhite’s part before 
we arrived home. On our way Tom had the 
distinction of making the prettiest shot of the 
day, and this came after dad had missed, so I 
took special delight in telling him this. 
Just as we were entering a posted field, a 
farmer with his whole family approached us 
with “Get out of here!” and we decided we had 
best obey, but Dick thoughtfully crossed his 
field, and when we reached the opposite side, a 
most pleasing sight met our gaze. A large 
covey seemingly had taken refuge in this par¬ 
ticular place, and instead of lying for the dog, 
they had run on ahead of him and were just 
in the act of crossing a public highway into a 
field where we had gained permission to hunt. 
This was a sight that would stir the blood of any 
sportsman, and I longed for my camera. It 
seemed almost a shame to molest these little 
creatures that had so obligingly run almost into 
the jaws of death, but the b-r-r-r-r of the wings 
of the first that left mother earth caused me to 
forget all my tender feelings toward them and 
we fired right and left for the next few minutes. 
This very obliging bevy fattened our game 
coats, but not to such an extent that we were 
overloaded. We soon drove the quail back to the 
shelter of the posted field where they seemed to 
understand they would be protected until an¬ 
other good pointer got wind of them. We de¬ 
cided we had enough sport for the day any way, 
