A Hunt With the Boys. 
It had been arranged with Jim and Tod that 
when they came home from college on their 
short 1 hanksgiving vacation we would finish up 
the grouse season with one day after the birds. 
Both boys have had considerable experience 
with gun and rod, but while Jim, the older boy, 
is the more persistent hunter and much the 
better angler, Tod is quicker and much more 
certain with the gun. Di, the big, strong, obedi¬ 
ent Irish setter, has learned his part of the busi¬ 
ness so well that when he makes a mistake he 
needs a petting rather than a whipping. 
Snow had fallen during the early part of 
1 hanksgiving week, and while it had all dis¬ 
appeared in the low country we knew that among 
the mountains there would still be much of it 
left. In spite of this, however, we decided to 
hunt some country that has plenty of elevation 
and that requires good wind to reach, and we 
accordingly took the early train for C. A large 
party of rabbit hunters and hounds also boarded 
the train. ( 
At our stopping place, Eli, the station master, 
who sometimes with the best of intentions gives 
us pointers that turn out later to be disappoint- 
ers, told us that he had learned of some birds on 
Parson’s ridge that had not been disturbed dur¬ 
ing the whole season. His directions were not 
very explicit, but we felt pretty sure that we 
could find the place, and after seeing the rabbit 
hunters ofif down the creek we climbed out of 
the valley and up into the high land. 
Our way from the station led across some 
fields that rose steeply to a strip of thick woods 
which separated the fields below from those on 
top. It was a hard climb and we had to stop 
every five or six minutes to recover our breath. 
We had crossed the fields and been in the woods 
but a few minutes when a snapshot from Tod 
brought down a young bird that had flushed 
from a low, thick hemlock whose bottom 
branches were weighted to the ground with 
snow. Just before leaving the woods Jim killed 
a rabbit. 
When hot and panting, we reached the fields 
on top of the hills, and we had a beautiful land- 
1 scape spread out around us. The side we were 
; to hunt had been more recently settled and the 
farms were smaller and the patches of woods 
larger than they were on the other side of the 
creek valley. The leader decided that the woods 
■ should be entered at a point where a small side 
swamp intersected the main swamp. We had 
almost finished this little patch when Di flushed 
two birds. One flew into a birch and stood “quit- 
■ ting” excitedly until Jim shot it; the other bird 
doubled back on us, and when Di pointed it 
later, I walked it up for the boys to shoot. It 
was very thick just there and only Jim got a 
shot. He claimed that he had hit it. Just be¬ 
fore reaching the hemlock Di made a stand at 
the top of a little bank and when we came up 
to him we found the grouse. Both birds were 
big and plump and Jim was considerably elated 
with his luck. 
We found the snow in the large swamp liter¬ 
ally packed down with rabbit tracks among 
which we could now and then detect the big, 
broad tracks of the white swamp rabbit. Tod, 
who had never seen one of these big rabbits, 
was very anxious to shoot one and we had not 
been in the swamp more than ten minutes when 
his chance came. Di occasionally points a 
rabbit that he runs very close to, and when I 
saw him on a very stiff point, I went in and out 
streaked a big white rabbit past Tod, who rolled 
it over with a single shot. 
At this point the leader called a halt for lunch 
during which he issued a decree that there would 
be no more rabbits killed. Jim, who had lugged 
two pints of cold coffee all forenoon, thought 
that he would have room for just one more 
rabbit where Ire had carrried the coffee, but 
fortunately I was the only one who saw another 
rabbit, a very large blue one that was slipping 
through a patch of brush. 
Soon after lunch I had my one bit of luck. 
The party was spread out in a line to cover the 
entire width of the swamp. The boys and dog 
were in the swamp while I was in a road at the 
foot of the ridge. From a bunch of laurel 
a big cock grouse sprang and flew directly away 
from me. There was so much time that when 
I pulled up my gun, cocked it, and then aimed 
and fired, the bird was still within easy shooting 
distance. The hoys called, “Did you get it?” 
and I answered, “Only a few feathers.” I 
loaded and walked on, when happening to glance 
around I saw another bird standing on a log 
near where the first one had risen. This one 
1 promptly killed. Jim, who had marked down 
the first bird, insisted that it must be looked up. 
His persistence won again, for he found the 
grouse sitting stone dead under a stump. 
We now took to the swamp and the dog made 
a point near a pile of treetops out of which we 
flushed three birds, two of which Tod killed. 
The next birds were flushed wild, but I marked 
one down near a tall slender pine. When I got 
near the pine this bird came out of the top with¬ 
out giving anyone a shot and returned near to 
the place where it had been first flushed. We 
went back and hunted this ground carefully and 
finally the bird sprang from almost under Jim’s 
feet and was cut down by him before it had 
gone more than a rod. 
The next bird rose before the dog from a 
thick laurel and flew to a scraggly hemlock 
where it lit on a limb in plain sight. It was in¬ 
teresting to see how quickly it sidled in against 
the trunk where one had to look twice to dis¬ 
tinguish it from a knot. This was my shot and 
I missed the bird. Along one side of the swamp 
ran an old stake and rider fence, along a.M 
through which had grown up little bunches of 
pines, making excellent cover for birds, and from 
one of these we put out a bird that dropped into 
a thicket. Di worked up to it and the bird was 
flushed only after we were all in fine position, 
but it went away untouched by any of the six 
shots. 
It was now late in the afternoon. When we 
crossed the woods in which Tod had killed the 
bird in the morning we found the fresh tracks 
of a grouse. It was very nearly train time, but 
Tod and Di started out through the thicket and 
we heard the bird go up. Jim and I saw the 
bird top the birches and then crumple up at the 
crack of Tod’s gun. 
At the station we found the rabbit hunters 
tired and short tempered. They had five or six 
rabbits—less than one to a hunter—most of 
which they had chased into holes and then dug 
out. Eli had brought over from his house a 
basket of Baldwin and Northern Spy apples and 
the hunters munched them while the tired dogs 
slept until the evening train came swinging 
around the curve to take us away from the 
haunts of the grouse for another ten months. 
In all my experience with grouse I have never 
enjoyed a day more. The thin, leafless woods 
with the white untrampled snow below and the 
bright cloudless sky above gave us not only the 
most splendid shots at the big, brown birds, but 
gave us many beautiful pictures as well. It was 
a day in Utopia that was worth a cycle in 
Cathay. Charles Lose. 
Small Bores for Wildfowl Shooting. 
Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 16.—Editor Forest 
ond Stream: In a recent issue of your paper 
a correspondent writing of California duck 
shooting states that the Pacific coast sportsmen 
are now using sixteen and twenty-gauge shot¬ 
guns on wildfowl, and that these weapons are 
quite effective when properly loaded. This sub¬ 
ject that of the small bore gun—has interested 
me for some time, although I have had no per¬ 
sonal experience in this line. 
Now, I would like to know what a proper load 
for these small-bore guns is—what powder, shot, 
wadding, etc., is most effective. Will some of 
your readers kindly give their views and ex¬ 
periences? I am sure there are others beside 
myself to whom this is a matter of interest. 
J. M„ Jr. 
Forest Fires and Seagoers. 
Reports from vessels arriving in New York 
early last week told of extraordinary conditions 
met at sea. Showers of dust, ashes and fine cin¬ 
ders fell on the deck of a number of the great 
liners. On Monday, Oct. 19, two sunsets were 
seen, the first when the sun vanished behind what 
looked like the horizon, but was really a thick 
bank of smoke and dust; the second a little later 
when, the wind shifting to the east, swept away 
the smoke and showed the real horizon and the 
sun sinking beneath it. The Atlantic Transport 
Minneapolis, from London, met the smoke and 
dust zone on Oct. 19, one hundred miles off 
shore. Land birds were seen high in air flying 
in several directions, apparently bewildered. 
Latei. dead land birds were observed floating in 
the sea; other vessels saw these bewildered birds 
and a number of exhausted ones fell on the 
decks. 
