In the Days of Few Birds. 
Htor Forest and Stream: 
A good many of us who have started down 
; hill from our prime, and who thus remem- 
r the old days when there were plenty of birds, 
?ard with regret and with some amusement 
j a laws of the present day which limit one to 
ur, five or six partridges, a like number of 
jodcock and half a dozen quail in a day. In 
;w of existing conditions such laws are wise 
d might be made even more stringent. I re¬ 
amber one day—and it does not seem so very 
ng ago—when I came back from a day and a 
If of shooting in the country within seventy- 
e miles of New York, carrying the bag for 
o guns, forty-four birds, quail, partridges and 
i Dodcock, and a ’coon. The ’coon was an acci- 
nt. You could not call this slaughter, yet it 
is good shooting, the like of which I have not 
ice seen in New England. 
This year I have been out in the swamps and 
Dod lots half a dozen times. Three or four par- 
idges live near me, and one or two small broods 
quail, with not more than seven or eight in 
:vy. During the flight there were a number of 
oodcock, and I know of a dozen or more being 
lied by various gunners. The biggest bag that 
have heard of was six birds to two guns. 
Working the dog I have faithfully tried to 
art the partridges of which I know, and each 
me I have been out have succeeded in moving 
le or more of them. I soon learned of three 
, ways to be found in a piece of swamp wood- 
nd cover, but almost the first day that I went 
it I began to reason with myself and to ask 
hat I should go shooting for in case I should 
j ippen to kill these three partridges. If I did 
lat, not only would there be none left to breed 
?xt spring, but during the last few days of the 
■ason I would have no motive for carrying my 
in or working my dog. I decided, therefore, 
lat it would be poor policy for me to shoot 
lese partridges, even supposing I were able to 
: it them, and that since I did not care much 
j lout killing them, there was much greater 
| anger of my hitting them than there would be 
I were very keen on bringing them to my 
acket. Since I reached that conclusion, I have 
j* 7 
ad four or five very excellent open shots at 
lese birds, and I rather pat myself on the back 
acause I have contented myself with aiming 
iy gun at them and letting them go. My com- 
anions have usually been two young people who 
ave taken the outer edge of swamps and runs, 
here they would have open shooting, but al- 
lough they have fired a few cartridges at these 
irds, they have not succeeded in doing any 
reat amount of harm. The quail I have only 
:arted once. They have not yet settled down 
| n any fixed feeding ground, and it is mere 
i aance if the hunter happens to come across 
j lem. 
As to the woodcock, my feeling is some- 
hat different. They are an uncertain bird; here 
>-day and there to-morrow. An easterly storm 
iay leave a number of them with us which a 
few degrees of frost will send on again, never 
to return. 
It was some years since I had seen a wood¬ 
cock, and so one day late in October I was 
more or less interested when the dog, work¬ 
ing through a patch of white birch sprouts, sud¬ 
denly whirled, and I saw a woodcock get up, fly 
thirty or forty yards, and then drop down under 
an old apple tree at the edge of the sprouts. I 
called to my companion to hurry around there, 
and take a position in the lot, and I would go 
through and put the bird up. Before she had 
reached her position and before I had started, 
the bird flipped up again, and went on over the 
hill, apparently to another run where there is 
good cover. We kept on our course, seeing 
nothing more exciting than a rabbit, crossed 
the other run low down, and then I followed it 
up, while she kept along the edge. Before we 
reached the place where the bird should have 
been, a partridge got up near the place, and a 
little later, when we were still more than a gun¬ 
shot distant, the woodcock got up and went back. 
A thorough beating out of the rest of the ground 
revealed nothing more, and we started back to 
the cover that the birds had gone to. This time 
I cut across an open lot, dotted with- good sized 
cedars and with patches of barberry and black¬ 
berries, while the others walked down through 
the sprouts at the edge of the run. I had gotten 
only half way across the field, when from under 
one of the cedars a big gray partridge got up 
and flew off across the fields, giving me a shot 
that a child should not have missed. I did not 
shoot at it. A search of the run from which 
the woodcock had first been started yielded noth¬ 
ing, so with the dog and one companion I swung 
around up the hill and entered another patch of 
sprouts, leaving the third gun to watch the open¬ 
ing between these sprouts, and those where the 
woodcock had first been sprung. We had not 
gone far through the tangle, when the bird got 
up immediately in front of us and flew out in 
the desired direction; the gun sounded and then 
came the call, “I’ve got it.” 
It was in a tiny swamp at the head of a long 
and narrow trout pond that the second wood¬ 
cock was killed. It was started close by the 
brook at the very head of the pond, twisted be¬ 
hind a group of trees and dropped down fifty 
yards further ahead in a dense tangle of alders, 
blackberries, cat briars and cedars. Here it lay 
fairly close, but was out of sight almost in¬ 
stantly as it took wing. My nephew’s shot 
through the dense growth killed it and the bird 
was found lying in the open field at the very 
edge of the brush. 
The same day, after working through a 
swamp, we came around and at the border of 
the wood took the edge of a gravel knoll thickly 
strewn with dead leaves, on top of which was 
a dense growth of weeds and blackberries with 
a few white birch sprouts. One gun was at the 
foot of the hill at the edge of the swamp, and 
I was near the top of the knoll where I could 
see the dog working down in the swamp or 
again when she crossed me and took the top of 
the knoll. She was galloping along on the knoll 
when she suddenly whirled, drew on a yard or 
two and then stopped and stiffened, with her 
nose about six inches from the foot of a little 
clump of birches. She stood for but an instant, 
and then the bird darted out, showing itself 
clearly for a few feet and then disappearing 
among the tops of the weeds. I was lucky 
enough to hit it after it had disappeared, and 
there bagged the first woodcock that I have seen 
for several years. 
In the country where I shoot, quail are so ex¬ 
ceedingly scarce that no one ought to kill them. 
The partridges are probably more numerous than 
the quail, and being non-gregarious, make much 
more show. Yet it is my feeling that people 
ought not to kill them. If I had begun early 
in the season and hunted faithfully over the 
particular region to which I am referring, I do 
not doubt that I could have killed all or almost 
all of the ruffed grouse found there. 
It will be a melancholy day when we go out 
over our old shooting grounds and find there 
not the roaring partridge, the buzzing quail and 
the whistling woodcock of old days, but new and 
strange birds imported from Europe, which, how¬ 
ever fast they may fly or however numerous they 
may be, will not give us the satisfaction which 
we used to find in shooting our native birds. 
Ramon. 
Boone and Crockett Club. 
The Boone and Crockett Club will have a 
dinner at the Metropolitan Club in Washington 
on Saturday, Dec. 12, at 8 o’clock P. M., the 
occasion for which is as follows: 
The Austro-Hungarian Government, through 
its ambassador, has requested the President of 
the United States to interest this country in a 
Sportsmen’s Exposition, to be held in Vienna 
in 1910, which is to include all things pertaining 
to hunting, exploration, forestry and agricul¬ 
ture. In response to this invitation, the Presi¬ 
dent has designated the Boone and Crockett 
Club as the official medium for securing a repre¬ 
sentative American exhibit, and has asked the 
President of the club to appoint a special com¬ 
mittee to have general charge of matters of 
organization. Such a committee has been 
formed. 
At the dinner the questions of plan and scope, 
of ways and means, of an appropriation by Con¬ 
gress to meet the necessary expenses, and of 
organization generally, will be discussed. The 
President, the Secretary of State, the Austro- 
Hungarian Ambassador and his first secretary 
and others interested, will be present. The com¬ 
mittee earnestly hopes that the attendance of 
club members will be very large. It is hardly 
necessary to point out that the occasion is one 
of the utmost importance to the club and affords 
an opportunity to greatly and permanently in¬ 
crease its influence and prestige. 
The regular annual dinner of the Boone and 
Crockett Club will be held in New York during 
the latter part of January. 
