Dec. 4, 1909 ] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
897 
Of his method I will only say that it was 
needlessly elaborate, as it involved his carrying 
about the woods a specially contrived and 
cumbersome apparatus for producing the sound. 
The whole trick, it seemed to me, lay in being 
properly concealed, keeping fervently still and 
motionless and in producing a good imitation 
of the drumming. As I am extremely long as 
to legs, the concealment part of the programme 
offered the greatest difficulty for me, for I am 
strong in inertia and was born with an infallible 
ear and imitative ability beyond the ordinary. 
I itched to try the thing myself, but dared not 
without a witness for fear that, should I suc¬ 
ceed, I would forever after be studiously 
avoided by those whose good opinion I most 
wish to possess. So I put in the most of the 
morning still-hunting without a dog or other 
companion, succeeding only in locating a few 
birds which all flushed wild well out of gun shot. 
Later on the deserter companion sanely and 
sensibly drove up in state. He was a little 
peevish when I told him I had no dogs, and 
quite impolite about what he called my pro¬ 
posal to hypnotize the birds. Moved probably 
by the desire to guy the life out of me, he 
finally consented to go along and witness my 
foolish attempts. We very soon found a likely 
looking spot. My companion is a comfortable, 
neat, pear-shaped sort of package of a 
person and was soon and easily hid. After con¬ 
siderable planning, I inconspicuously draped my 
legs along the side of a fallen log at such an 
angle to my body that acutely conscious slum¬ 
ber was immediately induced in my feet. Then 
I commenced to drum. I used no apparatus 
except a very little gray matter, a stone com¬ 
fortably fitting my half-closed fist, and the trunk 
of a beech tree about eighteen inches in 
diameter at the stump. With rational pauses 
between each complete performance, I con¬ 
tinued drumming until that tingling paradoxi¬ 
cally active paralysis, miscalled sleep, had 
reached a point between my shoulder blades. I 
hadn’t seen or heard a peep from a bird, but 
fearing a commitment for lunacy and utterly 
discouraged, I struggled to a standing position. 
As I did, I was utterly dumbfounded to see a 
big old cock bird get up not sixty feet from 
us, and fly off straightaway. He was quickly 
covered by the then (Oct. 6) too heavy 
foliage, but neither my companion, who had 
also risen, nor myself seemed to think of shoot¬ 
ing. We simply stood gaping after him in open- 
mouthed wonder, finally uttering in perfect 
unison a prophesy as to our respective futures, 
which, the editor says, is unprintable. This bird 
had approached us from a quarter not within 
the fields of vision of either of us, and had 
he come in closer would in any event un¬ 
doubtedly have discovered us before we could 
have seen him. 
We started to follow up this bird and flushed 
another from a spot about forty feet to the left 
of where the first bird got up, but not very 
much further away from our late hiding place. 
We think this bird, too, was coming in to our 
call. We tried to mark down both birds and 
follow them up, but after considerable thrashing 
around with no results, except high tempera¬ 
ture and frayed tempers, we sought out a 
spring and by it took our late nooning. 
My next attempt was a complete success, so 
far as establishing the fact that the birds will 
respond to a good imitation of the drumming 
is concerned. I had only given two complete 
calls when I heard the real drumming of a 
partridge answering me. This, of course, put 
me on the qui vive. As every one knows who 
has heard it, the distance and direction from 
which the sound comes is very hard to more 
than guess at. To the uninitiated the drum¬ 
ming of a bird only a hundred feet away may 
sound as if he were a quarter of a mile off. In 
this instance, I guessed the distance was about 
a hundred yards or more. I kept on drumming 
with great care and not quite so loud in any of 
the measures as at first, but got no further re¬ 
sponding call. Suddenly I happened to see a 
big cock bird enter the woods from a small 
clearing about seventy-five yards off to the 
right and in front of me. As soon as he was 
hid from me by some brush, I wriggled down 
into a little hollow at my side for better con¬ 
cealment. During his approach and while he 
was again out of sight, I drummed just once 
more. He came on sneaking, almost creeping 
in, not in a straight line, but zigzagging about, 
and at times keeping out of sight so long that 
I would fear that he had seen us and left. He 
dodged in and out behind and from behind 
brush and tree trunks, only occasionally rais¬ 
ing his head and breaking for a few steps into 
a pace that was half strut, half trot. Finally he 
hopped on a fallen log which had some brush 
left on at the top. I had last seen him, as I 
thought, rounding this brush at the top of the 
log and was holding my breath, hoping for an 
open shot at him, when he appeared clear of it 
and well to my left. He completely surprised 
me by doubling on his track and hopping on the 
log near its base and directly in front of me at 
a distance of about forty-five yards. I had with 
me a little 16-gauge gun with 26-inch barrels, 
loaded with No. 8 shot, for which he presented 
a rather long shot through more or less inter¬ 
vening brush and leaves. But as I lay on my 
back in the hollow, with my feet higher than 
my head, I was afraid to give him a chance to 
hop off the log and get out of my sight 
again, and tried to shoot. My awkward attempt 
to get into a shooting position that would 
not hazard blowing off my toes, startled the 
bird, and he began to scuttle—the most descrip¬ 
tive word I can find—half running, and half 
flying along the length of the log, being actually 
in flight as I pressed the trigger. I was plainly 
rattled and over-hurried about the whole thing, 
and in trying to swing the gun on him, did 
not notice a group of three saplings just ahead 
of the bird and between his path and me, stand¬ 
ing in a compact triangle. As a result, these 
saplings were simply plastered with shot, and 
I didn’t get a feather. 
A short distance away I tried it again. 
Within ten minutes another bird came in, and 
my friend shot it at a distance of not more than 
ten or twelve yards. I did not see this bird at 
all until after it was hit, as my friend and I 
were sitting almost back to back, so as to 
cover as much territory as possible from our 
combined viewpoints. Neither of us saw any¬ 
thing of the bird’s approach. My friend tells 
me he happened to see the bird’s head bobbing 
about in front of him as he raised his own 
head in an attempt quietly to shift from a 
position that was rapidly putting his legs to 
sleep. He says he shot while poised unsteadily 
. on one knee, but that, quick as he was, the 
bird was quicker, and was actually in the air 
a foot or two when hit. The bird was not 
killed outright, and my fun for the day was ob 
tained refereeing a sort of potato sack race that 
followed my friend’s snapshot. The air was 
full of man, bird and gun turning cart wheels 
for some time. I started to laugh, but wound 
up shrieking with pain. After so much noise 
and disturbance, it seemed best to go on a con¬ 
siderable distance before drumming again. 
We had hardly got started, however, before 
another bird got up about thirty yards in front 
of me and flew right at me with the gradually 
lising flight of an ideal drive at golf. It is the 
meanest shot on earth for me, but I trusted to 
luck and let drive, barely getting a tail feather 
for my pains. I doubt if I actually shut my 
eyes, but at all events, quite unnoticed by me, 
the bird treed directly over my head. My friend 
could not see me from where he stood and pm 
my head and pet war bonnet in serious danger 
of annihilation by dropping the bird stone dead. 
Oddly enough this bird was a full grown, but 
young, female. But for its sex, I should have 
said it was on its way to offer battle in answer 
to the drumming challenge. 
Later, while separated from my companion, I 
tried drumming, but had given it up dis¬ 
couraged, when my friend parted some bushes 
about forty yards off and called over, “Job, did 
you hear that old drummer down in here?” I 
had some difficulty persuading him that he had 
heard me practicing. When he had been sitting 
right by me he hadn’t seemed to think much 
of my performance. Now he said, “Well, all 
I’ve got to say is that it’s a mighty fine imi¬ 
tation.” Twice on our way in we got answers 
to our calls, but did not see the birds come in 
or hear them go away. I feel quite sure that 
they did come in and that they went away as 
quietly as they came because they had either 
heard or seen us first at some unguarded 
moment. These birds can move very noise¬ 
lessly. It is only when they are startled and 
think you have seen them that they burst off 
into that well-known tumultuous roaring flight. 
I have happened to see them flying without the 
least noise and have often accidentally spied a 
bird gliding away like a ghost through the 
brush at the side of some old wood road. 
Probably hundreds have escaped me in just 
that way. 
READY. 
