Feb. 25, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
289 
caused, I felt sure, by his throwing his 
ponderous weight against some barrier that he 
could not wriggle through. It was not like him 
t . niake a noise in the cover when he could help 
it- for he knew far better than the rest of us 
h°w ready the ruffed grouse is to take alarm, 
and when once startled by a noise to run for a 
considerable distance and then to rise. A little 
iater, while trying to thread my way noiselessly 
through a very thick clump of brush, I became 
So effectually tied up in some green catbrier 
\ ines, that for a little while I absolutely could 
not move my feet. While I was trying to break 
loose I wholly lost the sound of True’s bell, 
was not nearly so pleasant as the one before 
had been; the sky was overcast and in the breeze 
there was a raw, cold feeling, which at length 
made us rise and start again on our way. The 
going under foot was smooth and easy, but it was 
a long slow climb to the top of the hill where 
we purposed to work out some corn lots, and 
passing through some cedar pastures to take 
the high wood where we expected to find the 
partridges. 
The corn lots yielded nothing, though from 
the way in which the dogs acted, we all thought 
that birds had been there early in the morning. 
Just after crossing into the cedar lot, however, 
Why not send them all in,” he said. "It's 
more fun to see something like what we saw 
yesterday afternoon than it would be to kill a 
dozen birds. Let them all go and see what they 
make out of it.” 
And truly it was a pretty sight to see these 
differently colored dogs crossing back and forth 
through the feathery yellow grass among the 
dark green cedars. But we had not long to con¬ 
sider it. Suddenly Rex stiffened on a point and 
was backed by the two old dogs; the puppy, 
which did not see them, continuing his gay career 
until a sharp whistle from Joe made him look 
around, when he, too, backed a long way off. 
WAITING FOR THE RISE. 
and by the time I had freed myself and started 
011,1 met the do & returning and looking at me 
with reproachful eyes. I have always believed 
that he had been standing on a woodcock some- 
"here, and that the bird had risen while I was 
getting out of my difficulties. 
Before we got to the edge of the swamp, Joe 
shot once more and my brother fired again, and 
when we came out of the bushes and turned to 
the right to climb the hill and take the ridge 
where we were going to look for partridges, we 
all came together, and sat down under a stone 
"all to smoke a pipe and talk it over. It then 
appeared that my brother had killed two par¬ 
tridges and a woodcock; Joe one partridge, while 
1 had got the partridge and woodcock just 
spoken of. It was now nearly noon, but cer¬ 
tainly four partridges, two woodcock and two 
snipe made a pretty fair bag for the morning, 
the labor ot wallowing through the swamp had 
>een more or less severe, and we were all glad 
to sit here for a half hour and rest. The day 
the puppy pointed a bevy of quail, which flushed 
off to one side, almost at the instant when he 
stopped. No one got a shot, and we watched 
them carefully to see where they would go 
down. It was a good bevy of a dozen or fifteen 
big birds, and they seemed to drop in the long 
bent grass at the further edge of the cedar lot. 
how, said Joe, ‘‘unless I’m much mistaken 
we are going to have some good shooting out of 
that bunch of birds. I don’t know as we’ll see 
anything as pretty as we saw yesterday, and I 
don t know as we will. Anyhow, we can go 
up there with the dogs, and if they don’t find 
the birds it looks as if we ought to be able to 
walk them up ourselves.” 
Keeping the dogs in pretty c’ose, we walked 
forward and soon were very near where the 
birds had seemed to go down. I suggested to 
Joe that perhaps it would be better if we kept 
back three of the dogs, sending in only one to 
look for the birds, but he sniffed contemptuously 
at the suggestion. 
“Step forward and take him,” said Joe, ad¬ 
dressing me, and I advanced, but just after I 
had passed a little cedar I heard two birds get 
up behind me and a moment later a single shot 
rang out. Going on to Rex I flushed the bird, 
which flew sharp to the right, and as my right 
barrel sounded, another bird rose just behind 
me, and flying back was killed by my brother. 
We spent fully an hour working on this piece 
of open land, and in that time killed in all seven 
quail. A number of the young males, though 
full grown and apparently as heavy as the adults, 
still had the buff throat and cheek patches, 
though the black feathers of the heads were 
strongly marked. No doubt a more careful and 
patient search would have given us half a dozen 
more birds, but it hardly seemed worth while 
to take any more from this bevy. When we 
determined to stop, we walked over toward the 
edge of the woods, and sitting down in a shel¬ 
tered place, hungrily devoured the lunch that 
Mrs. Warner had prepared for us that morning. 
