FOREST AND STREAM 
83 
February, 1918 
• 
mvriads of duck which flew over a certain 
range every night just after sundown. I 
sent my telegram off at once, and three 
days later Cummings, the veteran of many 
trails, came to join me there. 
W E were 'up long before dawn, anfl 
our rising bell was a huge negro 
banging on a worn out buzz saw, 
for we were in a turpentine and log camp. 
Then, after a leisurely and good breakfast, 
we started out with the three dogs, Robin 
Hood, Lem, and Lee, the first of them a 
liver-and-white pointer; the second an 
orange-and-white setter, and the third, Lee, 
a Belding — three 
fine dogs indeed. 
Through the dawn 
we walked, with 
the redbirds sing¬ 
ing, with a thou¬ 
sand field and for¬ 
est voices heard 
up north only in 
Summer. Along 
the edge of the 
prairie we 
tramped, and soon 
the fun com¬ 
menced. Lem 
pointed, Lee 
backed, and Robin, 
ranging far off 
hunted on. We 
were in our first 
covey of quail. 
Slowly the dogs 
crept up till right 
in a palmetto 
thicket they came 
to a quivering 
stand, while we 
walked slowly 
through them, nerves tingling, guns ready 
for the rise of the first bird. But there 
was not any first. They rose in twos and 
threes, whir-r-r, whir-r-r-r!—Oh, you 
know the music of it—and “Pow” went 
Cumming’s gun, then “Bang,” again. Of 
course I did not wait to see what he had, 
for just then up rose mine, right beneath 
my feet and there came my first doubles 
on quail, “Bang,-bang!” just like that. 
One half minute of the hunter’s supreme 
joy, and the dogs sent in—“Fetch Dead.” 
. . . Nosing among the palmettoes Lem 
came in with one. . . . Then another, and 
Lee with another. We had three to bag 
sure enough, and the covey marked down. 
Now here is a point the Veteran gave 
me: Don’t rush right after your covey. 
They‘drop and squat—a dog cannot lo¬ 
cate them until they begin to move about 
a bit. So the thing to do is, light your 
pipe, sit down a bit, and then go on for 
the next event. Which we did, as per 
schedule. 
And while we sat smoking beneath the 
palms, with the buzzards wheeling over¬ 
head in the blue sky, and the dogs held in 
at our knees, we discussed the first event. 
We had two cocks and a hen, the veteran 
pointing out that the cock quail has white 
where the hen has yellow. Also we dis¬ 
cussed the confusing rise of a covey of 
quail. In spite of the fact that we had 
sworn to keep cool, that thundering whirr 
of the covey made our nerves jump; and 
the criss-crossing of the birds, some this 
way, some that, made us aim at one, only 
to see what appeared a better shot, and 
end by getting the worst of all. We laid 
plans for the next rise—shoot quickly at 
the first shot, but make sure of him, then 
if there is another in sight try for him. 
Do not be anxious to make doubles, make 
sure of one, then take another if you can. 
So, feeling fully prepared this time, we 
sent the dogs on. They took up the trail 
in a clump of palmettoes, roading care¬ 
fully. From the palmettos the dogs 
trailed through a marshy tract. Those 
birds were running ahead of the dogs. It 
was pretty work on the part of Lem and 
Lee, but the birds never stopped. Creep¬ 
ing between the dogs as they roaded, we 
came to thickets of tall bushes, and here, 
from time to time, a bird would flush, fly 
for twenty feet or so, and land again, all 
so swiftly and all so under cover that 
never a shot could we get. 
So I went ahead while Cummings fol¬ 
lowed them with the dogs. But the birds 
never came through. Just as soon as the 
bush thinned out, the quail turned, till at 
last, despairing of ever getting them up 
in this swamp and scrub, we w T ent on. 
Here was a factor we had not counted 
on—the hiding and running ability of Bob 
White in these Florida sw T amps. 
There seemed to be plenty of birds, for 
we had not gone more than five hundred 
yards along the edge of the prairie before 
the dogs pointed again. And this time, 
we got betwen the birds and the thickets 
lining the swamps, the idea being to drive 
the covey toward open country when they 
flushed. But again, Bob White had a card 
up his sleeve, for, as we stepped ahead of 
the dogs, up got the covey with a whirr 
and scurry, like an explosion of shrapnel. 
And they went in all directions. Alas for 
nicely laid plans! We shot two barrels 
each and got one bird. Let me tell you 
about that one bird,—and here I want it 
understood, I w'rite the exact and accurate 
truth, w'ith the desire to see if any of you 
old veterans who read this may have had 
a similar experience. 
I SAY the covey got up and we fired, 
Cummings first, and next, myself. 
Both those first shots were misses as 
far as we could see, but a few steps on 
ihe dogs pointed again, and up got a sin¬ 
gle bird. I shot and Cummings shot al 
most together. The bird went down in an 
open space, a little plot of thin, dried grass 
among some sparse pines. There was ab¬ 
solutely no doubt about it. The feathers 
flew, and we saw t he bird strike the 
ground. 
Taking our time we sent the dogs on 
to retrieve. Lee went in, picked up the 
bird, which was wounded, and which flut¬ 
tered out of Lee’s mouth. She immediate¬ 
ly picked it up again, and again it flut¬ 
tered out. For the third time she took it 
in her mouth, only to have it go again. 
Each time the bird 
fluttered perhaps 
two feet before 
the dog got it 
again, the n- 
THAT BIRD 
JUST DISAP¬ 
PEARED! 
I say, that quail 
disappeared. That 
is the only way 1 
can describe it. 
Lee quested 
around and could 
not find it again. 
Lem sniffed over 
every foot of the 
place and could 
not get the bird. 
And both those 
dogs were good 
retrievers. 
Now do not 
get the idea that 
here was a hole or 
a thicket. You 
could put an 
orange down any¬ 
where in that little grass plot, and. see it a 
hundred feet away. You could see the 
feathers scattered where the bird fluttered. 
Also, the Veteran and I went over every 
foot of the ground carefully. We took 
forked sticks and raked over the whole 
plot. Then, thoroughly interested, we di¬ 
vided the plot off in sections with a rope, 
moving the rope as we exhausted every 
foot between the segments of it. And still 
no quail! Then Cummings suggested that 
we call off the dogs and go away, to give 
the bird a chance to move and let out 
scent. So we filled a pipe, smoked it, and 
searched again, with no results. 
“You go off and hunt awhile in sight.” 
said I, “and then when I call you, come 
back.” Which Cummings did, I mean¬ 
while eating oranges and resting within 
twenty-five feet of where I felt sure the 
bird was. It was more than half an hour 
before I called the Veteran, and when he 
came up, he held in his dog and I mine for 
a time. Then we sent Lem in to “Fetch 
Dead.” He went right along, picked up 
the bird and brought it to us—a thorough¬ 
ly live bird only slightly wounded. Now 
how do you explain that? When I tell 
you that for over an hour two men and 
two dogs combed a spot of grass about 
twenty by forty feet—thin grass which 
could not hide a shoe or an orange—and 
never found that bird we knew was there,, 
and proved was there by finding it as 
stated above, I tell the simple fact. How 
do you explain it? For that matter, we 
had dogs that will road a single quail or 
(continued on page i 15) 
Slowly the dogs crept up and came to a quivering stand 
