ens of jack-rabbits, we turned to the 
heavy cover at the right of the valley. 
After shogging around through a lot of 
thick cover we were approaching a 
sparsely grown patch of weeds and 
brush when out burst at least one hun- 
dred quail about sixty yards distant. 
Six shots followed instantly, all aimed 
above them. The flock scattered, a 
large number of the birds alighting 
about three hundred yards away in 
heavy cover. 
WE ran as rapidly as possible to the 
spot, flushed about forty birds, 
fired six more shots over them as they 
rose, and followed them up a little draw 
where we raised some fifteen or twenty 
quail, which we saluted with a salvo 
of half a dozen additional shots. Up 
to this time, we had not attempted to 
kill any quail. This following them 
up and scattering them by continuous 
shooting, makes them lie close and 
keeps them from running in a drove to- 
gether. We were tolerably “well winded” 
after our runs over the broken ground 
and hard going, and sat down to rest 
for a little while before starting in to 
do real shooting. 
Then we got up, divided our forces, 
and began to kick up the scattered 
quail. They lay very close, some at 
the edges of a small arroyo, or dry 
creek bed that wound in and out of the 
canyon, others at the side of thickets 
near the low brush, and some deep in 
‘the densest cover. It was next to im- 
possible to get doubles, as we had no 
dog, and in such brush you would be al- 
most certain to lose one, if not both birds 
of a double, without a retriever. The 
only safe way was to shoot single birds, 
retrieving each bird as soon as shot. 
Winged birds counted as lost birds un- 
less you could get in a second barrel 
on them. Dead birds are most surely 
picked up by running quickly to the 
spot where they have fallen, putting at 
this point a white handkerchief, then 
walking about twenty feet from the 
place where the quail has apparently 
dropped and putting another handker- 
chief on a weed. Then, by working be- 
tween the handkerchiefs, and to one 
side and the other of the line between 
them, and keeping a sharp lookout for 
feather-signs almost no dead birds will 
be lost, even without a dog. 
[X shooting without a dog, very few 
birds will be winged if care is taken 
to have the quail well in sight before 
firing, and you avoid taking+!ong shots. 
All sorts of chances can be taken when 
you have a good retriever, but when 
you are minus a dog, it is very much 
more satisfactory to shoot carefully 
and keep from losing birds. The un- 
evenness of the ground makes foot-hill 
Page 21 

quail-shooting very deceptive. Quite a 
few shots are missed clean by reason 
of the birds darting over declivities and 
tall brush, or by curving around cor- 
ners of the hills, or by diving from the 
branches of scrub oaks where they have 
been hiding. If anything, the Valley 
quail is a bit swifter than “Bob White,” 
and they are somewhat smaller. The 
cock birds have a white throat, and 
both male and female birds have a 
perky little top-knot. The distinguish- 
ing call sounds like “po-ta-to, po-ta-to, 
po-ta-to.” 
E worked about very slowly in the 
dense cover, kicking some of the 
birds out almost at our feet. I got one 
run of four birds straight, and fol- 
lowed this with a pair of inexcusable 
misses. Ed and Walter had located a 
cluster of scattered birds close at the 
edges of some scrub oaks fringing the 
foot-hills, and their guns were crack- 
ing at irregular intervals. Bruce, “the 
kid,” discovered a quail in an oak tree 
and I let him have my gun. He re- 
turned a little later with the bird, al- 
though he said the gun had “kicked 
him cruel.” 
After we had worked the brush and 
the first slope around the foot-hills, we 
began a climb of the higher elevations 
to root the quail out of the occasional 
clumps of cover on the upper eleva- 
tions. Here, the shooting was more dif- 
ficult, as the angles were more puz- 
zling, and often the shooting was true 
The kid and a bird 
snap-shooting, as we only saw the birds 
for a moment. 
UT the ground was barer, and we 
found our dead birds much quicker 
than in the brush. To indicate how 
arduous the work is, and the length be- 
tween shots, it took us close to five 
o’clock in the afternoon to get our limit 
of fifteen birds apiece. We flushed one 
very large, and one medium-sized bevy 
during our hunt,after the first big flock, 
besides scores of jack-rabbits and cot- 
ton-tails. All told, I should judge we 
saw not less than two hundred and 
twenty-five quail. 
While valley quail-shooting is strenu- 
ous sport, it is thoroughly good shoot- 
ing, but a dependable retriever makes 
it infinitely more enjoyable. In some 
of the southern California counties 
where the country is not so rough, and 
where the brush and cover is lower, 
unusually fine shooting is had over 
dogs, after scattering the quail so that 
they will lie close and permit of points 
being made like those in “Bob White” 
shooting. When this occurs, the dogs 
can go in and make point after point 
and retrieve the dead birds the same as 
in the Eastern, Western, and Southern 
States in “Bob White” quail shooting. 
The season for valley quail in Cal- 
ifornia is from November 1st to De- 
cember 1st, with a daily limit of 15 
birds, weekly limit of 30 birds, thus 
limiting the shooting to each hunter to 
(Continued on page 56) 
