
















for any of the 
jivers reasons I 
find I am or must 
se without one I 
still vote for 
qwnting anyway 
regardless, since 
{ must still fare 
afield. 
LU» Tot 
lost, not by 
token, a short 
me for the mat- 
ter of that. But 
it may be said 
that to fare forth 
alone with pipe 
and gun for good 
zompanions, or 
mayhap a part- 
ner tried and 
playing 
your own dog in 
finding and retrieving the game and 
Jepending solely on one’s own knowl- 
adge of nemoral science and skill in 
zuncraft to bring down each day’s and 
season’s allotment is a horse of quite 
mother color. For, just as it is rated 
4 greater test of skill to down the 
whitetail buck without dogs, so is it a 
iner feat of arms and woodcraft quiet- 
y to stalk and circumvent this smart- 
»st bird that flies, for the ruffed grouse 
schools the wing-shot as severely as the 
wily trout tries the angler. 
a ruffed grouse is a pleasing illus- 
tration of the old adage that “Na- 
ure takes care of her own.” If you, 
ny reader, have traveled the vast for- 
sst stretches of the North, you will re- 
‘all how tame and unafraid this bird 
‘an be where man intrudes but little. 
dere he will vie with the Spruce par- 
tapitate a few for the pot or, mayhap 
‘et Jules the guide slip a hair noose 
leftly over his head at the end of your 
split bamboo. Yet what a change in 
his bird when we seek him in the set- 
Jed sections where wing-shots most do 
songregate. Our problem then becomes 
yne of catching an instant’s glimpse of 
iim tearing through space and cover, 
sufficient to start the flying lead in his 
general direction that may, and yet 
again very probably may not, bring 
lim to hand. In common with the black 
duck and blacker crow he knows his 
umber and has kept pace with civili- 
tation. 


\ JERY few sports can bear compari- 
’ son with grouse shooting. For in 
prays that are dark and tricks that are 
vain the ruffed grouse is the feathered 
ia 

ridge in posing stupidly while you de-- 
fox of the air. In all the world there 
is no bird quite like him. In him we 
have at once a bird apart and without 
equal in the whole realm of feathered 
game, as a difficult mark for the gun 
and possessed of uncanny ability in 
eluding it. 
HE arts, while they may be rooted 
in theory, grow and develop only 
by practice and still-hunting the ruffed 
grouse, most admittedly an art by those 
proficient in it, as is wing shooting 
itself, is no exception. Still-hunting, 
as a term applied to the pursuit and 
capture of this bird, is no misnomer, 
but all that the term implies. Indeed, 
if ever silence be golden it is to the 
scouting partridge hunter and it should 
always be practiced as his cardinal vir- 
tue. The great aim and object is to 
be within range of your bird when the 
rise comes and nothing works to de- 
feat this oftener than noisy progress 
through the cover, or, if accomplished 
by other guns, talking or whistling to 
companions. 
OISE in their immediate surround- 
ings is always disturbing and 
alarming to all wild things, and to the 
educated grouse, in particular, in hard 
hunted territory, the sound of the hu- 
man voice seems to be anathema itself, 
with perhaps quite good reason enough. 
But as the saying goes, “it can be 
done.” With a little application of the 
time-honored three P’s—practice, pa- 
tience plus perseverance, the wisest of 
these feathered .aces can be circum- 
vented and outwitted and sent tumbling 
to the gun, but the first thing to prac- 
tice is quite absolute noiselessness in 
as near as possible. 

There is always a last time for the craftiest of old cocks when you out-guess the final ruse in 
his bag of tricks. 
Of course fewer straight runs are 
made upon grouse and more shells are 
expended per bird to bag him than 
are averaged by any other game that 
flies. For he is a child of wooded hill- 
side, tangled thicket and forested 
ravine, haunting the most romantic of 
scenery and by the same token the most 
difficult in which to wield the gun. And 
nature seems to have endowed him 
with a certain fulness of untamed life 
quivering always in every fibre of his 
being. 
NE should learn to work fast with 
the gun and on the trigger and 
cultivate a supersensitiveness of hand 
and eye, for if anything exists in ani- 
mated creation slightly faster than 
thought itself, or that demands the 
shooter be galvanized into most instant 
action, it is a rpffed grouse as he de- 
parts from your vicinity for what he 
considers a healthier location. 
Because of the many natural haz- 
ards that constantly crop up to defeat 
the shooter, still-hunting the ruffed 
grouse is perhaps of all game-bird 
shooting the sportiest, the most arduous 
and the most exciting. It is at once 
a school that develops in its pupils the 
qualities of fortitude, hardihood and 
woodcraft. One must be alert at and 
for, the slightest sound of the first 
wing stroke, for your bird is itself a 
synonym for wildness. You match 
their vigilance with your caution, their 
wariness with your adroitness. 
OU learn to bear ill luck with 
equanimity and pluck from disap- 
pointment the fruit of experience. To 
persevere with the pertinacity of the 
sleuth hound and the patience of the 
519 
