An ash twig, two or three inches long, 
had been driven into its breast muscles. 
The stick had entered from the right 
and had evidently been there for some 
time; long enough, at last, to allow it 
to become encysted. 
HE bird showed no evidence that 
the presence of this formidable 
skewer had caused it any embarrass- 
ment, but it did seem certain that here, 
at last, I had a victim of reckless driv- 
ing. Plenty of grouse and woodcock 
come to grief each year against win- 
dow glass, telephone wires and such 
like artificial hazards, but I had never 
seen either of the two hit any natural 
object hard enough to hurt. Picking 
up the bird’s head I discovered that it 
was blind in the right eye—and the 
mystery of the collision with the ash 
was explained. 
Two bird hunters with whom the 
writer is acquainted were hunting a 
particularly fruitful bit of cover when 
a grouse got up at the feet of one of 
the pair and flew straight at the head 
of his companion, who was standing 
fifteen or twenty yards away. The 
bird evidently mistook the motionless 
figure for the outlines of a stump. Of 
course, neither hunter could. fire with- 
out grave danger of plastering his 
comrade. As the bird swerved in or- 
der to pass the supposed stump, the 
hunter, acting on some impulse, sud- 
denly thrust out his hand—and actu- 
ally caught the bird in his grasp! 
There is a similar story, pretty well 
vouched for at the time, of an English 
cricketer who reached for a ball and 
fielded ‘a live swallow, but he would 
need to yield his honors to the man 
who picked an able-bodied grouse out 
of the air! 
Anything may happen to the man 
who follows this surprising bird far 
enough. One shooter, not so fortu- 
nately preserved by Lady Luck as the 
gentlemen in the above incidents, thrust 
his hand and arm down a rabbit bur- 
row after a wounded bird which had 
sought refuge there. He was promptly 
stung by a rattlesnake, which hap- 
pened to be a testy tenant of the same 
sanctuary. The hunter recovered from 
the bite, but has been chary ever since 
of shoving any of his members down 
holes in the ground. 
A GOOD grouse shot is one of the 
fastest gun handlers in the world. 
He is not necessarily the most accur- 
ate, but, in him, nervous impulse and 
muscular reaction are honed down to 
the razor edge of a lightweight boxing 
champion. He rarely has an oppor- 
tunity to “swing onto his bird” as the 
duck shot does. His shooting is nearly 
all of the spectacular “snap” variety, 
and a lot of embarrassment results if 
he gets into a duck blind, and much 
more when the duck shot tries for the 
first time to duplicate the partridge 
shooter’s performance. The trouble is 
that the snapshot, watching the ducks 
circle and dip preparatory to dropping 
into the decoys, finds himself with more 
time on his hands than he knows what 
to do with. 
E has been trained to shoot the 
instant he locates his game and 
has, in consequence, established a 
certain “time” from which he finds it 
very difficult and sometimes impossible 
to depart. The duck hunter, on the 
contrary, while one of the most fault- 
less performers in the scattergun line, 
cannot give over his swing and feels 
lost when he is compelled to shoot with- 
out it. 
The writer shot one autumn in com- 
pany with an army officer who had 
spent the greater part of his service 
in the Southwest. He loved the shot- 
gun and was, in consequence of a for- 
tunate mating between environment 
and hobby, a star performer at both 
duck and quail. He had never met the 
ruffed grouse and was extremely anx- 
ious to have the pleasure. It was my 
fortune to manage the introduction. 
The Colonel arrived in New England 
‘just before the season opened, and we 

Photo courtesy D. R. Dedman 
Springer spaniels, ideal for grouse in heavy cover, 
655 
