Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1894 — THE QUAIL AND ITS HUNTERS. [ARTICLE]

THE QUAIL AND ITS HUNTERS.

When America'* National Game Bird It Moat Plentiful. Though the quail is übiquitous, and is everywhere highly prized from both sporting and epicurean points of view, he is at his best in both capacities throughout the Carolioas, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, writes Charles D. Lanier, Harper’s Magazine. There a man has his setters and pointers almostas inevitably as bis kitchen. The boy grows up in proud dreams of the day when he shall be allowed to shoot over the dogs with the men instead of holding the riding-horses for them; ne practices diligently on tia cans tijowg into the air, and, as eye and artn begin to acquire canning, on the “bull bats” that circle around before dusk in the early fall. One’s shooting qualities are offlcialljrguaged by the number of quail one can kilL A good shot will bag half the birds shoots at, and a fair marksman will be content with two or three to every ten empty shells, counting after a full day’s sport. Then there are those rare Qld shots, with, lightojng nerves £ha ey&Z, \vh6, in open and thicket, taking snap-shots that would give the average man scarcely time to raise his gun, will bring down fifteen, or even eighteen or nineteen birds with twenty cartridges. Along the river bottoms and broad Stubblefields of these States the partridges are still so numerous that in favored localities it is no wonderful thing to find during the day twenty or twenty-five coveys of birds, averaging fifteen or more in a covey. But in finding the birds almost all depends cn the dogs. The curlycoated setters and shorter haired, trim-built pointers are about evenly used, the favorite varieties of the former known to the local sportsman being the Gordon, generally marked black, or black and tan; the English, marked white with black, lemon, orange, or liver-colored spots; and the red Irish.

The gun still used for quail, and upland shooting generally, is the 12gauge double-barreled breech-loader. The great manufactories turn these out so cheaply now that they are in the financial reach of everybody, whereas it has been but a score of years since they were rarities, and very costly ones. Some of the more dilettante sportsmen are beginning to use again the smaller gauges, generally of fine English make. Season before last the writer fliot a Scott 16bore hammerless with excellent results, and the lighter weight of gun possible with this small gauge is very grateful on a thirty-mile tramp across country. A five-pound gun can, too, be handled more quickly in snapshots than a nine-pounder. Even in grouse shooting, where the birds are strong and wild, the smaller gun shows no inferiority.