Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1884 — Hunting with Belled Dogs. [ARTICLE]

Hunting with Belled Dogs.

I hunted with an Englishman, in Michigan, once, who put bells on his dogs when he went woodcock-hunting; when the dogs got into thick covert, he could trace their course by the sound of the bells, and whenever the tinkling ceased, he knew they were pointing birds. He told me that one day he went out to a woodcock covert with a belled dog, and after following the sound back and forth and around and around m the tangled growth, suddenly the tinkling ceased. Very much pleased, he went to the spot expecting to flush a bird, but he could find neither his dog nor any woodcock. Long and patiently he tramped about the spot, to no purpose. Then he called his dog; it did not come. Here was a mystery. Could it be possible that his dog had fallen dead in some dense clump of the covert ? He called until he was hoarse, and finally went Lack to camp, tired and mystified. And there lay his dog at the tent door, dozing in the sun. It had lost the bell!— Maurice Thompson, in St. Nich oTas.