The quail (Oreortyx pictus) has one long, sweet whistle, with the peculiarity that it is almost impossible to follow up and find the bird by his note; it sounds so close that you expect the bird is standing on the nearest log, but you look in vain; then it calls you from a hundred yards off, among the brush; again from the other side, and you try to drive him out of the left-hand thicket; but all the while your dog is working in the wood twenty yards ahead. You turn your head just in time to see a dark-brown bird flit like a flash across the road and disappear.
In the shooting-season the quail is one of the hardest birds to kill. They run in front of the dog in the brushwood with the greatest speed, then rise and fly for fifty or a hundred yards like lightning, and then take to their heels again.
In harvest-time the grouse (Tetrao obscurus), here called the partridge, come down from the fir-woods to the grain-fields and give good sport. They frequent the corners of the fields, nearest to the brush, and as the brood rise, ten or a dozen in number, and wing quickly across to shelter in the wood, it reminds one of old times and of partridge-shooting in Norfolk or Suffolk ten years ago.
When the grain is cleared off, the grouse keep to the slips and corners of brush nearest to the field for some weeks. As the season advances, they take to the fir-woods again, and lose their interest to the sportsmen by becoming in the first place almost impossible to find, and next worthless for the table from their turpentine taste. After the grouse have left the harvest-fields and got back into the woods, the shot-gun sportsman must be quick indeed to shoot as the bird rises and makes for the nearest tall fir. There he perches and defies you. The rifle-shot waits till the bird has taken up its place on the bough and peers over to look after the dog; then he shoots and often kills, though the head and neck of a grouse thirty or forty yards off is not a very big mark.
The ruffed grouse (Bonassa Sabinensis), here called the pheasant, is a fourth larger than the common grouse, with beautiful bright-brown plumage, dashed with yellow, and a spreading tail. He frequents the oak-grubs and scattering brush of the foot-hills, and is found all through the less dense portions of the woods of the Coast Range. He gives good sport, rising to the dog and giving a longer flight, and offering the sportsman a fairer chance.
WILD GEESE.As soon as the first half of October has passed by, the cry of the wild-geese is heard far away in the sky, and their V-shaped companies are seen winging their southward course. These first advance-guards do not stay, and scarcely ever descend low enough to tempt even the most sanguine shot. But in a week or so the main army arrives. Following up the general course of the Willamette River, they betake themselves to the sand- and gravel-bars of the river to spend the night, leaving in the early morning for the bare harvest-fields, where, after a vast amount of debate and consideration, and many long, circling flights, they descend to feed. Now every kind of firearms sees the light, and the gun-maker of the town begins to reap his harvest.
As you ride along the country roads in the valley, you see a lurking form behind almost every fence. It is a kind of sport exactly suiting the average Oregonian, who likes his game to come to him, and is great at watching for it.
Following with your eye the line of timber that betokens the river's course, you see six or seven great flocks of geese (Bernicla Canadensis) on the wing at once; some in the far distance, mere specks in the air, others near enough for you to overhear their conversation, which goes on continually. However confused the crowd that rises from the river, it is but a few seconds until order is taken. One flies to the head to guide the band, others take places on either side behind him; regular distances are kept, leaving just enough room for free motion, but no more. Inside the head of the V, and generally on its left side, fly two or three geese in a little independent group. I think it is from these that the officer appears in turn to lead the van.
How many times have I watched their evolutions with delight!—all the keener that the band was coming my way; that the quick, regular beats of the wings had nearly stopped, and the spread pinions showed they were about alighting in the very field under the snake-fence of which I crouched, double-barrel in hand.
The voices grow louder; the conversation and debate is perfectly confusing; they are near enough for you to note the outstretched necks and quick eyes glancing from side to side; the blue-gray colors on the wings, with the black bars, are plain. Waiting till they have passed over, some thirty yards to the right—for it is of no avail to shoot at them coming to you (the thick feathers turn the shot)—here go two barrels at the nearest birds. What a commotion! There is a perfect uproar of voices all declaiming at once, and away they scatter as hard as they can, resuming regular order in a hundred yards, but leaving one poor bird flapping on the ground. My dog runs to pick him up, but can't make out the big bird, and comes inquiringly back to know what on earth I mean by shooting at birds he surely has seen—"Yes, about the home-pond, master—what are you about?"