Types of upland gun dogs vary with the game sought and ter rain to be covered both by dog and hunter. In heavily bushed and wooded grouse and partridge coverts the dog required is a strong, keen-nosed individual of somewhat restricted range as com pared to the needs for freer upland casting. Handling such birds is a distinct phase of gunnery both for dog and master, the supreme importance of stance and signal in thick cover being obvious in sizing up limited space and opportunity for enforced quick-point ing and snap-shooting. Good individuals on grouse or quail would doubtless find their ,respective abilities badly at sea were they to exchange territories abruptly. The pheasant, an imported upland propagation that has made great strides in the United States and now occupies a very definite place in gun dog usage and upland searching, requires a highly specialized apprenticeship for the bird dog. Having winded and engaged in handling a pheasant, the dog usually advances in swift, broken spurts of trailing. Trailed to the end of cover or having twisted and doubled through every advantageous bit of leeway, the cock pheasant flushes with a muffled cackle. The quail dog, having located his game, points it staunchly, and quail, as a rule, lie steadily until flushed. Accus tomed, however, to trailing a moving bevy of quail, the upland dog, when in contact either with a pheasant or Hungarian par tridge, soon learns to take care of them in a workman-like manner.
In quail shooting the gun has but to flush promptly and steadily and shoot, but with pheasants the trail and uncertainty of flush makes the rise quite a different proposition. In early chicken
shooting on the prairies the birds, handled by wide ranging quail finders, do not present the distance rises of the later season, nor do they run as promptly or to such distances.
The typical quail dog, setter or pointer, should possess above all else, regardless of speed and range, a good nose and bird-sense. As a general rule in bird dog calculation, the pointer learns more readily, and is therefore generally more easily broken and inclined to specific brilliancy. The setter is rather slow in learning but improves steadily with development. There is also a more or less generally accepted theory that the setter is more useful in a briar tangle country, but liable, on the other hand, to suffer from burr-chafing. The pointer has a more decided aversion to cold than the setter with his longer protective hair. In recent years pointers have enjoyed a supremacy over setters at field trials. This is thought by some to indicate that perhaps the setter strains have been bred a bit too high and too much toward high speed, resulting in a tendency to racial nervousness. The true quail hunter, however, finds his most suitable and sought-after dog type in the apparently tireless companion who joys in finding birds, holding them staunchly and steadily under fire, and retrieving fallen quarry from land or water.
In the south, quail are more often hunted from horseback, per mitting a much wider scope of travel for bird finding in wider casts and better mutual observation by gunners and dogs. Singles are better watched, too, from such vantage point. Following the find or "point" of a bevy of quail, the gunners alight, hitch their mounts and fire. After the bevy rise, the singles or scattered birds are hunted on foot. This phase of quail hunting has developed appreciation for the close-searching, quick-scenting, staunch single bird dog, as opposed to the wide-casting covey finder. It is usually as a result of careful work by the single-bird dog that a satisfactory bag is accumulated. If, in addition, such a dog is a skilled retriever, his value is greatly enhanced. Many crippled birds falling into briar tangles and log strewn swamps and vines would otherwise escape the diligent agent who follows their wind ing scent through inaccessible places and returns them often alive and almost unruffled to the hunter.