ther section of the country known to one of our party, and
fell in with some mountain pigeons, and in a couple of hours managed to
kill sixty-eight of them. Talk about shooting! Oh, Mama! How those
pigeons could fly! And pack away lead! No bird I ever saw could equal
them in that particular.

Even at close range, a well-centered bird would, when hard hit, pull
himself together as his feathers flew in the breeze, and sail away out
into some mountain side, quite out of reach of the hunter, undoubtedly
to die and furnish food for the buzzards or coyotes. We had to take
awful chances as to distance in order to kill any of them.

While looking for a dead pigeon that fell off towards the bottom of a
wooded bluff in some thick bunches of chapparal, I heard the quick boof!
boof! of the hoofs of a bounding deer. I did not see that animal. An
instant later, in rounding a heavy growth of bushes, I saw a magnificent
buck grazing on the tender growth. He stood just the fraction of a
second with the young twig of the bush in his mouth, looking at me with
his great luminous eyes, and then he made a jump or two out of sight.
Strange that these two animals had not fled at the sound of our guns.

A game warden hailed us and insisted on seeing all our hunting licenses
and on counting our ducks. This privilege, under the law, we could have
denied him, but we were a little proud of the birds we had, and as we
were well within the number we could have killed, we made no objection
to his doing so.

As a result of its speedy run the day before, the runabout had for some
little time been running on a rim. We left its occupants, who disdained
our help, putting on a new tire. After a beautiful run we again reached
the Newport place, where we lunched. The car did not appear. We hated to
go away and leave them, as we thought they might be in difficulty. We
telephoned to Temecula and found they had passed that point. About two
hours after our arrival they came whirling in. They had had more tire
trouble. They took a hasty lunch, and we all started together.

We made the home run without incident. Spread out in one body our game
made a most imposing appearance. Besides the 118 ducks there were 50
jacksnipe and 68 fine large wild pigeons.

Such days make us regret that we are growing old. They rejuvenate us
--make us boys again.

Boyhood Days in Early California

My boyhood days, from the time I was five until I was fifteen years of
age,