The Way of the Wild (Hawkes)/Ruff

The old drumming log near which Ruff was hatched was down in the pasture behind the old farmhouse where I lived as a boy. It was about half a mile from the house, but on clear spring mornings when the wind was right I often heard the old cock partridge drumming. The sound that this wary bird makes is so loud that one can hear it a long ways off.
I presume my young reader may not know what it is that the cock partridge does when he drums, so I will tell him. Perhaps he has thought that he had a real drum on which he whacked, but that is not the case. In the early spring at mating time the cock partridge finds an old fallen log, one that is clear from brush and moss, and he calls this his own particular drumming log, and woe to any other cock partridge who might try to drum on it.
​Ruff's father first began drumming about the middle of April. This was to call a mate. When the lady partridge hears a cock drumming she knows that he is calling in partridge language for her to come to him and be his mate.
The cock partridge often has to drum for several days before he gets his mate, for the lady partridges are coquettish and have to be wooed just like the rest of the sex. When the cock

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