BIOLOGY 
 LIBRARY 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 A BOOK OF THE WOODS, FIELDS 
 AND MARSHLANDS 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST McGAFFEY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK ::::::::::::::::: 1907 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published, April, 1907 
 
 BIOLOGY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
H)4- 
 
 BIOLOGY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 TO 
 JOHN F. SMULSKI 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
NOTE 
 
 For permission to republish thirty of the within 
 sketches, the author is indebted to the kindness of 
 Victor F. Lawson of the Chicago Record ; for 
 permission as to the other two, to the courtesy of 
 William Marion Reedy of the St. Louis Mirror 
 and S. T. Clover of the Chicago Evening Post. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MARSHES IN APRIL ...... . . r 
 
 PLOVER SHOOTING 10 
 
 THE MELANCHOLY CRANE . * ..... 19 
 FISHING FOR BIG-MOUTH BASS . . . . . 26 
 
 FLIGHT OF COMMON BIRDS . . 34 
 
 FISHING FOR CRAPPIE ... . ';'. . . . 43 
 IN THE HAUNTS OF THE LOON . . . . . 51 
 BLUEBILLS AND DECOYS . . . ... . . 60 
 
 WALKING AS AN ART * . . 69 
 
 FISHING FOR "BULL-HEADS" . . ... . . 77 
 
 ALONG A COUNTRY ROAD . . . . . . . 86 
 
 WOODCOCK SHOOTING 95 
 
 UNDER A GREENWOOD-TREE 103 
 
 PAN-FISHING in 
 
 A NORTHERN NIGHTINGALE 120 
 
 SQUIRREL SHOOTING 128 
 
 DOWN THE ST. JOE RIVER 136 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BROOK-TROUT FISHING 144 
 
 A MASQUE OF THE SEASONS 153 
 
 WOODCHUCKS 162 
 
 FROG-HUNTING 171 
 
 THE CROW'S WING . . . . * . . . .179 
 PRAIRIE-CHICKEN SHOOTING ....;.. * . . 187 
 A Fox IN THE MERAMEC VALLEY . . . .195 
 
 FALL JACK-SNIPE SHOOTING 204 
 
 IN DIM OCTOBER . ........ .213 
 
 RUFFED GROUSE 222 
 
 IN PRAIRIE LANDS 231 
 
 HUNTING WITH FERRETS ....... 239 
 
 THE BARE, BROWN FIELDS 247 
 
 QUAIL SHOOTING 255 
 
 IN WINTER WOODS 263 
 
 vin 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
THE MARSHES IN APRIL 
 
 THE marshes in April begin to show 
 a livelier green, and to deck their 
 edges with various bright colors. 
 Nearly every trace of winter has been blotted 
 out. The dead sedge is hidden by sheets of 
 emerald grass, and only in some out-of-the- 
 way corners is there a hint of the ravages 
 which mark the path of the months gone by. 
 In these nooks one may find a clump of faded 
 cat-tails, their stalks broken or bent, their 
 rusty brown heads flaking off and scattering 
 as the winds go over. Violets spring up on 
 the outer skirts of the swampy spots, together 
 with little starry flowers of white and yellow, 
 hardly noticeable to the careless comer. Bul- 
 rushes rise in olive-green masses, their grace- 
 ful tips tilting to the silent waters. Willows, 
 stunted and sparse, stand here and there, 
 the furry " catkins " of March having been 
 superseded by the more mature buddings. 
 The distant timber-lines are still black, but 
 I 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 soon will lighten with countless hosts of shim- 
 mering leaves. The rushes and canes, the 
 wild-rice and tawny marsh-grass, brood over a 
 waste of dreaming pools and lonely stretches. 
 
 Musk-rat houses dot the shallower por- 
 tions of the marsh, dusky heaps of rushes, 
 piled high by the industry of these cunning 
 water-rats. In many places the water is am- 
 ber-hued, darkened by slivers of decaying 
 reeds and shadowed by the overhanging 
 cover. In some niches it holds the sunlight 
 as a goblet holds wine, with sparkles at the 
 rim, and beaded bubbles welling up to break 
 upon the surface. All this marks the silences 
 of the marsh, the ineffable sadness tinged with 
 a yearning joy as a nun's face might light 
 with a smile at sight of a sleeping child. 
 
 The weather-beaten lines of an old skiff, 
 deserted and rotting, lie in one of the coves, 
 and beside it a school of tadpoles wriggle in 
 inky density. On the boat's bow a solitary 
 mud-turtle dozes in the sun, his black and 
 yellow markings proclaiming his ancient and 
 honorable race. Myriads of glistening wa- 
 ter-bugs dart back and forth over the water, 
 weaving a maze of invisible lines across its 
 
 2 
 
THE MARSHES IN APRIL 
 
 glassy floor. Marsh-spiders stretch silky 
 threads, filmy with dew, from reed to reed, 
 and this tether sways in silvery lightness with 
 every wandering gust. The little black rails 
 dodge in and out of the rushes, their rapid, 
 noiseless movements giving only a hint of 
 their passing. Further inshore, where the 
 denser growth tangles into a brake, the hol- 
 low, guttural cry of a bittern comes mourn- 
 fully out at intervals. 
 
 Sometimes a red-winged blackbird perches 
 on a cat-tail stalk, and sends out a joyous 
 whistle of the most care-free abandon. Some- 
 times the cow-blackbirds fly over in long 
 flocks, without a sound. And at odd times 
 the crow-blackbirds, the red-wings and the 
 cow-birds sweep across in a scattered mass, 
 chattering and clacking, to spread suddenly in 
 irregularly fan-shaped curves, and light when 
 they reach the trees beyond. Occasionally a 
 journeying " flicker " is seen flying from 
 one point of woods to another across the 
 marshes. His strong wings flail the atmos- 
 phere with regular strokes, his curving flight, 
 with its up-and-down dips, soon covers the 
 distance between, and perched on a topmost 
 
 3 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 branch of some oak or hickory he poses statue- 
 like, a bright fleck in the sunlight. 
 
 Marsh-hawks, or u harriers," their broad 
 wings tacking here and there, sail warily about 
 these wildernesses. They are great hunters of 
 mice and such small deer, and the plover, 
 snipe, rail, and other birds are their lawful 
 prey. And woe to the wounded duck that 
 has escaped the hunters when this freebooter 
 discovers his whereabouts. There is a poise, a 
 dart, a finishing of what man commenced, and 
 only scattered feathers to tell the story. If 
 you push a duck-boat into the more remote 
 fens you may be rewarded by seeing a brace 
 of belated mallards rise from the bogs, their 
 long necks reaching out, and usually a startled 
 " quack, quack, quack " issuing from their 
 opened bills. 
 
 Or maybe a lone teal will scurry past, the 
 very sense of music in his flight, the least 
 possible crisping of the air to mark his sym- 
 metrical course. No painter can draw a line 
 on canvas like the flight of wild-fowl along 
 the sky. 
 
 Where the shallow " slues " extend out 
 from the marsh the " tip-ups " stay, those 
 4 
 
THE MARSHES IN APRIL 
 
 spotted sand-pipers whose grotesque bobbing 
 up and down have given them their nick- 
 names. They are oftenest found singly, and 
 they assume such an absurd air of importance 
 at the sight of a man, that it might be imag- 
 ined they were first in the list of game-birds. 
 They will run a few paces, tilt their bodies 
 up and down, skim along a few yards far- 
 ther, bob again, and finally take wing in a 
 jerky, irregular way with a petulant cry at 
 being disturbed. 
 
 Along the sides of these little " slues," at 
 the edges and among the boggy spots, the 
 jack-snipe, true game-bird and cunning, hides. 
 You will not see him one time in five hun- 
 dred until he flies. And then with what a 
 bound he is in the air, twisting, gyrating, 
 and reeling off the yards of space. He 
 usually gets up with a startled " skeap, 
 skeap," as if he could not rid himself of 
 nervousness at the nearness of man. If he 
 has not been shot at much, he may pitch 
 down seventy-five or a hundred yards away, 
 spreading out his wings as he lights so that 
 you can see the barred appearance of his un- 
 der wing feathers. In the fields next to the 
 
 5 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 marshes the slue-grass is occasionally cut by 
 some marsh-dweller and piled along the drier 
 reaches of land. And here, especially if cat- 
 tle have tramped it over and wallowed it 
 about without breaking down, but only scat- 
 tering the cover, the jack-snipe are often 
 found in great numbers. They will rise 
 singly and in doubles, some starting up into 
 the air, and some skimming along close to 
 the ground. 
 
 If a pair of them flush, and they are birds 
 that have been hunted much, it is interesting 
 to watch their manoeuvres. They will rise 
 high in the air until they are mere dim specks, 
 and only an experienced and steady eye can 
 follow the irregular pencillings of their flight 
 through the sky. Here and there they will 
 swerve, veer, and tack, passing from one 
 cloud-vista to another. Finally they will be- 
 gin to descend. The speck becomes a dot, 
 the dot grows to a small shadow, the shadow 
 is etched into a bird. And after a few min- 
 utes, if a man remains motionless, they will 
 swing in toward where they were flushed and 
 dart into cover, sometimes within fifty yards 
 of the spot from whence they first rose. 
 6 
 
THE MARSHES IN APRIL 
 
 In spite of the life and light and color 
 about it, the key-note of a marsh is its ex- 
 treme sense of loneliness. 
 
 " A land that is lonelier than ruin," and 
 the pervading essence of it all is a gentle 
 melancholy. Storms are out of place here 
 where no trees loom to rock before the blasts. 
 Much rest and languor seem natural to these 
 wide savannas of waving grass and sleeping 
 water, framed in by far-down rims of utter- 
 most horizon. The signs of man are few 
 perhaps a decaying fragment of a " push- 
 er's " paddle, or the dismantled outlines of a 
 duck " blind." At times the faint report of 
 a hunter's gun and its accompanying wraith 
 of pale smoke, tell of some sportsman plod- 
 ding along in the marsh. 
 
 Above the reeds there is a level sea of 
 silence. And there is little to tell of change. 
 The trailing folds of a snow-storm fade and 
 sink in these watery coverts of marsh growth, 
 and the sleet finds no twigs to girdle with 
 clinging ice. All tokens in all seasons bear 
 with them the message of deep reserve and 
 a drawing away from the world's clamor. 
 And even in the varying moods of April the 
 
 7 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 swift-winged showers emphasize this feeling, 
 as a man stands midway of herdless solitudes 
 while the storm descends, and. sees 
 
 " the empty pastures, blind with rain.' 
 
 The sky is as changeable as the wind in 
 these early days. Sometimes it is very blue, 
 with now and then light flakes of snowy 
 clouds scattered across; and then it will be a 
 leaden gray, with wimpled skeins of cloud- 
 film blown across. And sometimes the vast 
 void is a majestic dome, pictured with a mov- 
 ing panorama of cloud, wind, and sunlight, 
 and troops of wandering wild-fowl. The 
 shade of a cloud cast on the sun may etch a 
 silhouette of Titanic boldness for a fleeting 
 moment; and then the sunlight reappears, to 
 fall in the space below, a golden cataract 
 that floods the shining marshes. The heights 
 where the blue deepens overhead seem arched 
 against the rafters of heaven. Below the 
 depths are boundless. The whistling call of 
 a flock of plover comes warningly, their white 
 breasts flash as they wheel solidly past, they 
 fade quickly over a slope, and the silence is 
 accentuated. 
 
 8 
 
THE MARSHES IN APRIL 
 
 Perhaps it may be the dry sedges of yester- 
 year, overtopped with the living green of 
 fresher herbage. Maybe it is the flutelike, 
 plaintive whistle of the greater yellow-leg 
 plover. Or it might be that it is the change 
 from sun to shade, from shadow back to sun- 
 shine, that steeps the marshes in such a tide 
 of passionate regret. At least, the touch is 
 there. And lying on one of the tumbled 
 heaps of forgotten grass, with the sigh of 
 late afternoon winds through the yellowing 
 cane, an autumn wraith seems moving across 
 the dusky waters. Old loves, old days, old 
 tendernesses come back to haunt you, and an 
 echo floats wistfully down the sweet spring 
 air. 
 
 "Oh! death in life, the days that are no more." 
 
PLOVER SHOOTING 
 
 WHEN the spring days begin to 
 send scattering showers over 
 prairies, marshes, and rivers, the 
 plover come in from the southern states, and 
 even from South America. They have win- 
 tered in the south by sea-shore and marsh, by 
 lake and river, and with the migratory in- 
 stinct of their kind, have flocked north at the 
 approach of warmer weather. Almost at the 
 breaking up of winter the kildee, or ring- 
 necked plover, has come. He is the advance 
 guard of an army of different species of 
 plover which soon follow. 
 
 The kildees, or kildeer plover, so called 
 from its two-syllabled cry, are small birds, 
 grayish brown on the back with a pure white 
 breast, and with two black collars encircling 
 the neck. They are the most restless of all 
 the plover tribe, and often move about un- 
 easily when in the fields, or along the edges 
 10 
 
PLOVER SHOOTING 
 
 of streams and ponds. The golden plover, 
 called also the yellow or green plover, come 
 in the spring and autumn in large flocks. 
 They fly swiftly, and mass close together, 
 over stretches of burned prairie, meadows, 
 and newly ploughed ground, and are the most 
 eagerly sought after of all the plover kind. 
 A golden plover is a compactly built and 
 hardy bird, about seven inches long and 
 weighing from six to seven ounces. The 
 back is black, spotted with white and span- 
 gled with golden specks. Their call is short 
 and musical. They are not easily approached 
 on foot, but are not afraid of a buggy or 
 wagon, and many are killed by driving up 
 on them with a horse that is used to guns, 
 and shooting them as they rise. One of the 
 best ways to hunt them is to put out " stools," 
 as they are called, or wooden decoys, and 
 shoot from a rough " blind." These decoys 
 are painted to resemble golden plover, and 
 the legs are represented by a single peg, 
 which may be stuck into the ground so as to 
 keep the body upright. If a " flight," as it 
 is called, or, more properly speaking, a suc- 
 cession of flocks of the birds, fly over the 
 II 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 country, the hunter will find that a pit dug 
 in the ground to hide in will give him the 
 best concealment. 
 
 A good-sized flock of " decoys " or stools 
 should be used. With such an array of " de- 
 coys " the plover will turn in, where the 
 ground is good feeding-ground, and good 
 shooting can be had right along when the 
 " flight " is on. If a pit cannot be dug, there 
 should be a slight blind of grass, reeds, corn- 
 stalks, or even some loose branches thrust 
 into the ground, to conceal the hunter's fig- 
 ure. Care should be taken to place the " de- 
 coys " or stools between or along lakes or 
 marshes, if possible, and in localities where 
 plover would come to feed, such as freshly 
 burned prairies, pastures, ploughed land, and 
 meadows where there is wet, bare ground. 
 There is, of course, more or less luck in 
 selecting a place to set up the " stools," but 
 if you notice after a while that the birds are 
 flying across other fields, it is an easy matter 
 to shift the " stools " and build another 
 "blind." 
 
 Sometimes a flock of sand-snipes, or, tech- 
 nically speaking, pectoral sand-pipers, will 
 
 12 
 
PLOVER SHOOTING 
 
 dash in over the " stools " for a moment and 
 then wheel away. And these may circle after 
 a shot and return to give the sportsman an- 
 other shot. These sand-pipers, called also 
 grass plover, are colored something like a 
 jack-snipe, although lighter in hue, but have 
 no cross bars on the tail like the jack-snipe, 
 and their bills are short. They live like the 
 jack-snipe, chiefly by suction, drawing up ani- 
 malculae from the wet ground through their 
 bills, by means of their sensitive tongues; and 
 they grow to be very fat. I have seen them 
 break open and split when falling from a 
 height of sixty or seventy yards, on account 
 of the accumulation of fat about the breasts 
 and shoulders. They are delicious eating, 
 but are not nearly so handsome a bird as the 
 golden plover. Like the golden plover, they 
 are swift of wing and irregular of flight. 
 
 When the " stools " are set out near a 
 pond or marsh the hunter is likely, if well 
 concealed, to get a shot at the greater or 
 lesser yellow-legged plover. The larger of 
 these is a bird almost as big as a good-sized 
 spring chicken. They come in flocks of from 
 four to a dozen or more, and their peculiarly 
 
 13 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 melancholy, flutelike call sounds weirdly in 
 the loneliness of marsh or prairie. The lesser 
 yellow-legs are in larger flocks, usually, and 
 are a much smaller bird, although heavier 
 than the golden plover or the sand-snipe. 
 
 In plover shooting innumerable shots of 
 various kinds come to the sportsman. 
 Straight-away shots, right and left quarter- 
 ers, rising quarterers, right and left rising 
 side shots, cross shots from either side, over- 
 head shots, and twisters are among these. In 
 all shots excepting the plain and twisting 
 straight-aways it is necessary to hold ahead 
 of the bird, keeping the gun moving at the 
 same time. How far to hold ahead depends 
 on divers contingencies. The distance the 
 bird is from the shooter, the speed at which 
 the bird is flying, and the wind, if any is 
 blowing, all enter into the calculation. And 
 it has got to be a " lightning calculation," 
 too. A man who is a good duck or jack- 
 snipe shot can bring down plover easily 
 enough, even on windy days. But a man 
 must be born with the knack or he will never 
 become a " crackerjack." 
 
 A good retriever is an excellent comrade 
 
PLOVER SHOOTING 
 
 to take along. He is companionable, and he 
 can find a dead bird in one-tenth of the time 
 that a man can ; and will also find birds which 
 a man would otherwise lose. A gun of almost 
 any ordinary good make will answer very well 
 for this class of shooting. It should be a 
 twelve or sixteen gauge, with the right-hand 
 barrel cylinder bored and the left-hand barrel 
 modified choke. A six-and-a-half or seven- 
 pound gun is amply heavy. Number eight 
 shot are the best size, and smokeless powder 
 is always an advantage. The smokeless pow- 
 der acts more quickly, requires less holding 
 ahead of the bird, and leaves the air unclouded 
 for the hunter to use his second barrel. 
 
 In tramping for plover the sportsman will 
 usually find many grass plover, or sand-snipe, 
 some of the spotted sand-pipers, a " tip-up " 
 or tilting sand-piper occasionally, kildees on 
 the drier spots. In the pastures and meadows 
 he may run across a pair of true Bartramian 
 sand-pipers, called also upland, pasture, field, 
 grass, and prairie plover. Their tremulous, 
 fluttering flight as they rise from the ground 
 is peculiarly their own, and their rippling 
 whistle when they are high in the air is one 
 15 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 of nature's most melodious sounds. They 
 are the only members of the sand-piper family 
 that light upon the fences around a field, and 
 when they do this they will often spread their 
 long and rather narrow wings, and give their 
 quavering and sweet cry in a long-drawn-out 
 ripple. These birds are the most richly 
 plumaged of all the sand-piper family, with 
 soft, golden-yellow feathers bronzing into 
 brown and tufts of grey under the wings. 
 And at rare times Wilson's phalarope is 
 found, daintiest and most aristocratic of all 
 the waders, the female being the larger and 
 handsomer of the two. Never shoot more 
 than a pair of phalaropes. They are not to 
 be eaten, but should be mounted by a skilful 
 taxidermist. 
 
 The best place for sand-snipe is found near 
 the big marshes and around the adjoining 
 wet country. They will be found feeding in 
 the short grass in low places, and in flocks 
 of from seven or eight to fifteen, and even 
 one hundred or more birds. A sportsman in 
 tramping around good plover country will 
 often get shots at passing flocks and at single 
 birds, especially if there are other hunters in 
 16 
 
PLOVER SHOOTING 
 
 the vicinity who are keeping the plover on 
 the move. 
 
 Plover shooting is nearly all spring shoot- 
 ing, although good golden-plover shooting is 
 possible in the fall. It takes a man out on 
 the marshes and prairies, and gives him exer- 
 cise and sunshine. As to clothing, the regu- 
 lation brown duck, grass-colored, is the best. 
 Do not wear rubber boots. Wear an old pair 
 of stout shoes, together with a pair of heavy 
 woollen stockings, and clamp your shoes and 
 your trousers with a thick pair of leather or 
 duck leggings, and the combination is almost 
 water-proof. And at any rate it will not be 
 weighty. When you get back to your start- 
 ing-place, you should have dry shoes and 
 stockings for an immediate change. A good, 
 hard rub-down for ten minutes before you 
 make the change, and you will not catch cold 
 or suffer any ill effects. But rubber boots 
 may lame you for weeks. 
 
 There is a peculiar delight in lying on a 
 stretch of uncultivated prairie or marsh land 
 and watching for plover. The absence of 
 trees in such a place gives the idea and effect 
 of a sea. The sky comes down to the horizon 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 as blue as a violet, and the sense of utter re- 
 moteness from the towns is like wine on the 
 lips. The fresh winds blow, and occasionally 
 clouds float past. Sometimes a prairie-hawk 
 will fly across, or a lone crow; and a belated 
 duck may be seen at times with his easy, 
 graceful flight, high in air. It is usually very 
 still. The faint report of a shot-gun is heard 
 infrequently, and the rustle of the grass 
 often. The air shimmers, and the day drifts 
 slowly and royally down the pathway of the 
 sun. And in the blue-and-white vaults be- 
 tween earth and sky will come now and then 
 a gleam of white breasts and swift-flying 
 wings; a faint, sharp " tweet, tweet" a 
 parting, fading glimpse of 
 
 " Deep-toned plovers gray, wild-whistling o'er the hill." 
 
 18 
 
THE MELANCHOLY 
 CRANE 
 
 THE melancholy crane lived in a 
 marsh which stretched away to the 
 river on the west of a wide ex- 
 panse of wet prairie. He was a heron, as a 
 matter of fact, but the hunters and people 
 who frequented those waste places called him 
 a crane, and he was entirely too disconsolate 
 to deny it. He was tall and gaunt, and he 
 lived on frogs and fish and snails, and any- 
 thing else in the creeping and swimming line 
 that came to his notice. His plumage was 
 of a greenish blue, and his wings were broad 
 and capable of carrying his ungainly form 
 easily over the marshes. 
 
 His favorite haunt was a spot in the marsh 
 where seldom, if ever, the foot of the hunter 
 penetrated, and where the spirit of solitude 
 dreamed and slept through the long, golden 
 days of early September. There the winds 
 came creeping past the tall grasses and ruf- 
 19 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 fling the amber waters of the silent pools. 
 Soft winds these sometimes were, hardly dar- 
 ing to breathe lest the sound might disturb 
 the lone bird poised in his quaint desolation, 
 a living scarecrow of the wilderness. And 
 then there were also the rude winds, rushing 
 by with their wake of trailing black clouds, 
 and roaring through narrow lanes where the 
 furrows of their comrades had been ploughed 
 to make them an exit, and then away to the 
 north, bending the trees beyond and dying 
 behind the hills. 
 
 These ruffling gusts annoyed the melan- 
 choly fowl. At the sound of the high winds 
 he would shake his feathers with a gesture of 
 disapproval, curve his snaky neck down, and 
 stand stolidly waiting for the storm to break. 
 And when the rain came in slanting gusts 
 and darkness fell, and all the sky was blotted 
 out, as with a giant hand, how dismal it was 
 for him there in the wastes! How different 
 from the luxury enjoyed by the canary in a 
 lady's boudoir ! And when the storm passed, 
 and the sun shone again, it was a distressing- 
 looking object that it beamed upon in the 
 shape of the melancholy crane. 
 20 
 
THE MELANCHOLY CRANE 
 
 And even when days were rich with sun- 
 shine and breezes flowed over the lake like 
 sifted swansdown, and haze stood over the 
 far-off hills in a purple veil of glory even 
 then there was a withering chill in the heart 
 of the melancholy crane. For what was to 
 him the rose of the dying sunset beneath a 
 dazzling west, the very strength and heart 
 of the passing day in one lingering farewell? 
 What mattered the gray blossoms of dawn 
 falling from the east when daylight shook 
 her white and fleecy robes of morning down 
 to the horizon line and stepped out to waken 
 a sleeping world? All color and change were 
 but the rounds of a weary time, a senseless 
 repetition of light and shade. For, mark 
 you, a ruthless hunter had shot his awkward 
 but faithful mate, and thus nevermore was 
 there peace in the breast of the melancholy 
 crane. 
 
 How like a slanting shadow he appeared 
 as he drifted across the marshes. Just such a 
 shadow as a vagrant cloud will cast on bend- 
 ing wheat, or on the billowy sweep of prairie- 
 grasses when the sun flashes from shade to 
 brilliance, and back again to shadow so 
 21 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 swung he from the silences of the wide marsh, 
 as a leaf might be tossed out on unreturning 
 winds to fall wherever fate might list, and 
 none the wiser. Morning and evening the 
 blackbirds flew over with noisy chatter, and 
 a kingfisher gossiped along the shores of the 
 lake or sat sculpturesquely on dead limbs of 
 a lightning-blasted tree. The sooty terns, 
 wavering of flight and querulous of cry, 
 wandered by and left him standing in severe 
 contemplation. And in the spring and fall 
 the wild-ducks, with their sharp-cut lines and 
 curves of aerial travel, darted on past him 
 and disappeared beyond the wild-rice and 
 willows. 
 
 Down there in that nook of the swamp, 
 where tadpoles swam and the black water- 
 bugs wove shining jet tracery over the pools, 
 and where gaudy dragon-flies hovered, was 
 the last retreat of the melancholy crane. 
 For there was at last the spot where the sun 
 came least obtrusively, and where the hush 
 seemed more sacred, and where all nature 
 lay wrapped in shadowy garments of abso- 
 lute repose. Hardly the white water-lilies, 
 snowy hearts in green setting, with golden- 
 
 22 
 
THE MELANCHOLY CRANE 
 
 petalled centres, stirred under the wanton 
 kisses of the bold winds. Hardly the 
 grave moccasin moved from the blackened 
 log where he lay, as the old blue crane 
 dropped down to his accustomed place. 
 Silence was there, and wildness. Nothing 
 more. 
 
 But there came a day when all this was 
 changed. A boat crept up into the reeds, 
 and as the bird, disturbed by the rustle of a 
 skiff, sprang up and out from his hiding- 
 place of tall marsh-grass, a report sounded, 
 and the stricken crane fell to the marsh. And 
 the hand of a hunter drew him to the boat, 
 and the mist from the marsh rose and met 
 the sun and faded away. And there was a 
 long interval, and then a miracle of skill and 
 science, and again the great bird stood erect 
 in a glass case, and beside him was his lost 
 mate. For the same hunter had killed both, 
 and his hand had been the one which had set 
 them in the glass case, and so even in death 
 they had not been separated. And many 
 people came to see them, and there was a 
 learned professor who told of their habits 
 and their life as birds, much of which he had 
 
 23 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 learned from books, and little of which had 
 any breath of the lone, gray marsh about it. 
 And many curious and even scornful eyes 
 were cast upon the two ungainly birds stand- 
 ing there. 
 
 But out on the wide stretch of marsh-grass 
 there was a something stiller than silence in 
 the spot where the crane had fallen. For to 
 satisfy a base curiosity, a harmless bird had 
 been slain, and there was a loss to the pict- 
 uresqueness and life of the lonely marsh, 
 and no recompense was given. No longer 
 would his figure float across in hazy flight as 
 the sun sank in the west, and in vain would 
 the friendly winds seek him in the place 
 where he had found haven. 
 
 Wind, sun, and rain; the flight of birds 
 overhead and the whirl of dry leaves from 
 November-harassed trees; the waving grasses 
 and the shadows all now was alone and un- 
 heeded, excepting by the ebb and flow of 
 changing seasons. The blackbirds might pass 
 over and the kingfisher scold along the reedy 
 shore; the dusky wings of the wandering tern 
 might tack and beat against delaying winds, 
 and the grim crow paint ebon lines in far 
 24 
 
THE MELANCHOLY CRANE 
 
 blue vaults above, but nevermore could come 
 to the marsh and lake as a part of its picture, 
 a shred of its loneliness, and the very spirit 
 and sprite of its haunted pools the form of 
 the melancholy crane. 
 
FISHING FOR BIG-MOUTH 
 BASS 
 
 BASS fishing, whether in river or lake, 
 has more devotees than any other 
 piscatorial sport in America. There 
 are very many lovers of trout-fishing, and to 
 some the lusty muskallunge is the king of 
 fish, but north and south, and from the Mis- 
 sissippi to the Atlantic coast, the black bass 
 is deservedly the favorite. He is known by 
 many names in different localities. He mas- 
 querades under various titles, such as the 
 Oswego bass, jumping bass, grass bass, chin- 
 quapin perch, tiger bass, and green bass, and 
 in the south he is called the green trout. 
 
 The big-mouth bass is the most democratic 
 of fishes as to food, but he associates only 
 with his kind when it comes to society. He 
 will be found with his brother, the small- 
 mouth, the wall-eyed pike or pike perch, the 
 pickerel and the muskallunge in the lakes and 
 rivers, but he does not fraternize closely with 
 any except the bass family. Bass fishing is 
 26 
 
FISHING FOR BIG-MOUTH BASS 
 
 carried on to an extent hardly to be esti- 
 mated. And, notwithstanding the incessant 
 fishing, the hardy bass manages to thrive and 
 keep its numbers up to an average from year 
 to year. 
 
 The big-mouth bass will strike at a frog, 
 a metal spoon, a minnow, small perch, or a 
 shiner, the different bass flies, and, sad to 
 say, at a piece of pork rind cut in a crudely 
 shaped imitation of a minnow. The " pork- 
 rind " fishermen often get large strings. The 
 big-mouth will also take crawfish, angle- 
 worms, a live mouse, or a piece of perch 
 meat. Early in the season he will " strike " 
 at the " spoon/' or spoon-hook, and many 
 are caught in that way. It is a good, sure 
 way to get fish for the pan, but the " bait- 
 casters " despise it. 
 
 Fishing with a spoon may be by " troll- 
 ing " or trailing a " thumb-nail " spoon on 
 the water some distance from the boat, or it 
 may be by " casting " the spoon and dragging 
 it in circles and lines, or by letting it sink and 
 reeling it up after it has gone down a few 
 yards under water. It requires skill to land 
 a three-pound fish with one of these toys, 
 27 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 as the hooks are very small and give the bass 
 a chance to fight and to break hooks. With 
 the large " spoons " the fish have little chance 
 to escape. 
 
 Bait-casting, using the frog or live min- 
 now, the shiner or small perch, is justly 
 claimed to be a science by its advocates. It 
 requires a deftness of wrist movement, an 
 eye for distance, accuracy in placing the bait, 
 lightness in dropping it, and various other 
 accomplishments, besides a thorough knowl- 
 edge of the habits of the fish and of what is 
 " fishable " water. If the fisherman intends 
 to use minnows for casting, he should by all 
 means, if possible, get his bait at the lake 
 or river where he intends to fish. Minnows 
 are very fragile bait, easily killed, and prac- 
 tically gone at the first " strike." Some ex- 
 perts do great work with a dead minnow, 
 but they are the exceptions among the bait- 
 casters, and a live minnow is the best bait. 
 
 A frog, when cast, can be brought back to 
 the boat with an enticing ripple, his legs 
 stretched out as though he was swimming 
 through the water, and he presents a most 
 alluring spectacle to hungry bass. The surg- 
 28 
 
FISHING FOR BIG-MOUTH BASS 
 
 ing rush of a big-mouth at such a moment, 
 when he churns the water over the frog and 
 goes down with the bait in his jaws, is worth 
 travelling a long way to see. The bass seizes 
 the frog crosswise in his jaws and goes to 
 the bottom with him. There he holds him 
 for a few seconds and then, shifting his prey, 
 swallows him. 
 
 Then he moves away, feeling very com- 
 fortable. And as he starts, the line, which, 
 after the first rush has slackened, begins to 
 straighten out again. And then is the time 
 for you to " strike." A sharp twist of the 
 wrist and your bass is hooked. And then 
 comes trouble. It comes right away, and 
 in chunks. A three-pound big-mouth is a 
 fighter, although not so fierce a gladiator as 
 the " small-mouth " bass. He may dive to 
 the bottom and sulk awhile. He is sure to 
 cut the pace in a number of swift curves and 
 turns, and he may break your leader in 
 one of those mad plunges. He also has a 
 gentle habit of making back for the boat and 
 knocking the hook loose by switching the line 
 across the bottom of the craft; or by tangling 
 the line with an oar and flopping off. 
 29 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 If he can get the line wound around a 
 weed or a bulrush or a tuft of grass, away 
 he goes. In lakes where there is a growth of 
 floating moss, as in many of the lakes, he 
 often twists up in bunches of this and man- 
 ages to wriggle from the hook. His only 
 ambition after being hooked is to get rid of 
 the troublesome barb, and his efforts are de- 
 termined and vigorous in the extreme. Not 
 an inch of slack may be given him. And he 
 cannot be lifted into the boat with proper 
 tackle, but must be " played " until he can be 
 drawn to the landing-net. The rod must be 
 able to stand the strain; there must be no 
 knots in the line, and if the reel slips or acts 
 cranky it means good-by to the bass. So, 
 from the moment a big-mouth first u strikes " 
 until he is tumbling around in the boat, it is 
 one round of excitement and uncertainty. 
 
 One test of the skill of the bait-caster 
 is to be able to plump a frog down in the 
 small pockets of open water around floating 
 lily-pads and near the bulrush beds close in 
 shore. Big-mouth bass have quite a fashion 
 of lurking in these spots, and a frog cast 
 skilfully into such a hole very often brings 
 30 
 
FISHING FOR BIG-MOUTH BASS 
 
 a " strike." The bait should be dropped 
 lightly, so as to produce a liquid and alluring 
 " plunk " in the water. 
 
 This mellow sound rouses all the ferocity 
 of a bass, and he will take the frog with a 
 " kerchug " of the water around where it lit 
 and a triumphant sweep of his broad tail. In 
 these little pockets the water growth of sub- 
 merged weeds and grass makes landing the 
 fish a difficult and delicate task. Often a 
 bass gets the line tangled in the weeds or 
 rushes, and it is necessary to row the boat to 
 where the fish is stuck and slip the landing- 
 net under the bass, weeds, moss, and all, so 
 as to save the fish. 
 
 A man fishing with a long cane pole, with- 
 out a reel, can pop a frog into these lairs 
 and snake, a bass out by main strength and 
 awkwardness. It is not scientific fishing, but 
 simply brute force. The fact is that a good 
 bait-caster, with the proper rod and appli- 
 ances, can get bass where the cane-pole fisher- 
 man cannot get them. He can cast farther 
 from the boat, and the bass, which is a shy 
 fish and a suspicious one, has less opportunity 
 for seeing the boat or hearing the oars of the 
 
 31 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 boatman. If the frog is a large one, more 
 time should be given the bass to swallow it, 
 and the fisherman should never "strike" to 
 hook a bass when the fish first takes the frog. 
 
 A good boatman is a prime requisite in 
 bait-casting. Sometimes a man can go out 
 alone and drift or anchor his boat and cast 
 and get bass, but this is an unsatisfactory 
 way. It gives only a limited space to work 
 in. A good oarsman responds to the exigen- 
 cies of the situation, watches the rushes of the 
 fish and swings the boat, tacks it or rows 
 ahead, as the nature of the case demands. 
 
 A rod with a stiffer tip is used in casting 
 than in still fishing, and extra tips should al- 
 ways be carried. Lancewood rods, split bam- 
 boo, bethabara, and even steel rods are used 
 by some of the experts. A good green-heart 
 or lancewood casting-rod is very serviceable. 
 The hooks should be regulation bass hooks, 
 with either single- or double-gut leaders. 
 Lines may be of linen, braided oil-silk, raw 
 silk, or enamelled water-proof silk. A round 
 braided silk line gives the best results. A 
 tackle-box and a minnow-pail are also re- 
 quired. It is as well to take a frying-pan 
 32 
 
FISHING FOR BIG-MOUTH BASS 
 
 along and cook a couple of the fish on shore 
 to eat with the lunch you bring out. A big- 
 mouth fried an hour after leaving the water 
 is delicious eating. 
 
 Even in July and later, the big-mouth will 
 rise to a frog in the morning and evening, 
 and a light wind over the water is often ad- 
 vantageous. But all signs fail occasionally, 
 and I have caught some fine, lusty bass in 
 mid-August, at the noon hour, casting with a 
 frog in water unruffled by a single dimple of 
 the breeze. 
 
 33 
 
FLIGHT OF COMMON 
 BIRDS 
 
 IN walking through the woods or fields, 
 by the shores of a lake, or along the 
 river-banks, there is apparent always 
 a woven tissue of bird flight. There are 
 few persons who have noted the distinctive 
 peculiarities of the more common birds, so as 
 to be able to tell one from the other at long 
 distances. Observation and experience will 
 give one the power to read the channels and 
 winding aisles of light and air as a book's 
 pages may be scanned, and in this sym- 
 pathetic perceptiveness the veil of Isis lifts, 
 be it ever so little, and nature's secrets are 
 mistily revealed to the gazer. It is not to be 
 thought of as study, for that presupposes the 
 judging, dissecting, photographing, number- 
 ing, and theorizing which kills the freshness 
 out of such things. 
 
 Bird flight is the warp and woof of the 
 seasons, spun in the wind's looms, visible as 
 it passes, yet fading as it is seen. No painter 
 34 
 
FLIGHT OF COMMON BIRDS 
 
 has limned its motion, nor have the poets 
 caught its myriad complexities. In morning's 
 dew-sprinkled paths, over the noon's broad 
 gates, and when twilight weaves the sombre 
 threads that darken toward the west, the 
 birds fly past, each with its own individual 
 sweep of wing, each distinct in its place, 
 etched dark against the timber - lines, or 
 tipped and gilded by the trailing streamers 
 of the sun. The swallow, the dove, the yel- 
 low-hammer, humming-bird, robin, blackbird, 
 blue - jay, nighthawk, wild canary, shrike, 
 meadow-lark, bat, and many more. And the 
 average man looks and sees nothing as he 
 did in Wordsworth's day: 
 
 " A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 The swallow's flight I class as most gypsy- 
 like, roving and revelling in curves; most 
 buoyant, least hinting of exertion, and grace- 
 ful as a vine. Around the lakes, over the 
 river-currents, by meadow and slope the swal- 
 low flies. The purple martin, or house- 
 swallow, also known as barn-swallow, is one 
 35 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 of the most common of the family. He often 
 chatters to himself as he wings his way over 
 a barn-yard, and his long, sweeping curves 
 are a beautiful example of ^impossibilities of 
 aerial motion. One habit of the swallows is 
 to dip to ponds or running water as they pass 
 above it, and this has suggested to one writer 
 the figure: 
 
 " Short, swallow-flights of song that dip 
 Their wings in tears and then away." 
 
 The chimney-swallow, which is really a 
 swift, is usually abroad when the swallows 
 are circling about the roofs, and its erratic, 
 scallopy movements and its shrill twittering 
 as it cuts through the air make it easily 
 known from the true swallows. The perfec- 
 tion of swallow flight is found when the birds 
 are flying around some bit of meadow-land 
 along a river where small ponds are scat- 
 tered about. When sunshine and shadow 
 blend in such places, and the birds dip to the 
 water and away, with their glossy breasts 
 dripping, each curve of their wings is a lyric, 
 written on impalpable air, the subtle poetry 
 of wind and sun. 
 
 36 
 
FLIGHT OF COMMON BIRDS 
 
 I sing you a song of a swallow 
 With a purple breast and buoyant wings, 
 Curving down where the south wind springs 
 From out of a grassy hollow. 
 
 The turtle-dove's course through the air is 
 almost noiseless, swift, sustained, vigorous, 
 and suggestive of power. His feathers lie 
 closely to his body, and his wings are strong 
 and capable of carrying him at a high rate 
 of speed. On rising from the ground, be- 
 fore getting under full headway, his wings 
 beat in a nervous flappy way, and when set- 
 tling to a perch there is a fluttering of both 
 wings and tail before the bird quiets down. 
 But when fairly launched the flight of the 
 dove is very striking. It seems fairly to 
 pierce the air, and at times appears to be a 
 succession of long drives through space, the 
 bird shifting its direction and even partly 
 turning its body with the utmost ease when at 
 top speed. They go a great deal in pairs in 
 the summer-time, but as autumn comes on 
 they will be found in the cornfields and stub- 
 bles in flocks. 
 
 With the yellow-hammer, or, more prop- 
 erly speaking, the golden - winged wood- 
 37 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 pecker or " flicker," the wing movement is 
 practically the same as the other wood- 
 peckers, the members of the sapsucker family 
 and the tiny wild canaries. His flight is a 
 succession of billowy curves, as a wave will 
 slide from crest to base, and rise from base 
 to crest again. The red-headed woodpecker, 
 the downy woodpecker, the " quilt," the log 
 cock, and the sapsuckers all have this see- 
 saw motion through the air. But I should 
 say that the yellow-hammer's flight was of 
 longer and less abrupt curves, and that his 
 poise was more graceful and not so jerky. I 
 can tell him easily from the other woodpeck- 
 ers at any reasonable distance, and have al- 
 ways admired his swinging, forceful stroke 
 of wing. 
 
 And then across an open place, between the serried trees, 
 High up in sun-surrounded space a golden shadow flees, 
 
 In curves that rise and curves that dip, 
 
 As graceful as a curtseying ship, 
 
 With measured stroke of pinions bright 
 
 That marks the flicker's flight. 
 
 The humming-bird's motions are two, be- 
 ing the hover and the dart. See him poised 
 above a flower. His wings whirl like an 
 
 38 
 
FLIGHT OF COMMON BIRDS 
 
 electric fan, and his brilliant colors gleam in 
 the sunlight. He is a toy, gemmed with 
 jewelled green and gold, radiantly bright. 
 Suddenly he has slipped from sight, as a 
 shining dew-drop might glide into the depths 
 of a red-clover blossom. He has darted 
 twenty feet as swift as thought, and again is 
 poising, in a kaleidoscopic glitter, above a 
 spray of honeysuckle. The humming-bird's 
 movement is the most spritelike of all the 
 birds. You can neither hear it nor trace it, 
 and only partially divine it by mere sight. It 
 is a sudden blossoming of wings in mid-air, 
 a ceasing, a reappearing, and then a void 
 where had hung beauty, grace, energy, color, 
 and life. 
 
 The robin's flight, like his manner, is se- 
 date and unobtrusive. It is a succession of 
 flittings, and not marked by any particular 
 individuality. It is easily distinguishable, 
 however, from the other birds. The black- 
 birds, red-winged, crow-blackbird or purple 
 grackle, and the cow-blackbird have a long, 
 wavy flight, with not very much dip in the 
 movement. Their habit of flying in flocks 
 makes the flight very noticeable. The rudder- 
 
 39 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 like tail of the crow-blackbird seems to be 
 used by him to steer his course with. Single 
 blackbirds have a fashion of flying high, and 
 this will sometimes aid in determining what 
 kind of a bird is in the air. 
 
 The blue-jay flies on a more level course 
 than most of the common birds. He will 
 start on a line and keep it, and his bright 
 blue wings beat the air lightly but steadily 
 as he passes by, neither rising nor falling, 
 but keeping the even tenor of his way. The 
 shrike, or " butcher-bird," has a somewhat 
 similar way of flying, but the shrike haunts 
 the hedges and the open field, the blue-jay 
 the woods. And even with this difference of 
 environment, the shrike's flight is smoother 
 than the jay's. He reels off space as you 
 might unravel an old yarn mitten. In size 
 he is almost the same as the jay, and in color 
 of a subdued gray and brownish black. But 
 a hunter can tell which is which when both 
 are flying from the same hedge, even when 
 it is too cloudy and far away to distinguish 
 colors. 
 
 The meadow-lark soars, skims, and flut- 
 ters. When flushed from the fields he rises 
 40 
 
FLIGHT OF COMMON BIRDS 
 
 with a series of short, fluttering beats of the 
 wing, and usually settles to earth after flying 
 fifty or one hundred yards. At times he will 
 dart away almost like a quail and curve 
 sharply to left or right. When he is on a 
 fence-post his tail will bob and bob as a 
 person approaches, and when he flies from 
 such a perch he invariably rises with short, 
 jerky wing beats. His flight is not usually 
 swift. It is a good test of knowledge as to 
 the flight of the common birds to name them 
 when looking through the car-window of a 
 train that is whirling through the country at 
 a good rate of speed. To one familiar with 
 these birds their various peculiarities are as 
 easy to read as print. Crow, dove, yellow- 
 hammer, shrike, meadow-lark, blackbirds, and 
 sometimes the fluttering, tremulous flight of 
 the upland plover will be seen, and it takes 
 the practised vision of the outdoor man or 
 woman to name them as they are seen. 
 
 Over the woods and pastures and above 
 the fields as twilight approaches the night- 
 hawk flies. His flight is made up of darts, 
 swoopings, and sudden pauses. His raucous 
 cry is heard as his sharp-pointed wings sweep 
 41 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 through the upper spaces. His motion is 
 exceedingly irregular and full of sharp an- 
 gles. It is a herald of the night, and after 
 it comes the aerial wrigglings and twistings 
 of the bat over marshy nooks where 
 
 " Steadily up from their swampy forge the sparks of fire- 
 flies rise, 
 
 In the pool where the wading lily makes love through 
 half-shut eyes, 
 
 To the whippoorwill, who scolds like a shrew at the fluffy 
 owl, 
 
 While the nighthawk shuffles by like a monk in a velvet 
 cowl; 
 
 And the bat weaves inky weft through white star beams 
 that peep 
 
 Down through the cypress boughs, where the frogs all 
 sing knee-deep." 
 
FISHING FOR CRAPPIE 
 
 FISHING for crappie, or, as they are 
 more familiarly known, croppie, is a 
 sport which numbers many devotees 
 among anglers. The crappie has a wide- 
 spread range within his territorial limits, and 
 is equally at home in lake or river. In some 
 localities he is known as the " new light " 
 and the " bachelor." And in certain lakes I 
 have always heard the fishermen call him 
 the " silver bass." 
 
 In form he is something like a bass, but 
 with a weaker outline and a more showy set 
 of fins. In color he is a silvery olive, with a 
 brassy sheen, and mottled with greenish hue. 
 Crappies weigh from a fourth of a pound up 
 to nearly a pound, the majority of them 
 running about half a pound in weight. I 
 have seen some large ones of a full pound 
 in weight, but these big fellows are scarce. 
 The crappie is a true sunfish, so far as his 
 technical place among the fish is concerned. 
 
 43 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 And because he is a handsome fish, with his 
 gleaming sides and mottled scales, he is quite 
 a favorite among those lesser anglers whose 
 minds do not aspire to the u jumping bass," 
 the lithe pickerel, or the sturdy wall-eyed pike. 
 
 The crappie will sometimes strike at a 
 " spoon " when a man is trolling for pickerel 
 or bass, and a few are caught in that way 
 every year. But with his comparatively small 
 mouth it is plain to be seen that nature never 
 intended the crappie as a swallower of large 
 baits or lures. When he " strikes " a spoon 
 and hooks himself, he makes a very feeble 
 fight, and is easily lifted into the boat. But 
 he is only occasionally caught in this way. 
 The recognized method to fish for crappie 
 5n the lakes is by still-fishing for them and 
 by " drifting." In still-fishing in the lakes the 
 boat is anchored in water twenty or thirty 
 yards from the shore, and the fisherman sits 
 hopefully in the bow or the stern of the boat 
 and waits for the crappie to engulf the bait. 
 
 There is nothing on earth that can equal 
 
 the patient serenity of expression which rests 
 
 on the sunburned features of these living 
 
 pictures at such times. The fatter a man or 
 
 44 
 
FISHING FOR CRAPPIE 
 
 woman is, the better, and a broad-brimmed 
 straw hat makes a good frame for their rubi- 
 cund faces. The pole is grasped firmly, and 
 the cork, or " float," if one is used, is 
 scrutinized with painful fixity of gaze. The 
 sun beats down, strikes the water, and glances 
 into the eyes of the immovable angler. He 
 never even winks. As though moulded in 
 bronze, he watches the cork. Should a boat 
 approach as though coming to disturb the 
 water near the boat, his tense brow wrinkles 
 in disapprobation, but he watches the cork. 
 
 If the occupants of the oncoming skiff 
 should hold up a fine string of fish, he will eye 
 them hungrily with just the tail of one eye, 
 but he watches the cork. If news is brought 
 of war, pestilence, treason, sudden death, 
 throne-agitating happenings of dreadful im- 
 port, news of vast and awful portent, he sim- 
 ply closes his jaws tighter, mutters " um, 
 hum," or "ah-ha," and still watches the cork. 
 For statuelike contemplation, stolidity of ex- 
 pression, and stoic patience, not even a graven 
 image can equal the face of the fat man or 
 woman who, on a hot day, when crappies 
 are biting, watches the cork. 
 45 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 But how beautiful is the metamorphosis 
 on this stony, reddened visage when a slight 
 ripple around the " float " betokens a nibble ! 
 The stern lines about the lips begin to relax 
 a little, and the eyes of the watcher soften. 
 The pole is rigidity itself, lest the slightest 
 movement might frighten away the finny 
 denizen below, who is pursuing his investi- 
 gations warily. As the nibble becomes more 
 pronounced, a well-defined gleam of hope 
 comes into the eyes of the fisherman, and a 
 tremulous crease of expectancy dimples his 
 puffy cheeks. And lastly, as the " float " 
 goes under, and with neatness and celerity 
 our corpulent friend whips a fine crappie 
 from the depths, what a smile irradiates his 
 features. A calm grin of contentment bil- 
 lows his countenance with an unctuous hap- 
 piness, as with half-closed eyes he looks out 
 over the water as he rebaits the hook, with 
 an expression as much as to say, " Oh, it's 
 a good world, I think; a good world." 
 
 In still-fishing for all fish the temptation 
 is to keep on catching them as long as the 
 fish will bite. This is a very short-sighted 
 policy. A string of twenty-five or thirty 
 
FISHING FOR CRAPPIE 
 
 crappie will make a meal for several persons, 
 and only the hoggishly inclined will keep on 
 fishing after they have caught a good string. 
 Contemplation, as a matter of fact, is one of 
 the true beauties of still-fishing just to loaf 
 and invite one's soul; to take it easy, and 
 not care particularly whether you are going 
 to get a big string of fish or not. There is 
 everything around you to encourage this 
 dolce far niente feeling. There is a world 
 about you, if you will just take a little notice 
 of it. Pictures and dreams all spread out 
 before you, and music, too, of subtlest sort. 
 
 In the morning around the lakes you can 
 see the sooty terns, with their wandering, 
 aimless flight, dipping and shifting about the 
 shores. Occasionally they give their quaint, 
 shrill, skreeling cry as they pass. Long lines 
 of blackbirds cross over, sometimes in per- 
 fect silence, sometimes with a reassuring 
 " clack, clack, " from one of the travellers. 
 An old blue heron may slant past like a patch 
 of smoke blown from a cannon's mouth. 
 And the " flicker," or golden-winged wood- 
 pecker, with his scallopy curves, flies by with 
 steady wing. Over the water the wind wrin- 
 
 47 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 kles a web of ripples and a dead leaf from 
 the hills lies brown on the bright water. The 
 sun comes down with sheen of gold, and the 
 bulrushes stand in olive-green masses that 
 droop to the lake's edge. 
 
 Many of the western rivers are first-class 
 streams for crappie, and one of the popular 
 diversions along these rivers is the " fish- fry," 
 at which the harmless, necessary crappie has 
 a useful and an honored position. He is the 
 handiest fish to catch, for he can be depended 
 upon to bite when some of the other fish refuse 
 to touch a hook, and in numbers sufficient to 
 furnish forth the feast. Fried in cornmeal 
 the crappie is delicious, but he should be put 
 in the pan soon after leaving the water. In 
 some streams there seems to be an inexhaust- 
 ible supply of these fish. As fast as you pull 
 one out another comes to take the place of 
 the .departed. And if you haul out twenty 
 or thirty there in the morning, there will be 
 an equal number ready to take the hook in 
 the afternoon. They are apparently always 
 willing to come out and occupy the post of 
 honor at a " fry." It is a dreamy, lazy way 
 of fishing to sit in the shade and watch the 
 48 
 
FISHING FOR CRAPPIE 
 
 " bobber " as it rides the current. And when 
 the " bobber " begins to turn and swing and 
 bob, and finally goes under, what a calm sat- 
 isfaction there is in lifting out a wriggling 
 crappie and letting him lie on the thick grass 
 under the trees. How you admire his bright 
 tints and with what good-nature you " heft " 
 him before you put him on the string ! 
 
 Still-fishing on the river-banks for crappie 
 is more essentially philosophical and Wal- 
 tonian than the lake-fishing, for several rea- 
 sons. In the first place, the crappie does not 
 make a fight, as a bass does, and you are not 
 apt to be disturbed by a bass in the river- 
 fishing. And then a river has a great deal 
 more individuality and expression than a lake. 
 A river is going somewhere and is doing 
 something. It suggests a final picture of the 
 sea. So that even in the dreamy summer 
 freshness, under the trees along the river- 
 banks, you can call up salt seas and the snows 
 of myriad wings of restless gulls. A lake, on 
 the other hand, is purely pastoral and re- 
 ceptive. No current to speak of and no 
 carrying down of any message to the sea. 
 Still-fishing for the smaller fishes is conducive 
 
 49 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 to the highest development of the reflective 
 faculties. 
 
 No man who truly loves angling can be 
 wholly bad. It requires a love for the beauti- 
 ful in nature, a gentle sorrow for the deluded 
 fishes which swallow the bait, a chaste and 
 tempered joy in their capture and a serenity 
 of faith and optimism in the outlook upon 
 life. 
 
 Take, then, your long cane pole and your 
 gayly colored " bobbers," equip yourself with 
 hooks and lines, with basket, and a pipe to 
 smoke betimes. Go to some quiet stream 
 where the amiable and innocent crappie may 
 be found. Select a shady and unfrequented 
 spot under a broad-spreading tree and bait 
 your hook with worm or grub. Toss the hook 
 gently in and lie down on the grass with your 
 pipe, if you are a worshipper at the shrine of 
 Lady Nicotine. Look at the sunlight sifting 
 down through the leaves above and think how 
 cool and bright, how sweet and still the day is. 
 And do you be properly thankful for your 
 golden opportunity to " goe a-fysshynge." 
 
IN THE HAUNTS OF THE 
 LOON 
 
 THE loon, or great northern diver, 
 occupies a unique place among the 
 water-fowl of America. He is a 
 bird set apart from the rest, a frequenter of 
 loneliest lakes, a weird speck on shadowy wa- 
 ters. In old days, when the Indians roamed 
 the hills and valleys, they believed the bird 
 was an evil spirit, but nevertheless captured 
 him and used his skin for tobacco-pouches. 
 
 His stretch of wing from tip to tip some- 
 times attains five feet, but is usually from 
 four to four and a half feet in a full-grown 
 bird. The head and neck are glossy black, 
 excepting some small streaks of white at the 
 base of the neck, and this coloring of head 
 and neck gives out green and purple metallic 
 shades. The under parts of the fowl are 
 white. The back is regularly marked in black 
 and white, and the bill is black and pointed. 
 Besides the great northern diver, there are 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 the yellow-billed loons and the red-throated 
 and black-throated loons. 
 
 In the lake country, where the land round 
 about is rough and hilly, is a region where 
 this peculiar bird may be studied to advan- 
 tage. I say studied not in the sense of classi- 
 fication and ornithological accuracy as to 
 habits and surroundings, but in the idle and 
 curiously speculative spirit. This will take 
 in as accessories the lakes and hills, the 
 woods and sandy shores, the skimming flight 
 of sand-pipers, and the seesaw of sun and 
 shadow on the rocking ripples. Do not take 
 a camera with you. Take a rifle and shoot 
 a few times at the loons you see, simply for 
 the excitement of watching them dodge. The 
 chances are a hundred to one that you will 
 not hit a bird. 
 
 The best place to go is to some high point 
 overlooking a cove or bay that loons fre- 
 quent, and when you have found a pair, you 
 will first notice their fondness for solitude. 
 A pair of them will float a few hundred yards 
 from shore, in as secluded a spot as they can 
 find, for hours at a time. They do not heed 
 the blackbirds that fly across, nor the hawks 
 52 
 
IN THE HAUNTS OF THE LOON 
 
 that circle in stately rings above the trees at 
 the edge of the lake. The flight of the blue- 
 bill, ringbill, teal, or merganser ducks is un- 
 noticed by the loon, for a more unsociable 
 bird never existed. Sometimes, though, a 
 pair of loons will lure ducks away from the 
 decoys that a hunter has thrown out, thereby 
 earning a decided opinion of the sportsman 
 as to loons. 
 
 For hours, then, you can watch them drift- 
 ing here and there, apparently serenely un- 
 conscious of the world beyond the edge of 
 the lake. But if you send a thirty-two-calibre 
 rifle bullet out over the water at the head of 
 the nearest bird, he will dive down at the 
 report like a flash, and your missile will waste 
 its force on the water, where an instant be- 
 fore he was swimming. During the time 
 when he is undisturbed he will dive occasion- 
 ally, and sometimes he stretches his broad 
 wings in cumbrous flight down the middle of 
 the lake to another refuge. There he will 
 swim about until the lack of any disturbing 
 element finally arouses his suspicions, when 
 he will return to his former retreat to float 
 and dive, and dream the hours away. 
 53 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 The loon adds to the picturesque charm of 
 these lakes, but, unfortunately for his love of 
 peace, he is not allowed to pursue the even 
 tenor of his way in quiet. The taxidermist 
 covets him, shoots him, and mounts him on 
 a board. But the taxidermist cannot repro- 
 duce the framing of water, shore, sky, and 
 woodland which completes the picture, so the 
 stuffed and mounted loon of the glass case 
 exhibit is the most patent of frauds. And 
 therein taxidermy always fails. Fortunately 
 for himself, the loon is a marvellous diver 
 and swimmer, and at the report of a gun he 
 will dart down and out of danger in almost 
 every instance before a bullet reaches him. 
 His poise and motion while on the water are 
 graceful and strong. In the air he is clumsy 
 but effectual. In fifteen years' experience 
 around the lakes I have yet to see one on 
 land. But they must be as awkward as pen- 
 guins when they attempt to walk. 
 
 One of the most remarkable things about 
 the loon is his call, or cry. To the super- 
 stitious it is appalling, and to every one it is 
 one of the most grewsome sounds in nature. 
 It is a kind of cackling, maniacal laughter, ris- 
 54 
 
IN THE HAUNTS OF THE LOON 
 
 ing at its height almost to a scream. There 
 is nothing like it in the mysteries of outdoor 
 sounds, and when heard in the gathering twi- 
 light it is the ghostliest of all echoes. The 
 faces of drowned men rise, they say, when 
 the loon's mocking merriment sweeps over the 
 lake, and the solemn notes of bull-frogs sink 
 in silence as the cry floats past. As the sickle 
 of the new moon is etched beyond the hills, 
 and shadows hover over emerald-burnished 
 rushes, and the sands are dusky in the still- 
 ness, there comes the raucous complaint of 
 the great diver. And, if you are a believer 
 in the ghostly and the supernatural, you will 
 say it is the cry of a lost spirit, the wail of a 
 soul from the confines of " night's Plutonian 
 shore." 
 
 The loon is hunted as a " specimen," to be 
 mounted and set in store-windows or mu- 
 seums, and hunters sometimes shoot loons to 
 adorn a " den " with. But this is only done 
 by the unthinking. For the proper place for 
 all birds that are not strictly edible game- 
 birds, is their native haunts. It would be 
 very difficult to shoot a loon with a shot-gun, 
 as he almost invariably keeps out of shot-gun 
 
 55 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 range. Occasionally, however, he will swing 
 in near enough to a " blind " to invite de- 
 struction. 
 
 Web- footed as the loons are, with short, 
 muscular legs, swimming and diving is their 
 forte. They are adepts at either branch of 
 aquatics. They will dive and remain beneath 
 the surface for a long time, swimming under 
 water with great rapidity. They live on 
 small fish, which they catch under water. 
 What a picture such a scene would make 
 could it be reproduced by photography the 
 long neck of this great bird stretched out 
 to its full length, its body darting through 
 the water, propelled by strong strokes of the 
 webbed feet ; the eyes gleaming, and the sharp 
 bill ready at any instant to seize the prey; 
 the fish, fully alive to its peril, dodging and 
 curving about, only at last to be caught and 
 swallowed; and then a swift uprising to the 
 surface, and a parting of the water when the 
 snaky head and neck reappear. There is a 
 natural touch in the idea of one fish preying 
 upon another, but the thought of this weird 
 black bird whizzing through under depths of 
 green water seeking its food, is a reminder 
 
 5.6 
 
IN THE HAUNTS OF THE LOON 
 
 of old forms of animal life of days when 
 strange creatures crawled and swam and flew, 
 part fish, part bird, and part reptile. 
 
 The name of the loon has been taken in 
 vain by the writers, for it has been used to 
 denote a foolish or a distracted person, and 
 the great diver is not at all wanting in 
 sagacity. 
 
 " Hold off; unhand me, gray-beard loon! 
 Eftsoons his hand dropt he." 
 
 " Loon " or " lown " is also used to sig- 
 nify stupidity. Any one who has gone out 
 with a rifle to secure a specimen for tax- 
 idermy will hardly accuse the loon of that 
 failing. He has a proper suspicion of, and 
 a deep-seated respect for, that arch-slayer, 
 man. The big diver will swim away quietly, 
 always keeping a safe distance between him- 
 self and the boat, and if fired at he will dive 
 at the flash of a gun, very seldom taking 
 wing. He will rely almost always on his 
 power of swimming and diving to take him 
 out of harm's way. 
 
 The loon, the heron, the bittern, and the 
 bull-frog are the oddities of the lake and 
 57 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 marsh country, and add appreciably to the 
 pleasures of those who love to drift idly 
 over the lakes or penetrate reedy edges of 
 lonely bays and inlets. The bull-frog, with 
 his thunderous gutturals, chants basso notes 
 in the deepening twilight, and these echoes are 
 carried across the lily-pads and bulrush-beds. 
 The heron floats westward with the dying 
 sun, and himself seems a faint, gray frag- 
 ment of belated cloud, blown by on tardy 
 winds. The bittern, rising awkwardly from 
 the reeds on elongated wing, doubles his legs 
 under him and manages to swing away like 
 a balloon, shifted from side to side by op- 
 posing air-currents. And the lone loon, 
 black-headed and alert, rocking in secluded 
 cove or silent bay, laughs loud and mock- 
 ingly at the twilight as the sun fades behind 
 the hills. 
 
 The chorus of frogs dies away and is for- 
 gotten. The flight of the heron, dim as 
 passing mist, melted like mist and claimed 
 no remembrance. The bittern's scrambling 
 exit left the reeds tenantless, with only the 
 night-winds creeping through where his un- 
 gainly body had made broken spaces. But 
 
 58 
 
IN THE HAUNTS OF THE LOON 
 
 the cry of the loon, that cynical, garrulous 
 cachinnation which you heard last in the gath- 
 ering dusk that was the final eerie touch to 
 coming night, an ebon note of wild glee which 
 ended in a wail. 
 
 No weirder echo was in hell; 
 
 The loon laughed, and then silence fell. 
 
 59 
 
BLUEBILLS AND DECOYS 
 
 DUCK shooting over " decoys " has 
 always been a favorite sport with 
 hunters of wild-fowl, and of all the 
 ducks that fly none decoy more readily than 
 " bluebills." The greater scaup duck and 
 the smaller scaup duck, popularly known as 
 the big and little bluebill, or broadbill, are 
 shot in great numbers in the spring and fall 
 both along the coast and on inland waters. 
 The larger bluebills are about nineteen inches 
 long, with a spread of from thirty to thirty- 
 three inches of wings. Their plumage is 
 black, green, and white, mostly; white on 
 the belly, and black on the breast and rump. 
 The head is black, with a greenish tinge in 
 the drakes. The bill is broad and dark blue. 
 These birds are heavily plumaged, swift of 
 flight, and extremely tenacious of life. When 
 crippled, it is very difficult to recover them, 
 and means a chase after them often for a 
 mile or so, the bird diving at intervals, and 
 60 
 
BLUEBILLS AND DECOYS 
 
 showing only its head to the pursuing hunter. 
 It can safely be assumed that every time you 
 get out of the " blind " to chase a cripple 
 you will lose a couple of shots at other birds 
 which will meantime come in to your decoys. 
 Bluebills are so stupid sometimes that they 
 will fly in over the decoys while the hunter 
 is standing up in his boat throwing out the 
 wooden lures. When they make up their 
 minds to come in, they do not seem to mind 
 the presence of a man, but set their wings 
 and sail right in. The bigger bunch of de- 
 coys a hunter has, the better sport he is likely 
 to have. Bluebill decoys are the best to use, 
 and a flock of one hundred will be found not 
 too many, especially where the birds have 
 been shot at to any considerable extent. They 
 should be well weighted, and have sufficient 
 string, and heavy enough anchoring lead to 
 keep them from dragging in a stiff wind. In 
 both spring and fall the days are often very 
 windy, and the direction of the wind is likely 
 to shift, so that decoys should be properly 
 equipped to stand rough water without drift- 
 ing. The throwing out of decoys is easy 
 enough, but the arrangement of them into 
 61 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 flocks requires experience. They should not 
 be bunched closely together, but separated so 
 as to present the natural appearance of a 
 flock of live birds. When some of them turn 
 upside down, as they may do when tossed 
 from the boat, they should be righted at once, 
 it being one of the dispensations of Provi- 
 dence that live ducks do not swim on their 
 backs. Little omissions of this sort may 
 cause some shy old drake to give your 
 " blind " a wide sweep. 
 
 "Blinds" are either shore " blinds " or 
 " blinds " built around a boat or natural 
 growth of grass, bulrushes, or reeds. The 
 best " blind " is that of the natural growth, 
 when that can be had; although a shore 
 " blind," when made out of a hole dug in 
 some sandy point, with a slight fringe of 
 dead grass above, is a very "killing" place 
 of concealment sometimes. 
 
 A shore " blind " made of willows, rushes, 
 and a little hay is good, and to build a 
 " blind " around a boat you need brush and 
 willows for the skeleton or poles and twine, 
 and grass and reeds to fill in the spaces. 
 A first-rate " blind " can be made around a 
 62 
 
BLUEBILLS AND DECOYS 
 
 boat by sinking half a dozen or more stout 
 stakes at the sides and end of the craft, bind- 
 ing these together with thick, strong cord, 
 and thatching the cord with grass, rushes, or 
 whatever natural growth is common to the 
 locality. Building a " blind " is a matter of 
 the greatest possible importance. It should 
 not be too high or too conspicuously heavy. 
 It should present as near as may be from the 
 outside a semblance of natural growth similar 
 to the growth about the surrounding shores. 
 
 As a rule a low " blind " is the best, espe- 
 cially when the hunters build one about a boat. 
 They must depend considerably on crouching 
 low and on keeping absolutely immovable. 
 There is nothing so exasperating in duck 
 shooting over decoys as the man who persists 
 in getting up to stretch himself, and see if 
 the ducks are coming. The ducks can see 
 him as far or farther than he can see them, 
 and they will sheer off when they catch a 
 glimpse of him squatting down when he notes 
 their approach. 
 
 Some men sit with the barrels of their guns 
 sticking up over the top of the " blind " and 
 then wonder why the ducks don't come in. 
 
 63 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 They might as well be waving the American 
 flag to the accompaniment of a brass band. 
 Even the bluebills, stupid as they sometimes 
 act, are not entirely fatalists. 
 
 When a bunch of bluebills come in they 
 sometimes keep close together until within a 
 couple of hundred yards of the decoys, and 
 then they separate and whirl in all over the 
 decoys. This is varied with exhibitions of 
 swinging in and settling down close to the 
 decoys, with their wings outspread and their 
 white bodies shining in the sunlight. Or they 
 may dip as if going to settle, and then swing 
 away without stopping. Pairs and singles 
 usually decoy with hardly any hesitation. It 
 is usually hard to get a raking shot at blue- 
 bills, although cross shots, where two birds 
 are killed with one barrel, are of frequent 
 occurrence. The best practice is to select your 
 duck and not bother about the other birds in 
 the flock. 
 
 A bluebill needs the centre of the charge to 
 kill him, or a shot through the head or neck. 
 He can carry off shot in his body better than 
 most ducks. Number six shot in the right- 
 hand barrel and number four in the left bar- 
 
BLUEBILLS AND DECOYS 
 
 rel has been my load for them, backed up by 
 plenty of powder. For cripples a number of 
 shells loaded with number eight shot will 
 come in handy. When a bluebill falls you 
 can often tell whether he is dead or only 
 wounded, by his wing-action; if wing-tipped, 
 or only hard hit, he will usually swerve, or 
 sail down to the water; if killed stone dead, 
 he drops like a plummet. If wounded, slip 
 in a shell loaded with number eight, and 
 when he starts to swim off give it to him in 
 the head. 
 
 The best way to get good shooting for 
 these ducks is to find where a flock of them 
 have been feeding, in some cove or bay. If 
 possible, find a flock that has not been shot at. 
 Paddle down to them and scare them away 
 without firing a single shot at them, no mat- 
 ter how good a chance you get. Build your 
 " blind " where they have been and throw 
 out your decoys. If there was a big bunch 
 there, say, one hundred or so birds, they will 
 afford shooting all day for you. At first, 
 when frightened from their feeding-ground, 
 they will fly out to the main waters of the 
 lake and drop down with some other big 
 
 65 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 gang. But after a while, say, in an hour or 
 so, they will begin to yearn for the flesh-pots 
 of Egypt, and will get up in small bunches 
 five, three, and even pairs and singles and 
 start back for their former feeding-ground. 
 
 As they see your decoys they will set their 
 wings and come in bravely to your " blind." 
 Now is your time. For doubles, let them get 
 well in before you rise to shoot, for it is sur- 
 prising how quickly a bluebill can get away 
 from a dangerous spot when he sees and real- 
 izes the necessity for so doing. He is a 
 winged athlete, and the way he will whirl 
 away as you stand up in the boat will make 
 you hustle to get him. 
 
 Sometimes a pair of suspicious bluebills 
 will anchor off your decoys and browse 
 around for awhile. Let them alone. The 
 chances are good for their eventually giving 
 way to their curiosity and swimming in close 
 enough for you to get a shot. They are in the 
 habit of giving a curious purring, chuckling 
 noise as they feed or float about, and some of 
 the hunters imitate this sound so exactly that 
 the deluded birds will come in readily to their 
 decoys. 
 
 66 
 
BLUEBILLS AND DECOYS 
 
 " Travellers," or ducks that are on their 
 way south or north, do not decoy so readily 
 as the birds which have settled down to feed 
 in some cove or lake and have been undis- 
 turbed for some time. Ringbills, ruddies, 
 butterballs, red-heads, widgeons, pintail, and 
 mallards are apt to come in at times during 
 the day with the bluebills, but bluebills and 
 ringbills will be the most numerous. The 
 red-heads are getting scarcer, and mallards 
 mostly stick to the timber with the pintail, 
 but good bluebill and ringbill shooting is had 
 every spring and fall in the lakes, rivers, and 
 marshes of many of the states. 
 
 There is, naturally, much attendant hard- 
 ship in duck shooting. The throwing out 
 and picking up of decoys in cold or stormy 
 weather is hard work, the rowing of a heavily 
 laden boat in rough water is sometimes dan- 
 gerous, and, generally speaking, shooting over 
 decoys is sport that tests the patience and 
 physique of the hunter severely. It ruins a 
 complexion, and unless you use gloves, your 
 hands are a sight after a couple of days. 
 The chill winds sweep down when you sit in 
 a boat for a few hours and preempt the 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 choice spots in your marrow, and at other 
 times the sun burns and cracks your lips; 
 and altogether you must have patience and 
 " sand " to be a " thorough-bred " when it 
 comes to a week's shooting in the early spring 
 or late fall over decoys. 
 
 68 
 
WALKING AS AN ART 
 
 WALKING as an art has almost 
 fallen into disuse in these days of 
 wheels, electricity, and horseless 
 vehicles. Yet to some of the old-fogy class, 
 pedestrianism still has charms. At the lake 
 summer-resorts and the farms where city 
 people go for their mid-year vacations, you 
 will find many bicycles and very little evi- 
 dence of stout walking-shoes. This is not as 
 it should be, for, with its many advantages, 
 a bicycle is not fitted to carry a person into 
 the inner sanctuaries of the woods and 
 fields where nature has her choicest treasures 
 hidden. 
 
 You have been at the lake for a week with 
 your wheel, and you have gone to town a 
 couple of times with it and skirted the fields 
 and forests. You have dawdled in ham- 
 mocks and trifled at lawn-tennis, and imag- 
 ined that you were enjoying yourself and see- 
 ing the country. In reality, you have been 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 looking at nature through the wrong end of 
 an opera-glass. To-day, as you promised, we 
 will go around the lake together on foot. No 
 gun, no fishing-rod, nothing but a light stick 
 and a substantial lunch, not forgetting a 
 couple of apples apiece. We will wear stout 
 shoes and old clothes, for this will be tramp- 
 ing, pure and simple. 
 
 We are away now, and this is the first 
 slope, where these oaks are. The grass is 
 thick and green, and a robin is hopping se- 
 dately along at the top of the hill. The lake 
 shines and shimmers through the trees, and a 
 crow is cawing somewhere overhead. There 
 is the very breath and feeling of out-of-doors 
 among those massive trunks and waving 
 branches. See how the sunlight scatters fine 
 flakes, as a sower might send with his palm 
 shining handfuls of grain over a March field. 
 There is a singing in the very bosom of the 
 hills, a palpitating of life in the leaves, that 
 tells of the fervent passion of summer, the 
 blossoming of June. 
 
 Down in that pocket of the slopes, walled 
 round by alders and brush, is a little pool, 
 shallow, and hidden from everything but the 
 70 
 
WALKING AS AN ART 
 
 prying eye of the sun. If an eager-eyed 
 water-spaniel were to browse around in those 
 alders to-day he might find nothing for his 
 trouble. Later on, in July, possibly, he would 
 disturb a spritelike bird, which would rise out 
 of the alders like a ray of light and disap- 
 pear as swiftly as a shadow a woodcock. 
 
 Now here we dip toward a sandy point 
 that extends into the lake, and we will wait 
 awhile on this high bank and take an obser- 
 vation. A little distance from the lake's edge 
 a grebe is swimming. The boys and hunters 
 call them " hell-divers." They are greatly in 
 use as targets by ambitious riflemen and boys 
 who go about with revolvers peppering away 
 at everything alive. Their miraculous swift- 
 ness in diving renders their persecution almost 
 entirely harmless. Those two small, dark 
 specks just about to alight on the end of the 
 point are spotted sand-pipers. And now up 
 and around to the first bridge. There goes 
 a big garter-snake. He is perfectly harmless 
 don't kill him. A golden-winged wood- 
 pecker is calling from another hill, and now 
 he flies across, dipping and rising as he goes. 
 You should walk in the fields and the woods 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 year in and year out until you could tell all 
 of the common birds by their flight a quarter 
 of a mile away. Get your ornithology direct 
 from the woods, streams, and fields. 
 
 In walking, hold yourself well together. 
 Walk erect and from the hips, swinging your 
 arms easily. Never hump along or toe in. 
 It is perfectly simple to do this, and the easi- 
 est thing in the world to have a style and 
 verve in walking. And not more than one 
 man or woman in a thousand walks decently 
 well ; the rest amble, sprawl, slouch, or weave 
 along in a manner to disgrace pedestrianism. 
 Cultivate a chest well forward, the soft flan- 
 nel shirt, the hip movement, and the carriage 
 of a man and a soldier! Notice a West 
 Pointer! Why, he handles himself like a 
 greyhound. Seek for an erect carriage, so 
 that when you are seventy, men will turn and 
 say, " he carries himself like a man! " 
 
 Here is the bridge. The water is low 
 now and you can see sunfish swimming in the 
 shadows of the bridge timbers. Do you 
 remember the " pin-hook " days of your boy- 
 hood? Lily-pads are thick here, and far- 
 ther up the creek you can see snowy water- 
 72 
 
WALKING AS AN ART 
 
 lilies floating on the surface. The red-winged 
 blackbirds are down here at the creek, and 
 their liquid clean whistle, " oak-a-lee, oak-a- 
 lee, clack-clack, oak-a-lee," sounds sweetly 
 over the water. In those tall rushes and 
 grasses you would " jump " a bittern if you 
 were to push into the cover with a skiff. 
 
 We turn into the woods here and begin to 
 go around the head of the lake. This timber 
 is squirrel-timber. That tree there what 
 would I call it? A massive trunk with no 
 branches for a height of fifty feet from the 
 ground. It isn't an oak, an ash, an elm, a 
 hickory, basswood, or sycamore. Oh, you 
 have noticed that bead of gummy sap in that 
 crack of the trunk, have you? a wild-cherry 
 tree. You would have hardly believed that 
 they could grow to be such splendid trees. 
 
 There goes a fox-squirrel. He is just 
 stretching himself across the grass and, doubt- 
 less, believes himself to be in imminent dan- 
 ger. We will give him a chase for the nearest 
 den. Now he goes up an oak, and in the very 
 top he whirls around a limb and the wind 
 dangles the tip of his fluffy red tail from the 
 treetop. 
 
 73 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 Down there to the left is a tamarack 
 swamp. Years ago I shot ruffed grouse 
 there, but the grouse are all gone from this 
 part of the country now. There are quite a 
 number of rabbits in there yet, and a few 
 owls. How dark the dense green of tam- 
 aracks shows against the lighter shades of 
 the surrounding woods ! The blue glint of a 
 jaybird's wings gleams in the branches here 
 and there, and woodpeckers and nuthatches 
 are numerous. Now to the lake again, and 
 we shall find a myriad of gorgeous dragon- 
 flies darting about the edges of the water. 
 That ripple extending out into deeper water 
 was where a bass or a pickerel slid away as 
 we came toward the lake. He was sunning 
 himself in the shallow water and our appear- 
 ance frightened him away. There's a frog 
 by the side of that stone. A bull-frog? No, 
 a meadow-frog. A bull-frog has a very much 
 darker color; this one is bright green with 
 dark spots. You have walked seven miles and 
 are not perceptibly tired. 
 
 From this opening you can see across the 
 pasture, which is really a meadow. A spar- 
 row-hawk is poising high in the air, his wings 
 
 74 
 
WALKING AS AN ART 
 
 beating the ether vigorously, as his body keeps 
 in one place over the field. The mouse creep- 
 ing about is in immediate danger. That 
 graven image on the side hill of the pasture 
 is a woodchuck. He is watching the scenery 
 lest any of it should slip away. He will 
 squat in that same position for hours if he is 
 undisturbed. Contemplation is the chief end 
 and aim of the woodchuck. 
 
 As we come over, and start to cross the 
 meadow a half-dozen bobolinks are pirouet- 
 ting and tumbling in the air, drunk with the 
 wine of summer and riotous over a wilderness 
 of clover-blossoms. They have routed the 
 red-winged blackbirds from the rushes and are 
 undisputed masters of the field a tipsy crew 
 of aerial Bacchanalians, with nothing to do 
 but rise on fluttering wings and sift melody 
 through the sieves of sunlight that are waver- 
 ing above the grasses. Such a madcap, dis- 
 reputable band of joyous songsters ! Such a 
 disregard of all theories of moon-filtered pas- 
 sion of nightingale, or sky-flung music of 
 English lark! Here is the bubbling over of 
 the beaker of summer at last the plash and 
 tinkle of raindrops on glass the gurgle of 
 
 75 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 reed-fretted rivulets the very pipes of Pan. 
 Over and over the strains rise, fall, and 
 waver, to break forth again and again. And 
 well may you listen, far from the roads, far 
 from the town, in nature's secret cloister, to 
 the June-spun tissue of the music of the bobo- 
 links 
 
 " Crying 'Phew, shew, Bob-o'-Lincoln! 
 See, see, Wadolincoln; 
 Down among the tickle-tops, 
 Hiding in the buttercups, 
 I know the saucy chap, 
 I see his shining cap, 
 
 Bobbing in the clover there. See! See! See! 
 Bobolink, 
 Whisk-o'-dink, 
 Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait.' " 
 
 This is the stone-wall. Nine miles, and we 
 are half-way round. We have loafed, we 
 have walked, we have observed. Honestly, 
 now, would you have seen one-tenth as much 
 from the road? Would you have lugged 
 your wheel with you into all the by-ways and 
 nooks where we have been to-day? What do 
 you think of walking as a lost art, anyway? 
 
FISHING FOR "BULL- 
 HEADS" 
 
 THE bull-pout or horned pout, also 
 called the "bull-head," is a meek 
 and lowly fish, with a voracious ap- 
 petite for anything which he can cover with 
 his ample spread of jaws. He rarely goes 
 over a pound in weight, but he is both willing 
 and anxious to endeavor to gulp down a piece 
 of bait six inches square. In some parts of 
 the country they call him the " mud-cat." He 
 is the most serious-looking fish in these United 
 States. And although not heralded afar, as 
 the brook-trout and the salmon are, as a food- 
 fish he is one of the most delicious of the 
 fresh-water tribes. He has a tough and 
 leathery skin, which should be removed be- 
 fore he is cooked, and there are two ways of 
 preparing him for the table. The first way 
 is to fry him, with thin strips of bacon to 
 lend that delicate, poetical flavor of the pig 
 to the dish. The second way is to smoke 
 77 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 him, just as you would a white-fish. He is 
 vastly superior to the white-fish in the smoked 
 state, and when fried, with bacon accompani- 
 ment, he divides the homage of the palate 
 with the aristocratic brook-trout and the flaky 
 black bass. 
 
 It is true, of course, that the first necessity 
 for a dish of fried " bull-head " is the " bull- 
 head." And you cannot go out carelessly 
 and amateurishly and drag out the " bull- 
 head " from his lair without any knowledge 
 of his haunts and his peculiarities. He be- 
 longs to a very exclusive, though humble, 
 species of fish, and if you do not understand 
 his habits and humor, and his little eccentrici- 
 ties, he will have none of you, nor you of him. 
 With his large and engulfing mouth, his pig- 
 gish little black eyes, the three sharp horns, 
 one in the centre of his shoulders and one at 
 each side of his fore-shoulders, he is not a 
 'beauty from a piscatorial stand-point. His 
 oily mustachios, similar to those of an Alge- 
 rine pirate, do not add anything to his looks. 
 
 Neither is he a lover of the sunny side of 
 nature. The sweep of sunlight over the wa- 
 ter he shuns. The mud and the contents 
 
 78 
 
FISHING FOR ! ' BULL-HEADS " 
 
 thereof are what he delights in, and the wise 
 fisherman who laughs to scorn the bony pick- 
 erel and the elusive black bass as table-fish, 
 well knows the " bull-head's " plebeian in- 
 stincts and profits nightly by his knowledge. 
 And, look you now, most enthusiastic and 
 scientific angler, adept at the " cast " and lo- 
 quacious as to the proper " fly," this is no 
 speckled tiger of the icy brooks, leaping high 
 in air when he feels the barb, and performing 
 no end of skilled gymnastics when hooked. 
 This is but the slothful " bull-head," dark of 
 color and sedate of life; a denizen of slug- 
 gish waters, and, being exceedingly good to 
 eat, the natural prey of designing man. 
 
 The best rod to catch " bull-heads " with is 
 your good right hand. An old umbrella han- 
 dle makes a nice pole. Any piece of stick, 
 from a section of barrel-stave to a base-ball 
 bat, is good enough for this kind of fishing. 
 The line should be a fairly stout line of any 
 kind or color. The hook shouldn't be a hook. 
 There are fishermen, rank amateurs in the 
 noble sport of " yanking " out " bull-heads," 
 who use hooks in the business, but they are 
 new at the trick. The " bull-head," as has 
 79 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 before been remarked, has three horns con- 
 nected with his anatomy, any one of which is 
 woful sharp, and decidedly painful when in- 
 serted into an angler's frame. These horns 
 are shifted from side to side by the wrig- 
 gling of the fish. The " bull-head," when 
 hoisted from his native heath, twists a great 
 deal when you try to remove him from the 
 hook. And he has an awkward fashion of 
 swallowing the bait clear down to the end of 
 his tail. 
 
 If you get one of these horns into your 
 hand it is one of the most painful and ugly 
 of hurts. It may swell up and cripple your 
 hand for a week or more, and it stings and 
 throbs and gives you infinite trouble. With 
 those three horns, each pointing a different 
 way, it is a delicate job to get the " bull-head " 
 off the barb without getting " horned." 
 
 But how easily all this vexation and pos- 
 sible pain is avoided by the knowing seeker 
 after " bull-heads." He simply ties a square 
 chunk of fat pork to the end of a line and 
 lowers it, with noiseless movement, into the 
 water. 
 
 Then, when the unsuspecting and glad- 
 So 
 
FISHING FOR "BULL-HEADS" 
 
 dened " bull-head " swallows the pork down 
 to the end of his aforementioned tail, a gentle 
 " heave-yo " is made and the surprised fish 
 begins to ascend from his turgid retreat. The 
 flavor of the pork is very dear to him, and 
 stubbornness is one of his marked character- 
 istics, as is also his lack of perceptive facul- 
 ties whence the name " bull-head." So he 
 hangs on to the fat and is up out of the water 
 before he realizes the situation. A gentle 
 jerk or a moderately brisk one and the 
 smooth bait slides out of his body and he 
 flops helplessly at the feet of the fisherman, 
 who, with appropriate ghoulish glee, takes 
 him gingerly by his tail and drops him into a 
 convenient basket. 
 
 And even thus the armored and stubborn 
 " bull-head " may be, and, indeed, is, circum- 
 vented, and the weapons nature has provided 
 him with are made useless by the wiles of man. 
 Therefore leave all fancy paraphernalia of 
 rod and creel, of fly-hook and landing-net, of 
 bait-can and minnow-bucket at home when 
 you go forth to capture the unsophisticated 
 " bull-head." 
 
 It must not seriously be supposed that this 
 81 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 branch of fishing is without its delights. 
 Come with me to the old bridge now and you 
 will see what I mean. Twilight is coming 
 on, and over the hills the nighthawks, long 
 and sharp-pointed of wing, are moving with 
 jerky, irregular flight. Their short, queru- 
 lous cry echoes constantly as they dart about 
 after insects in the upper spaces. Blackbirds 
 are flying past in long lines, and for the most 
 part in sober silence. Robins are coming 
 home to their roosting-places in the tamarack 
 swamp beyond, and after them the turtle- 
 doves, drab meteors in flight, swiftly follow. 
 The bull-frogs are beginning to chant, and 
 veiled shadows are forming thickly toward 
 the east. Distant hills stand like black monu- 
 ments, and up from the west comes the call 
 of a whippoorwill. 
 
 Let us sit by the centre of the bridge as the 
 night comes on. Now the bats are beginning 
 to dodge about, and the shadows grow longer 
 and deeper, and the stars are commencing to 
 show themselves above the trees some of 
 them faintly and timidly; others quite con- 
 fidently and brightly. The birds are gone, 
 and a strange, gloomily shimmering warp 
 82 
 
FISHING FOR " BULL-HEADS " 
 
 and woof of night envelops the creek and 
 spreads out into the lake across still waters. 
 The country road lies, a brownish-gray streak, 
 along the bridge and on the hill beyond, 
 and there is not the sound of a wandering 
 wheel to disturb the silence. Once in a 
 long while there will come the hardly heard 
 tinkle of a bell, but in the main there is 
 only an indescribable lisping murmur of 
 the night. 
 
 The " bull-heads " begin to roam around 
 when night comes, and they are partial to old 
 bridges like this. They are found in schools 
 of twenty or thirty sometimes, and a basket- 
 ful can be caught in a short time. They do 
 not seem to become alarmed by the abstract- 
 ing of their comrades, and the last one of a 
 group of a dozen will take a bait with that 
 same trusting confidence which characterized 
 the action of the first one to come out of the 
 water. Sometimes the u bull-heads " will act 
 capriciously and you may not get a bite for a 
 long time. The " bite " that the " bull-head " 
 gives is simply a steady pull on the pork as 
 he proceeds to engulf it. When you think he 
 has got it down as far as it will go, hoist away 
 
 83 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 slowly and easily. When he comes out bring 
 him right over the basket, if you can, and 
 snap him off in it. 
 
 "Bull-head" fishing is great "family" 
 sport. Two or three families can go down 
 to an old bridge, where the stream is too 
 shallow to drown the children if they drop 
 in the water, and have solid enjoyment in this 
 way. The men can smoke, and the women 
 can gossip; the children can fish; and alto- 
 gether, for a quiet little time outdoors, the 
 pastime of fishing for " bull-heads " must not 
 be despised. And, so far as the fish are 
 concerned, there are no better " pan-fish " in 
 American waters. 
 
 And supposing, as it sometimes happens, 
 that you do not catch any fish; it is pleas- 
 ant on an old bridge, as night throws off 
 every lingering vestige of day and rides the 
 heavens in sable splendor. There is a great 
 concourse of trailing night-winds that now 
 and again lift the rustling rushes and then 
 cease on a floor of tranquil waters. There is, 
 perhaps, the tremulous cry of an owl from 
 the woods and the sound of whispering 
 leaves. Always, if you will listen, there is 
 
FISHING FOR "BULL-HEADS" 
 
 high above, a sound as of long waves in the 
 uttermost vaults where the pale stars lie. 
 
 On summer nights the signal stars 
 
 Flash o'er a wide, wild waste of seas 
 The signal lights of ruddy Mars, 
 
 Orion and the Pleiades, 
 And down the wind a murmur sweeps 
 
 Like whir of wings in circling flights, 
 The ebb and flow of mystic deeps 
 
 On summer nights. 
 
ALONG A COUNTRY 
 ROAD 
 
 THE dust is very thick and white and 
 soft, like a woollen blanket. The 
 road is broad in places, and espe- 
 cially at the bottoms of the hills, or in level 
 stretches of land. On the crests of the hills 
 and in the woods it narrows sometimes to a 
 dusty streak. There is an individuality in a 
 country road if one takes the trouble to ob- 
 serve. Where the road widens out in the 
 sunlight by meadows and fields of grain it 
 seems to invite the confidence of the traveller. 
 The invitation is emphasized by hospitable 
 clusters of blackberries on the way-side bushes. 
 But in the cool, secluded depths of the woods, 
 where the sun's rays are beaten back by shields 
 of oak and hickory foliage, and where the 
 hush is broken by only an occasional bird- 
 note, the old road seems to say, " I have my 
 secrets, too." 
 
 Where this road runs there was an Indian 
 86 
 
ALONG A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 trail many years ago. In the timber next to 
 the river-bank the aborigines buried their 
 dead in branches of trees, with winds and 
 the ripple of water to mourn for them. On 
 the tops of these hills are yet to be found 
 bowl-shaped stone mortars where the Indians 
 ground their corn in early days. 
 
 They say the ghosts of departed warriors 
 travel this road, and that on summer nights 
 ponies go by, dragging the poles on which 
 are laid the " wickiup " and camp trappings. 
 After them, the warrior and squaw and silent 
 pappoose go through the deep woods down 
 and out to the prairies beyond. Always these 
 phantom caravans are going to the west. But 
 where the unshod hoofs of ponies trod, and 
 the plumes of mighty chiefs waved, came the 
 iron destiny of the white man, and this trail 
 blended into a highway, while the Indian 
 faded as mist melts at the touch of summer 
 sunlight. 
 
 The river dips and bends under high bluffs 
 and against low shores and reedy shallows, 
 and seems to be running a race with the white 
 ribbon of dust that stretches past over valley 
 and slope. The road is a silent racer that 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 runs breathlessly to the great hills, noiselessly 
 passes the woods and hollows, and leaps with 
 shadowy flight to the prairies. Echoless it 
 traverses all space before it. 
 
 But the river is singing' as it gallops down 
 the rocky reaches and out over pebbled shal- 
 lows, and its song is as varied as the never- 
 ending change of season and circumstance. 
 There is a perfect liquid babble of laughing 
 gossip across the shingly bars, and a whisper- 
 ing of stealthy secrets to the reeds along the 
 island sedges. Where the hills hang over the 
 water there are deeper echoes; and a long 
 wash of spent ripples flows on the steadfast 
 barriers that sink their foundations in the riv- 
 er's flow. There are trebles and minor tones 
 in many keys; and now and then, where a 
 town's steeples whiten the blue and the chim- 
 neys of factories send curling smoke-wreaths 
 aloft, there is an organ roll of prisoned wa- 
 ters the roar of mill-race and sluice-vexed 
 currents, the fretting of the river in its chains. 
 
 Here now, as we pass, is a country post- 
 office. It is a weather-beaten little building 
 with a block in front of it to aid people in 
 mounting their horses, and a long pole sup- 
 88 
 
ALONG A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 ported by two posts to hitch teams to. Far 
 away on the hills and in the woods are lone 
 souls to whom this dingy spot is Mecca, and 
 hither, and especially on Saturdays, they set 
 their faces in hopeful pilgrimage. Through 
 dusty lengths of uneventful miles they come 
 to test the fiat of fate to see if somewhere 
 a hand has reached out to open the door of 
 solitude. Among these seekers are the aris- 
 tocrats of the post-office who have their own 
 boxes, to which boxes the country weekly 
 comes. 
 
 In the wheat- and oat-fields all day the 
 lights and shadows run riot. Ever since the 
 gray veil of morning was brushed aside, 
 and 
 
 " A light wind blew from the gates of the sun 
 And waves of shadow went over the wheat, " 
 
 have these alternating cloud-woven pictures 
 flashed and faded. All day, while the chip- 
 ping sparrow sings in fence-corners and 
 clumps of hedge, and rattling wheels stir up 
 powdery dust, does this panorama of the 
 winds and clouds pass on. The quail's clear 
 whistle echoes gallantly from posts or top- 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 rails, and a warring hawk " chirrs " men- 
 acingly from over the corn. The chink of 
 grasshoppers sounds at intervals, and mayhap 
 at the dead level of noon a horn's mellow 
 blast comes faintly across the fields. All 
 these rustic interludes come and go and are 
 forgotten. But over the canvas of cloth-of- 
 gold, on the wheat, and the lighter gold of 
 bending oats, all day the shadows chase the 
 sunlight and the sunlight follows the shad- 
 ows, and a myriad wind-wrought landscapes 
 are painted as they pass. 
 
 By the bridge in the woods the river 
 widens out into a reedy pool where a single 
 water-lily rests like a snow-flake on the tawny 
 waters. Here the reeds grow tall and thick, 
 and sighing grasses echo of Pan. Here the 
 dragon-flies dart in and out, and the hills 
 stand guard. And here might Pan himself 
 have plucked a reed from the depths and set 
 lip to the bruised stem to send out a wail of 
 marshy music till the listening earth had 
 cried : 
 
 " Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! 
 Piercing sweet by the river, 
 Blinding sweet, O great god Pan, " 
 90 
 
ALONG A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 and the ghosts of all the departed Naiads 
 waited with dripping locks for such dulcet 
 clamor to cease. 
 
 The road through the woods has all the 
 solemnity of an aisle of the Druids. There 
 is something in an ancient oak which will 
 not be dismissed lightly. How many storms 
 have rocked this veteran to sleep in winter 
 stress and turmoil? How many suns have 
 shimmered among his leaves when summer 
 ruled the land? Squirrels have played in his 
 branches and the dove moaned through his 
 leaves. The stars have spangled the skies 
 above him, and a thousand rains have 
 quenched his thirsty roots. The moccasin of 
 the Indian has pressed the trail which led by 
 him, the white man's footstep has followed, 
 and both are now as the dust they crossed. 
 But the oak bides. 
 
 Through stretches of vine-tangled thicket, 
 by open meadow and fields of grain the road 
 winds. It passes by pools where cows stand 
 knee-deep in water and blue flag-lilies rise in 
 hosts, each one veined as delicately as a lady's 
 hand. It passes slopes that flame out in em- 
 broidered banners of wild-flowers, brilliant 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 against thick grass which surrounds them. 
 Here a windmill is creaking in the summer 
 breeze; there a lone tree stands sentinelling 
 the entrance to a pasture. Occasionally one 
 meets a passing team and is greeted with the 
 careless wave of the hand or " good-day," 
 the salutation to the stranger which marks the 
 etiquette of country highways. In city streets 
 you meet the thousands and you greet the 
 few. On the rustic thoroughfare, if you are 
 to the manner born, you will drive to the 
 right and salute all whom you pass, beggar 
 or horseman. 
 
 Of birds along the road you will see many. 
 The shy cat-bird dives into the bushes as you 
 go by and complains of your presence. The 
 robin flies over and blackbirds scold and chat- 
 ter in the woods. Meadow-larks perch on 
 the fences and make many preparations for 
 flight as you approach, before they finally take 
 wing across adjacent pastures. The golden- 
 winged woodpecker flits along the road, 
 keeping a safe distance from you, and occa- 
 sionally giving his piercing call. Crows stalk 
 in the meadows, out of shot-gun range, and 
 eye the passers-by warily. The jay dodges 
 92 
 
ALONG A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 about in the treetops, and the cruel shrike or 
 " butcher-bird " haunts hedges by the side of 
 the road. 
 
 And when the shadows droop to the hills 
 and the light fades from the waters; when 
 the singing of twilight comes in faint-drawn 
 chords of softest minors, then the old road 
 takes on a dusky gray that fades to brown, 
 and in near-by woods the line of brown deep- 
 ens. All sounds of river-music have lapsed 
 to silence, and the harvest-moon bends like 
 a bow in western skies. By way-side ponds 
 the frogs have already begun to sound their 
 castanets, and home-bound birds have gone 
 past swiftly and silently to the harboring nests 
 which awaited them. The hush of night 
 draws near. There is only one touch more 
 to close the chapter; one sound to lull the 
 sleepy birds and fill the woodland spaces with 
 drowsy melody. And presently, as the first 
 note of a whippoorwill comes from the more 
 remote thickets, there follows a medley of 
 jangled brass, a clangorous and broken chorus 
 of bells. And in the shadows, followed by a 
 shadow, the cows come through the reaches 
 of odorous dust, and by the bars as you pass 
 
 93 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 they surge with a great cling-clanging into a 
 barn-yard ahead, and night folds down a leaf, 
 while darkness settles on the country road. 
 
 94 
 
WOODCOCK SHOOTING 
 
 WOODCOCK shooting in most of 
 the states is rapidly becoming a 
 thing of the past. Yet to those 
 few sportsmen who swear by it, this sport is 
 the most fascinating that the gun affords. The 
 increase in drainage and the clearing away of 
 the natural cover, together with injudicious 
 game-laws, is gradually putting an end to 
 this branch of shooting. 
 
 The woodcock, wald-schneppe, longbill, 
 bog-sucker, timber- doodle, or big-headed 
 snipe he has various other names is a bird 
 of the night, a frequenter of thickets and 
 brushy cover. He likes to be as far from the 
 madding crowd as he conveniently can get, 
 and hence he is not so approachable and eas- 
 ily found as his half-brother, the jack-snipe of 
 the prairies and boggy pastures. And yet he 
 will plump down into little spots of cover 
 very close to the habitations of men, and re- 
 turn there year after year. I have shot 
 woodcock along the rivers so close to a main 
 95 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 travelled road that an ear of corn might 
 have been tossed into the place by any pass- 
 ing country-man. They lurk in little coverts 
 around lakes in the hills within gunshot of 
 " campers " and cottages, and only the pry- 
 ing nose of a good dog, or the persevering 
 efforts of a persistent hunter can rout them 
 out. It is possible to shoot woodcock with- 
 out a dog, but it is not pleasant. 
 
 A good pointer or setter, of course, can 
 find the birds when they are in the country, 
 and in fairly open ground a man can follow 
 the dog and shoot over " points " after a 
 fashion. But there are places which a man 
 cannot very well "beat" thoroughly jun- 
 gles where a dog can barely worm a passage 
 and in these almost impenetrable tangles 
 of " pucker " brush, alders, and twisted un- 
 dergrowth the woodcock is quite frequently 
 found, stowed away in the shadiest of moist 
 corners very seldom on the edges, but often 
 right in the " dead jimp and middle " of the 
 maze. There a spaniel is needed to stir him 
 up and make him fly over, around, or through 
 the cover. It is true " snap shooting," with 
 no time to follow the bird or enter into elab- 
 
WOODCOCK SHOOTING 
 
 orate instantaneous calculations as to where 
 to " hold." It is just a matter of throwing 
 the gun to the shoulder and firing at the spot 
 where you think he ought to be when your 
 shot reaches that spot what might be called 
 instinctive marksmanship. 
 
 The spaniel, either a cocker- or a water- 
 spaniel, is fitted for the work, and will rum- 
 mage around in the brush and fairly nose the 
 bird into taking wing. I remember an in- 
 stance of a dog catching a full-grown wood- 
 cock. The bird had started up through the 
 thick brush and had struck a twig, probably, 
 and fallen back. The spaniel caught it by 
 one wing as it rose the second time. I heard 
 the first fluttering, and next the second start, 
 and then a prolonged fluttering. On break- 
 ing through the cover I found the woodcock 
 in the dog's mouth, fast by one wing. 
 
 Let it not be imagined for an instant that 
 woodcock shooting at any season is parlor- 
 sport. In the summer, in thick cover, a man 
 would not need more than a seal ring or a 
 deep blush for his costume, if it were not for 
 the brush and briers. As it is, some of the 
 hunters strip down to shoes, trousers, and un- 
 
 97 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 dershirt. The perspiration pours down from 
 you in streams. It is a regular out-doors 
 Turkish bath, and the work in boring into 
 the dense thickets, stumbling over fallen logs, 
 and kicking through vines and tangled under- 
 brush enlarges a man's vocabulary. Frank 
 Forester's favorite sport was shooting " tim- 
 ber-doodles," and New York State was for- 
 merly the " happy hunting-ground " for these 
 birds. In some of the eastern and middle 
 states, together with two or three of the 
 southern states, fair woodcock shooting can 
 still be had in favored localities. In Canada, 
 by reason of greater attention to the game- 
 laws, the shooting has not gone back so rap- 
 idly as it has in the United States. 
 
 The flight of the bird is eccentric, swift, 
 and puzzling to the average shooter. Some- 
 times a woodcock rises straight up through 
 the trees; at other times he is up and over a 
 clump of bushes like a ray of light flashed 
 through a shutter; and again he will rise, 
 dodge around a tree, and with one long, 
 quick swerve, be out of gunshot. His flight 
 has not the whir of a quail or the ruffed 
 grouse, nor the sudden start a jack-snipe 
 
WOODCOCK SHOOTING 
 
 gives. With the woodcock the motion is 
 vaguely, impalpably swift. You see a golden- 
 brown streak in the atmosphere for the 
 briefest second. You see the long bill and 
 hear the creaking whistle. But how sudden- 
 ly that phantom flight ceases; how short 
 a space the picture hangs in the summer 
 air! 
 
 The woodcock bores for his food like the 
 jack-snipe, and his appetite is prodigious. He 
 will eat his own weight in angle-worms in a 
 very brief time. He loves the ground about 
 the spring-holes by a river-bank, and the 
 brushy, soft spots around creeks where they 
 empty into the rivers. He haunts shaded 
 thickets where the ground is moist and easily 
 penetrated by his long bill. He feeds at 
 night, and the places he frequents are easily 
 distinguished by his borings, which give the 
 ground a pepper-box appearance where he 
 has stalked about investigating the yielding 
 soil. When alarmed, he is away like a 
 shadow into thicket or adjacent cover. He 
 is not a bird of extended flight, but when 
 flushed darts into some convenient hiding- 
 place near at hand rather than fly a consider- 
 99 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 able distance, as ruffed grouse or quail will 
 fly when hunted persistently. 
 
 In color the woodcock is most richly plu- 
 maged in golden brown, with darker markings 
 on the back. His head is round and large, 
 his neck thick, and his bill is only a trifle 
 shorter than the bill of the jack-snipe. The 
 female is the larger of the two. From five to 
 seven ounces for a full-grown bird is fair 
 weight, although exceptionally heavy birds 
 are occasionally brought to bag which will 
 weigh eight ounces and over. The European 
 woodcock will run to twelve ounces and is 
 much larger than his American cousin. A 
 true game-bird, the woodcock has an aristo- 
 cratic air about him. All true game-birds are 
 as cleanly put up and handsome as blooded 
 racers. Nature doesn't build on guesswork 
 principles. 
 
 In the days of Lucullus and other Roman 
 epicures the long-billed feeders were in great 
 demand; and as long as the last woodcock is 
 alive he will be relentlessly hunted. In the 
 south many are killed by fire-hunting at night. 
 An iron basket is filled with blazing pitch- 
 pine knots carried by one man, while the 
 100 
 
WOODCOCK SHOOTING 
 
 other man shoots the birds at short range 
 with a sawed-off shot-gun. 
 
 In hunting woodcocks the lightest and 
 toughest kind of clothing is a necessity. 
 Stout, light shoes, duck hunting-trousers, and 
 a coarse-grained " hickory " shirt, with a 
 linen handkerchief in lieu of a collar, make 
 a good combination. A peaked fore-and-aft 
 hunting-cap of light duck or canvas is a good 
 thing to keep twigs and bushes out of your 
 eyes. Use a belt to hold your trousers with. 
 In thick cover a coat, however light, is too 
 hot. A dozen or so shells in your pocket will 
 be enough ammunition, and a game-carrier is 
 preferable to hold your birds instead of jam- 
 ming them into the pockets of a coat. Draw 
 the birds at once after shooting them, and fill 
 with grass. Keep them in the open air and 
 in the shade as much as possible. The gun 
 should be very light, cylinder-bored in both 
 barrels, and of twelve or sixteen gauge. Use 
 smokeless powder. Number eight or nine 
 shot is amply large. Don't forget to take a 
 dog along. Get a spaniel if you can, and 
 if not, get a pointer or a setter. A pointer 
 can stand the heat better and a setter can 
 101 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 stand the rough going best. Take your 
 choice. 
 
 A hard day's woodcock shooting, followed 
 by a swim in the river, will put an end to 
 any case of insomnia. It is also excellent for 
 " the blues." It is great sport, and to some 
 men more fascinating than any other branch 
 of field or marsh shooting. In the fall the 
 weather is, of course, much cooler, but I do 
 not know myself of any place where good fall 
 woodcock shooting can be found. Occasion- 
 ally woodcocks are shot while hunting quail, 
 in old orchards and wet cornfields, and along- 
 side hills sloping to creeks in the timber. 
 
 102 
 
UNDER A GREENWOOD- 
 TREE 
 
 NORTHWARD over a long, sandy 
 slope the woods may be seen 
 hard and soft maple, beech, and 
 sycamore; mostly hard maple and beech, 
 with a mere sprinkling of sycamores. Occa- 
 sionally there is an ash-tree. In the pasture 
 this side of the forest a glacier has left its 
 sign-manual across the hills. More ages than 
 a man could guess have lapsed since that huge 
 mass came drifting down from the north, 
 but even in these days a hint of its grinding 
 course is evident in deep valleys cut through 
 the hill-tops, and scattered along its path the 
 farmers have found " float " copper, which 
 the icy mass dislodged and brought down in 
 its powerful grasp. The dense green of the 
 woods stands firm against the sky, and an 
 old rail fence hugs close to its borders. Far 
 above, a solitary crow crosses, and higher 
 still a buzzard swings slanting pinions and 
 103 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 executes a masterly curve whose precision is 
 like that of a wheeling line of perfectly 
 trained infantry. A flicker's golden-brown 
 wings beat regularly as he flies over the 
 field, and a blue-jay's call comes queru- 
 lously as we clamber over the fence and enter 
 the forest. 
 
 The first thing that fixes the attention of the 
 intruder is the sense of silence that broods 
 among the squat trunks of the beeches and the 
 taller figures of the other trees. The beech, 
 more than any other tree, seems built on al- 
 most human lines, so smooth is its bark, so 
 graceful are its outlines, and so solid is its 
 general appearance. A little way up from the 
 ground its subsidiary branches spring out, and 
 so thickly that the growth is as close as that 
 of a bush. Everywhere the limbs shoot out, 
 heavily covered with lesser twigs, and all of 
 these are thronged with compact, dark-green 
 leaves, small and pointed. Birds seldom seek 
 the beech-tree, and rarely animals. So dense 
 is the foliage when the branches start from 
 the body of the tree that it is almost impos- 
 sible to make any progress toward the top of 
 the tree or in any direction from the trunk. 
 104 
 
UNDER A GREENWOOD-TREE 
 
 The hard maples are among the tallest 
 and most graceful of all trees. They grow 
 farther apart than the beeches, and do not 
 begin to branch out until their trunks have 
 reached to a considerable height. Among a 
 clump or group of these trees, with the sun- 
 light falling through on their delicate leaves 
 and fine outlines, there is a sense of some inte- 
 rior of a vast cathedral, so much is the feeling 
 of arch, pillar, dome, and fresco suggested. 
 
 There is little to be seen here either of bird 
 or animal life. Sometimes a small red squir- 
 rel, white-bellied, and with eloquent tail, will 
 scurry up a tree, pause on some lower limb, 
 curl his tail over his back, sit up, eye you 
 curiously, and then unhinge himself and lie 
 close to the bark as if to escape observation. 
 If you frighten him from his perch or his 
 hold on the bark, he will dart up the tree like 
 a streak of sunlight and put the tree-trunk 
 between you and himself. He is a very curi- 
 ous little creature, and will come back if there 
 is an interval of silence, and with inquisitive, 
 beady eyes, survey you until you make another 
 movement that sends him out of sight. 
 
 The sycamores are marvellous shapes 
 105 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 among all this greenery. Tall and sombre- 
 colored for perhaps fifteen feet from the 
 ground, they begin to shed their rusty red- 
 dish bark as they climb higher, and soon ap- 
 pear in a beautiful creamy white that shines 
 like marble among the surrounding trees. 
 And numerous slender and pallid branches 
 are thrown out from the main trunk, adorned 
 with many leaves. The whole effect is sculpt- 
 uresque in the highest sense. No splotch or 
 blot mars the marble-like contour of many of 
 these woodland Apollos. They seem hardly 
 ever ruffled by the winds that sweep across. 
 Birds flit in their branches and along their 
 symmetrical outlines the sunlight falls, weav- 
 ing many a lacelike bit of golden tapestry 
 between the shadows of the leaves. 
 
 A slender, feminine quality is perceptible 
 in most of the sycamores, but occasionally 
 some sturdier one stands like a young Greek 
 stripped for a race, with arms outstretched 
 and long locks ruffling in the breeze. There 
 is a caste and distinction among forest-trees, 
 and the sycamore is one of the stateliest and 
 most aristocratic. 
 
 The lone ash stands like a fighter, its close- 
 106 
 
UNDER A GREENWOOD-TREE 
 
 grown fibre telling of its strength. It is not 
 so columnlike in its lines as the beech, nor so 
 tall as the maple, nor anything like as elegant 
 as the sycamore. But the herculean power 
 is there, and a certain suppleness as well 
 something that tells of tough timber, of slow 
 growth and resolute, defying storm and 
 wind, reliant and contained. Its roots dive 
 deep into the dark earth and spread through 
 and under, gripping fast to the soil. The 
 lightning may fall on forest-aisles and thun- 
 der come in the wake of roaring winds, but 
 the ash holds its branches sturdily to the 
 blasts, secure in the knowledge of its matted 
 foundations. It is the type of constancy 
 among trees, strong, pliable, and enduring. 
 It is seldom, if ever, uprooted, and nothing 
 but a lightning-bolt can suffice to lay it low. 
 Among the other trees it is almost a forest 
 Ishmaelite, for its brethren are seldom seen 
 among these gatherings of beech and maple 
 and the lordly sycamore. 
 
 Of bird life in these woods there is not 
 one-tenth the variety of the southern and 
 middle southern woods. 
 
 The watchful and sable-pinioned crow is 
 107 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 here, and often in quite large numbers. He 
 sails above the woods and alights on the tops 
 of the tallest trees, keeping a sharp lookout 
 for suspicious-looking characters, especially 
 any one with a gun. When he nests he usu- 
 ally does so in a high oak somewhere along 
 the banks of a river or in places where the 
 oak-groves stand. His monotonous cawing 
 and his black wings are common enough in 
 these forests. 
 
 The woodpeckers the golden-winged, the 
 red-headed woodpecker, and the downy and 
 hairy woodpecker are seen sometimes on 
 the outskirts of woods such as these, but sel- 
 dom in their innermost depths. The red- 
 head is the only one who ventures into the 
 inner sanctuaries, and he is usually found 
 perched on some lightning-blasted trunk, 
 beating a tattoo, and at times sending his 
 shrill call through the treetops. The golden- 
 winged woodpecker skirts the edges, flitting 
 from rail to rail of the environing fences and 
 flying to the fields when disturbed. The other 
 members of the woodpecker family frequent 
 the scattered portions where trees grow far- 
 ther apart, and here they seek the dead 
 108 
 
UNDER A GREENWOOD-TREE 
 
 trees to climb and forage on. Blackbirds are 
 sometimes seen in flocks, the redwinged and 
 the crow-blackbirds going together. They go 
 into the edges of the woods, and sometimes, 
 where hard maples form a grove, they will 
 fly in and chatter until something scares them 
 away. The cuckoo, or " rain-crow/' as he is 
 sometimes termed, haunts thickety portions of 
 the woods, the undergrowth that stands along 
 some portions of the forest. He will not fly 
 at the approach of an idler, but will wait on 
 a fence-post or twig and eye the intruder 
 fearlessly. 
 
 Blackberry vines and ferns are scattered 
 all through the timber, and splotches of moss 
 girdle the bottoms of tree-trunks. Sometimes 
 a ruffed grouse thunders up from a covert, 
 his strong wings carrying him out of sight 
 quickly. Rabbits are scarce, but at times a 
 brown body will scamper away through the 
 brush, a white tail bobbing up and down as 
 he goes. Snakes do not seem to frequent these 
 woods at all. 
 
 Of' all things that seem most significant in 
 bird or animal life in these gatherings of 
 heavily foliaged and silent trees the turtle- 
 109 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 dove or mourning-dove comes first. Its 
 mournful, melodious call comes sometimes at 
 midday and sometimes in the evening. Al- 
 ways it is the essence of a chastened melan- 
 choly, a saddened moan for the stillness that 
 wraps the forest " coo, coo, coo ; coo-ee 
 coo." Sometimes a pair of them may be 
 seen whirling in graceful flight through the 
 sky, coming back to their roosting-places. 
 
 When twilight gathers on the hills and de- 
 scends on the woods, the dark vistas of the 
 forest gloom and gather their robes of 
 shadow about them and wait. The stars 
 come out and the moon rides by, and through 
 the loom of night wriggling bats dodge and 
 cross. The mink and weasel are abroad now, 
 and dozing owls have ruffled their feathers 
 and opened their large, unwinking eyes. Un- 
 der the moon and stars the woods brood, and 
 over the leaves the whisperings of night-winds 
 come softly, telling of darkness and the dis- 
 solution of the day. 
 
 no 
 
PAN-FISHING 
 
 IN the art of " casting," or the science 
 of " still-fishing " for game-fishes, the 
 average woman or boy rarely becomes 
 adept. In vacation-time, when their thoughts 
 turn lightly to angling, they content them- 
 selves with the lesser grades of fish and the 
 more tranquil methods of capture. The sport 
 of " pan-fishing," or fishing for those partic- 
 ular fish whose excellencies shine brighter in 
 the frying-pan, is a most popular pastime 
 about the lakes and rivers. It is in vogue 
 principally among the ladies and small boys. 
 It is a true art in itself, but can easily be 
 made common and ignoble by an inattention 
 to details. It is a soothing sport, entirely de- 
 void of the excitement attending the capture 
 of black bass or muskallunge, and yet there 
 is a gentle fascination about it. 
 
 The first fish in the scale of excellence as a 
 pan-fish is the perch the American yellow 
 perch, with a string of local names on his es- 
 cutcheon. He sometimes weighs as much as 
 in 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 a pound and a quarter, and is really a very 
 handsome fish. The small perch are just as 
 eager to take the hook as the large ones. The 
 bait may be either angle-worms or a small 
 piece of perch meat cut from a lately de- 
 ceased perch. The perch-meat bait is cleaner 
 to handle than worms and the fish to take it 
 quite as readily. Perch are free biters, sel- 
 dom dilly-dallying about a bait, but just grab- 
 bing it and starting away for a quiet spot 
 wherein to enjoy it. A bright red " bobber " 
 adds to the pleasure, for in seeing the " bob- 
 ber " go under there is a thrill of enjoyment 
 which no mere tug at a plain line could ever 
 give. A blue or white " bobber " is not 
 nearly so effective. It seems that blue and 
 white, and even yellow, blend too easily with 
 the water, sky, and sunlight, while the red 
 " bobber " the true danger-signal always 
 presents a vivid contrast to the surroundings, 
 and any motion on its part is immediately ap- 
 parent to the angler. 
 
 The grass bass, sometimes called the calico 
 
 bass, red-eyed bass, and goggle-eyed perch, is 
 
 found in the same places frequented by the 
 
 yellow perch, and he is a very easy fish to 
 
 112 
 
PAN-FISHING 
 
 land when hooked. Blue-gilled sunfish and 
 the common sunfish also haunt the spots where 
 perch are found, and are susceptible to the 
 same temptations, as regards angle-worms and 
 fresh-cut perch meat. 
 
 Fishing for pan-fish is very good sport if 
 properly managed. In the first place a spick- 
 span clean boat should be selected, one that is 
 clinker-built, wide, and not easily tipped. Get 
 the prettiest girl possible to go with you. Let 
 her do all the fishing. It will keep you busy 
 attending to baiting the hook, taking off the 
 fish, stringing them, cutting bait, and keeping 
 up a running comment of airy persiflage. A 
 girl who is not indifferent to the joys of yank- 
 ing out the toothsome and inoffensive pan- 
 fish is the kind you want one who is enthusi- 
 astic about clouds, landscape, the ripples over 
 the surface of the lake, and the hornless cattle 
 grazing on distant slopes. Beware of a blase 
 girl. Nothing is worse, excepting the blase 
 man. 
 
 The particular nooks where pan-fish hide 
 are along the shores of lakes in the lake re- 
 gion, and around bulrush-beds they can gen- 
 erally be found all in a democratic gathering 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 yellow perch, sunfish, bluegills, goggle-eyes, 
 and occasionally the crappies. Each one is 
 patiently waiting to be lifted out of his ele- 
 ment to adorn a " stringer." A word as to 
 the stringer. Get a steel chain stringer and 
 never trust a cord or fish-line, however stout. 
 For in your overweening pride you may find 
 occasion to " hist " the string up to show it 
 to some one and the string may break and 
 sow your fishes broadcast back into the depths 
 of the lake again. This often happens. With 
 a wire chain stringer or a steel chain stringer 
 you can do this display business with the ut- 
 most impunity. 
 
 One of the beauties about pan-fishing is 
 that the biggest fish do not get away at 
 least, not permanently. If you inadvertently 
 lose a fish, bait up again and try him once 
 more. A perch will munch and munch until 
 all is gone and then return to the charge 
 as often as bait is renewed. The bluegills 
 and the rest of the crowd all follow suit, and 
 when a crowd of pan-fish begin to take the 
 hook they bite fast and furiously. The small 
 hooks used enable the anglers to put back 
 into the water unharmed all the smaller fish. 
 114 
 
PAN-FISHING 
 
 It is not every day that a good catch of pan- 
 fish can be made. The wind and the weather 
 must be right. When the sun falls blindingly 
 on level stretches of water which is un- 
 wrinkled by a solitary ripple, except when a 
 turtle's head is thrust above the surface, then 
 the pan-fish get lazy and seem to lose their 
 appetites. They drop down to the cooler 
 depths of the lake and look listlessly at the 
 dangling bits of perch meat, and eye askance 
 the wriggling and ruddy-hued angle-worms. 
 It is too hot ; too still. The lazy cattle stand 
 motionless on the hill-sides and birds seek the 
 coolest recesses in the woods. It is not the 
 time to fish. But when the morning breaks 
 in a web of cloudy streaks, and a wind comes 
 from the south, rippling the water into a 
 maze of gray wrinkles, then dig your worms 
 and get ready for the fray. Cloudy days are 
 the days to fish in. In open spaces among 
 the bulrushes, where the water is about five 
 or six feet deep, is a good place to anchor 
 the boat. 
 
 The spectacle of some women fishing for 
 the first time is a sight worth a day's journey 
 to witness. The fair angler pities the fish 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 she catches and execrates the ones that wrig- 
 gle off the hook and slide back into the water 
 again. She smoothes back the locks of 
 hair that the impudent wind has disarranged, 
 and carefully tucks them away with the aid 
 of the ever-mysterious, ever-present hair-pin. 
 She takes care occasionally that her hat is on 
 straight, and fishes in a bewilderingly attrac- 
 tive costume that ought to reconcile the fish 
 to their fate. Her exclamations are many and 
 varied, and her good-humor is intensified with 
 each fresh capture. 
 
 The proverbial patience of women is not at 
 its best in angling. Where a down-trodden 
 worm of a man will sit meekly for hours 
 glaring at a cork, a woman will lift the bait 
 twenty times in half an hour to see if there 
 was not a nibble. She is impatience itself if 
 the fish do not exert themselves to bite, and 
 she rapidly gets disgusted if they quit biting 
 after having started in with promising sud- 
 denness. If she is of a dreamy, poetic nature 
 she will be calling attention to some lovely 
 bit of color in the west or north at critical 
 moments when sturdy perch or obtrusive 
 bluegill have gone down with the cork. 
 116 
 
PAN-FISHING 
 
 When she recovers her angling instinct the 
 bait is all gone, and she will straightway for- 
 get the glory of the shore and sky in lament- 
 ing the perfidy of the fish that got away. She 
 enjoys the sport as you used to when you were 
 a boy. 
 
 A cloudy day, and one when the wind is 
 blowing from the south or south-west, and 
 with occasional lapses of sunlight through 
 the shadows, is a typical fishing day. There 
 is a seclusion to such days that full-lighted 
 days do not possess. The wind writes liquid 
 messages on the surface of the lake that fade 
 in the writing and sink swiftly into shadow, 
 like the names of all the long-forgotten dead. 
 The sun strikes seldom through the barriers 
 of trailing cloud, but when striking his flashes 
 are as sword-cuts with a jewel-hilted blade. 
 The birds do not sing and only at long inter- 
 vals is their flight marked from the gently 
 rocking skiff. The hills are like huge, 
 crouching mammoths, shaggy with forest and 
 thicket, and buried in a century-old repose. 
 The shadows rule, and the wind is as rollick- 
 ing as a boy on his summer holiday. 
 
 Pan-fish are very good eating, some people 
 117 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 preferring them to the more generally es- 
 teemed black bass. They should be rolled in 
 cornmeal and fried. When they are rather 
 small, if fried crisply they can be taken in the 
 fingers and eaten bones, fins, and tails 
 everything but heads with a relish. At the 
 ordinary camp, where a change of diet from 
 canned goods is a source of great delight, a 
 skilful pan-fisherman is looked up to with 
 something bordering on reverence. He it is 
 who leads the campers out of the wilderness 
 of baked beans with tabasco sauce and canned 
 buckwheat-cakes. 
 
 Pan-fishing is the true Waltonian style of 
 angling, minus the charm of absolute quiet, 
 the repose " which marks the caste of Vere 
 de-Vere." This infraction of silence is fur- 
 nished by the lady who is doing the fishing. 
 Do not wince if she thinks that a passing 
 kingfisher is a jaybird, or that a turtle's head 
 bobbing up a few yards away is a snake. 
 Leave her to those broad generalizations of 
 outdoors which make up in enthusiasm what 
 they lack in accuracy. And be very proud 
 and glad to think that she has this sense of 
 fresh enjoyment in the sport that you once 
 118 
 
PAN-FISHING 
 
 had yourself in the old, old days days when 
 you set your " bobber " afloat by a certain 
 bridge across a certain creek so long ago 
 that it makes your eyes misty to try and see 
 across the years and find the place. 
 
 119 
 
A NORTHERN NIGHT- 
 INGALE 
 
 HOW many years ago the cat-bird re- 
 ceived his name history does not 
 exactly record. But it was all on 
 account of his scolding, mewling cry when 
 disturbed in the thickets where his nest was 
 built. Just so soon as an intruder's footstep 
 came near his retreat he was out and com- 
 plaining about it. It did not matter whether 
 the stranger was merely a curious observer, 
 anxious to study the habits and peculiarities 
 of the slate-colored songster, or a prowling 
 boy intent on robbing nests. The presence of 
 the disturbing element of man was enough, 
 and the bird's feline protestations gave him 
 the name which has clung to him ever since. 
 And a very misleading and inappropriate 
 cognomen it is, too. The cat-bird is of the 
 mocking-thrush family, and enjoys the dis- 
 tinction of being full first cousin to the mock- 
 ing-bird, and is himself a mimic of no little 
 120 
 
A NORTHERN NIGHTINGALE 
 
 power. His aversion to singing in public is 
 well known to his admirers, although he can 
 never be said to be without his notes. In 
 some of the earliest " Hoosier " dialect ever 
 written, Edward Eggleston celebrates this 
 peculiarity as follows: 
 
 " The cat-bird poorty nigh splits his throat 
 
 Ef nobody's thar to see; 
 The cat-bird poorty nigh splits his throat, 
 But ef I says : * Sing out, green coat,' 
 
 'Why, I can't, and I shan't,' says he." 
 
 But in the throat of this most modestly plu- 
 maged bird there is a perfect marvel of mel- 
 ody, and when the spirit moves him, and then 
 only, does he sing. What a pity that some 
 of the poets do not wait for their inspiration 
 like the cat-bird! 
 
 The cat-bird is a brush-bird, a frequenter 
 of bushes and thickets. Not for him the 
 lofty perch of the robin, the tip-tilting pose 
 of the golden-winged woodpecker, the far 
 flight of the blackbird. Like a true-hearted 
 minstrel he is a modest singer who seeks in 
 shady retirement a spot to pour out his music. 
 While the bobolink spills bubbles of joy in 
 the midst of sun-thrilled days the cat-bird 
 121 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 hides in deepest copses and builds his coarse 
 nest gossiping between times with his mate. 
 He is chary of his song, as if he knew its 
 worth and matchless melody. The robin 
 flutes in the elms when the sun's rays wheel 
 slantingly toward the west, and after the rain 
 the brown thrush sings from a treetop, but 
 only rarely, in my experience, does a cat- 
 bird choose the daytime for his gift of song. 
 Possibly he listens, for he has the notes of 
 many a morning and evening songster in his 
 repertoire. 
 
 His coat is of a subdued tint, as betokens 
 the rarest vocalists of the woods and fields. 
 It is true that the red-bird, brilliant in color 
 as a torch at midnight, sings sweetly. And 
 the orioles, with their orange and black and 
 other bright diversities of plumage, are sing- 
 ers in the true sense, but not such lyrists as 
 the cat-bird and the mocking-bird. How 
 quietly has nature robed her chief favorites 
 the cat-bird, the mocking-bird, the thrushes, 
 the song-sparrow, and the robin. The lone 
 exception among the birds whose songs rank 
 highest is that saucy harlequin, the bobolink, 
 for the tanager and the oriole, sweet as their 
 122 
 
A NORTHERN NIGHTINGALE 
 
 songs are, belong to the lesser chorus of the 
 fields. How the gaudy and impudent jay 
 suffers in comparison with such a bird as the 
 cat-bird ! 
 
 When the leaves go, and gray winds of the 
 north smite hard on branch and thicket and 
 the snows sift over valley and meadow, the 
 cat-bird spreads his wings and disappears. 
 The loss of summer's young delights he never 
 knows, for with the fading of the season his 
 tarrying time has passed. The ice-bound 
 pools, the empty nest and naked branches, the 
 thickets piled with glittering drifts, come 
 after he has migrated. In happier valleys, 
 where the sunlight comes in a yellow flood to 
 grassy hills; where the fire of summer has 
 again been kindled and mild winds blow in 
 secluded woodland aisles, the cat-bird finds 
 the season that departed from the north. Let 
 the world's worn axle turn as it may, the cat- 
 bird's flight will follow the sun, however the 
 jay and crow stay on to brave out the eager 
 and nipping airs. 
 
 But as the earth turns so does the bird's 
 instinct swerve to the northern hills. Over 
 Mason and Dixon's line, with the other north- 
 123 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 bound wayfarers, he comes. The thickets 
 where he hid and chattered welcome him 
 again, and again the cat-bird builds his nest 
 in the bushes and watches his fledglings 
 through the long, warm days, while grass 
 grows underfoot and the sun shines overhead. 
 And when night comes, when the west is a 
 full-blown rose and the valleys and slopes 
 take on nunlike folds of twilight and deeper 
 darkness, comes the cat-bird's matin time. 
 His most beautiful song is of the night. And 
 if ever a bird had a soul, some subtle trace 
 of sensibility to stars and moon, and the tide 
 of summer languor, surely this bird has. 
 
 Where we used to fish at a little lake 
 locked in by the hills, there was a cat-bird that 
 made his nest in a thicket in the orchard. 
 Sometimes he would come at midnight to a 
 cedar-tree close to the house and sing. We 
 never saw him come to the tree, but we heard 
 him sing several times in the moonlight. At 
 about twelve o'clock he would begin, and the 
 song would continue for possibly twenty min- 
 utes, with some short intervals of silence. 
 He never came except on clear nights, and 
 the cedar where he sang stood dense and 
 124 
 
A NORTHERN NIGHTINGALE 
 
 black at the orchard's edge. Those of us 
 who had heard the mocking-bird in Missis- 
 sippi forests and Floridian hammocks, and 
 the hermit-thrushes on eastern hills, decided 
 that the singing of this cat-bird surpassed in 
 sweetness both northern and southern wood- 
 vocalists. After all, is not moonlight the time 
 for music? And the song of this northern 
 nightingale seemed to us the poetry of bird- 
 music, the lyric voicing of winds and waters 
 trembling up into the moonlight, and softened 
 and saddened by the night. 
 
 We were certainly an appreciative audi- 
 ence. Whatever the boys were doing, 
 whether playing cards, oiling up reels, wind- 
 ing new lines, or telling fish-stories, the word 
 that the cat-bird had begun to sing was the 
 cue for an adjournment to the side porch. It 
 was very still out there. The moon at that 
 time of the night would be rolling high and 
 free from trailing clouds. The bird seemed 
 to prefer those nights when only occasional 
 gusts of wind stirred the apple-trees, the cot- 
 ton-woods, and the tufted cedar. There was 
 no other house for miles and the loneliness 
 was emphasized by the near-by presence of 
 125 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 the heavy timber which skirted the lake. The 
 song was clear, voluble, and very sweet, hav- 
 ing in some portions of it notes of other 
 birds. Its own proper song was its rarest 
 quality, apart from the imitations or mock- 
 ings of the common songsters of the fields. 
 There was a mellowness in these notes, a liq- 
 uid quality, which came like little cascades in 
 a mountain-brook. Sometimes it would seem 
 as if the bird were in an ecstasy of happiness, 
 and then there would be a tone of sorrow 
 which would broaden into an interlude of 
 pain, and this again would change and soar 
 into a triumphal passage of bubbling music 
 till the cedar rang with the melody. 
 
 Some miserable vandals destroyed his nest 
 and killed his mate maybe, for the boys 
 found the torn nest and the broken eggs at 
 the side of the road the day before we left. 
 But on that beautiful moonlight night the 
 bird came to the cedar-tree and gave us a 
 farewell burst of the finest bird - music 
 possible. 
 
 The cat-bird sang in the cedar-tree, 
 
 Where the argent flood of a midnight moon 
 
 Poured down as a river flowing free, 
 
 All white and bright as the light of noon, 
 126 
 
A NORTHERN NIGHTINGALE 
 
 And the dusky depths of the cedar thrilled 
 
 As the echoing music rose and rang, 
 And the clouds bent down and their dews distilled 
 
 Like tears of joy, while the cat-bird sang. 
 
 The cat-bird sang in the cedar-tree, 
 
 And never a wave of breezes fleet 
 O'er apple-blossoms, or minor key 
 
 Of flowing water, was half so sweet; 
 And the winds were hushed by his matchless song, 
 
 And the dumb trees sighed 'neath the moonlight pale, 
 While the shadows came in a muffled throng 
 
 To hark to the northern nightingale. 
 
 So blest, so curst by the touch of fate; 
 
 Give note, though thy nest no longer be, 
 Or if thou wander and find no mate, 
 
 And sing alone in the cedar-tree. 
 Aye! tell thy pain to the night forlorn, 
 
 Sing on, sing on, lest thy heart should break, 
 For the breasts of those shall press the thorn 
 
 Who live for naught but the song's own sake. 
 
 127 
 
SQUIRREL SHOOTING 
 
 ALONG in the early summer the 
 squirrel families are bringing their 
 young hopefuls into sylvan society, 
 and man, base man, with a palate tickling with 
 anticipations of squirrel-pie, is preparing for 
 the woods. East and west, north and south, 
 the squirrels are found, and the earliest expe- 
 riences with the gun for most boys is in the 
 line of squirrel-hunting. Gray squirrels, fox- 
 squirrels, black squirrels, and red squirrels, 
 they are found from the Lakes to the Gulf and 
 from Maine to California, and in their pur- 
 suit wood-craft is a prime essential to success. 
 
 The novice may go through the woods and 
 over the hills and never see a sign of game. 
 His dog may chase rabbits or hunt moles and 
 mice, or if he is a dog that is posted, he may 
 tree a squirrel which the " tender-foot " can- 
 not find. 
 
 But after the greenhorn may come the ex- 
 perienced hunter, who has followed the sport 
 128 
 
SQUIRREL SHOOTING 
 
 from boyhood, and then there is a different 
 tale to tell. To be successful in this sport re- 
 quires a keen eye and patience, some little 
 wood-craft and out-door knowledge. The 
 woods in June are dense with foliage. Every 
 tree is a mass of emerald, and when the wind 
 blows, the boughs and branches wave and in- 
 termingle in a blending of dark and light 
 green. It is very hard then to distinguish the 
 movements of so small an animal as a squir- 
 rel. And the squirrel is a crafty little cus- 
 tomer, too. Well he knows where the hol- 
 low trees are, and the holes in them as well. 
 And when there are strange noises in the 
 woods the fox-squirrel furls his red and 
 feathery tail close to his sides and glues him- 
 self to the side of a tree until he is flattened 
 out like a postage-stamp. And there he 
 clings until all sound has ceased excepting the 
 tattoo of the red-headed woodpecker on the 
 dead limbs or the petulant cry of the uneasy 
 blue-jay. The sounds that first startled him 
 may have been the careless steps of a " ten- 
 der-foot " squirrel-hunter, thrashing steadily 
 through the woods, looking up into all sorts 
 of trees, big and little, and wondering why he 
 129 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 doesn't see a cluster of squirrels on every 
 other branch. He is very likely to be a reck- 
 less fellow with a gun and the song-birds are 
 apt to suffer as he goes along. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the sound of foot- 
 steps dies away and the sharp-eyed fox-squir- 
 rel holds to the bark and listens, and all is 
 apparently safe again. A crow flying over 
 sends out his challenge of " caw, caw," in an 
 impudently assertive manner, and the downy 
 woodpecker busies himself on the very tree 
 on which the squirrel is fastened. There is 
 a faint breeze stirring, and the broad green 
 leaves of oaks move softly and waver be- 
 tween shade and shine. The peril seems 
 over. Now, the squirrel, at the first echo of 
 approaching steps, runs around to the oppo- 
 site side of the tree and clings there. Conse- 
 quently his line of vision is limited. If he 
 could look around the tree or through it he 
 would see a wily man, an experienced hunter, 
 watching for squirrels. This man has come 
 up the slope and has noticed a number of 
 fine oaks scattered about here and there, with 
 occasional logs and stumps in different places 
 on the hill. A quarter of a mile away is the 
 130 
 
SQUIRREL SHOOTING 
 
 lake. Its blue waters are visible through the 
 trees to the right. Down the slope, at the 
 very bottom, is a narrow pond with a brushy 
 covert on two sides and open on its other 
 banks. It is shallow but clear. There are 
 frogs around the shores and possibly a wood- 
 cock in the brush at its edges. At any rate, 
 it would be a good place for squirrels to slip 
 down and drink out of, and the timber cer- 
 tainly looks favorable. " Mr." man resolves 
 to wait, not for a minute, nor for five min- 
 utes, but for an hour or so if necessary. 
 
 There are no squirrels in sight, it is true, 
 but there is much to observe and enjoy. For 
 instance, there is the fresh greenwood charm 
 of forest-aisle and grassy stretch of hill-side, 
 the companionship of birds, and the search- 
 ing rays of sunlight peeping down through 
 lattices of leaves. 
 
 "Under the greenwood-tree, 
 Who loves to lie with me?" 
 
 There is the call of the sable crow, the 
 blue-jay's noisy clatter, the querulous note of 
 the red-headed woodpecker, the long-drawn- 
 out, chattering call of the " flicker " or 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 golden-winged woodpecker, and the clack of 
 passing flocks of blackbirds. There is also 
 a nervous little nuthatch bobbing around on 
 that big oak yonder, gradually zigzagging up 
 the trunk and softly, softly, what is that 
 dark spot edging cautiously over the top of 
 that third limb of the oak? 
 
 It is a squirrel, by all that is lucky. He 
 has become emboldened by the security of 
 sylvan bustle into doing a little peeping on 
 his own account. That small spot is his 
 nose. The observant hunter has immediately 
 noticed this, but he has not moved an inch ; has 
 not " batted " an eye or twitched an eyelash. 
 He has seen the inquisitive nose of the squir- 
 rel and waits, statuelike, for further pro- 
 ceedings. Presently the squirrel's head comes 
 over the limb and then his body follows. 
 Then he springs to another bough and goes 
 around the tree again. Instantly the hunter 
 raises his rifle to his shoulder, aims a little 
 above where the squirrel has disappeared, 
 and again awaits developments. He has not 
 long to wait. Over another limb the little 
 animal gambols, now feeling quite secure 
 from any foes. Something causes a momen- 
 132 
 
SQUIRREL SHOOTING 
 
 tary pause and the squirrel halts for an in- 
 stant on a limb half-way to the top of the 
 tree. 
 
 Then the crack of a rifle, spiteful and short, 
 sounds in the woods, and a twenty-two-calibre 
 bullet has whizzed through the squirrel's 
 head. Death is instantaneous and probably 
 painless, and the nimble forager of the woods 
 drops plummet-like to the ground below. 
 The hunter slips another cartridge into the 
 breech of his gun and waits a few minutes 
 before going forward. Sometimes there are 
 two squirrels playing about together, and the 
 other one may show itself, looking for its 
 comrade. If there is no sound the hunter 
 presently moves up and takes his game, 
 smooths the broad bushy tail out, and care- 
 fully tucks the squirrel away in the back of 
 his hunting-coat. Then he shifts his position, 
 say fifty yards or so, to another part of the 
 grove, selects a likely looking place near some 
 old logs under a clump of fine oak, and sits 
 down on a convenient stump. 
 
 The day dozes and drowses over cloud- 
 vistas and across masses of emerald foliage, 
 but the sun finds few chinks to sift through 
 133 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 his golden light to the mossy depths of the 
 woods. The hunter sits motionless on a 
 stump, his eyes scanning the tree-trunks and 
 branches, the logs and slopes and timbered 
 hills beyond. Suddenly a squirrel appears on 
 a log some forty yards or more distant from 
 where he is sitting. This squirrel is entirely 
 unsuspecting. He has probably come some 
 distance through the woods and evidently has 
 not heard or seen anything suspicious. His 
 back is to the hunter and he switches his tail 
 to one side and cocks his head up saucily. 
 The little rifle is raised quickly, again the bul- 
 let speeds through the air and the second 
 squirrel drops from the log, stone-dead. 
 Again there is a pause, and then the game is 
 picked up and all is still again. 
 
 The woods first, and next the rifle-ranges, 
 have made Americans a nation of sharp-shoot- 
 ers. For squirrel-hunting any one of a dozen 
 American rifles, repeaters, or single-shots of 
 twenty-two-calibre will give entire satisfac- 
 tion. For myself I prefer a single-shot rifle, 
 as it conduces to more care in shooting and a 
 consequent tendency to greater accuracy. For 
 dress, stout shoes, hob-nailed, so as not to 
 134 
 
SQUIRREL SHOOTING 
 
 slip on the grass, duck trousers, negligee shirt, 
 the lightest possible duck hunting-coat, and a 
 straw hat. Go thinly clad for this summer 
 shooting. 
 
 You will find much that is lovely in the 
 summer woods wonders of yellow lace 
 woven on the grass by the wandering sun, 
 the flight of birds and their calls, the shim- 
 mer of far waters, the breath of winds, the 
 sense of peace and beauty. And you will not 
 wonder that in olden days the Druids wor- 
 shipped 
 
 " Those green-robed senators of mighty woods 
 Tall oaks branch-charmed by the earnest stars." 
 
 135 
 
DOWN THE ST. JOE 
 RIVER 
 
 THE St. Joe River is one of the most 
 winding streams in the world. Its 
 tortuous course flows through high- 
 lands and lowlands, now with steep banks 
 overhanging the water, now with shelving 
 banks of sand dotted with mussel shells. 
 Springs rise along its shores and creep lazily 
 to the river, there to mingle with the current, 
 and along the timber-line higher up the crows 
 fly past. Shallows follow on the paths of 
 deep pools where black bass lie, and swal- 
 lows dip and cross above the river's surface. 
 Blackbirds linger along the shores, sometimes 
 among roots of trees at the water's edge and 
 at other times whistling from maples and 
 sycamores in the low grounds. Beech-trees, 
 sturdy of stature and compact of texture, rise 
 on the slopes and oaks grow on hills higher 
 up. There is an infinite variety of scenery 
 where the river weaves in and out of the hills, 
 
 136 
 
DOWN THE ST. JOE RIVER 
 
 and sun and shadow are forever alternating 
 on its surface. 
 
 Its tawny waters are forever hungry. 
 Swift and impetuous the current sweeps 
 around the bends, and insidiously gnaws away 
 at the soft banks. The earth crumbles off 
 and slides into the river, the water takes on 
 a trifle darker tinge, and the current again 
 arches up and rubs off a little more of the 
 soil. When the moon comes up the process 
 is carried on more stealthily. There is the 
 same disintegration, the same chipping off 
 and carrying away, but it is all done noise- 
 lessly. Finally a part of the roots of some 
 towering sycamore, elm, or maple is exposed. 
 The current keeps grinding on like the pad- 
 dles of a water-wheel, and at last the entire 
 body of roots is left without any support save 
 for those fibres that reach back in the bank 
 beyond the wash of the current. 
 
 After awhile these weaken, and the tall tree 
 takes a slant toward the river. The river can 
 afford to wait. Later on, there comes the reg- 
 ular spring freshet and the water rises high 
 above the banks and carries off the last vestige 
 of soil from the exposed roots. The water 
 
 137 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 falls, and the following summer the sun 
 bleaches these tangled roots till they look like 
 the wild gray hair of an old witch. The river 
 purrs under the tree like a cat. The tree heaves 
 in its uncertain moorings and takes a longer 
 slant toward the water. And some time soon 
 after, either at midday when the sun shines 
 strong on the sandy bars, or at night when the 
 moon trails like a ghost through the pallid 
 top limbs of the sycamore, there is a thunder- 
 ous crash. The tree is torn out from the bank 
 as a lock of hair from a Titan, and plunges 
 into the river with its green leaves swashing 
 the current and its form marking a long rip- 
 ple on the water. The tragedy is complete. 
 The treacherous river, the voracious river, 
 has claimed another victim. 
 
 Afterward, long years hence, with its 
 branches stripped clean of twigs and leaves, 
 with many of the small limbs washed away 
 by the force of the current or by the brunt of 
 driftwood, the tree, denuded of its bark and 
 rising stark from the river, has become a 
 " snag," a bane of steamboat-men, the haunt 
 of black bass and something to be avoided by 
 any idler who comes down the current in his 
 
 138 
 
DOWN THE ST. JOE RIVER 
 
 light skiff. For there the river runs swiftly, 
 and an overturning at that point will surely 
 be dangerous. 
 
 For many miles these mute evidences of 
 the river's power are strewn along, most of 
 them in the current still, some of them 
 dragged up on the bank and left there by 
 steamboat-men to make clear a passage for 
 the boats. Some are there green in the pride 
 of summer, not yet stripped of leaves and 
 branches, and the great holes above show 
 where the sly current has wrought its work 
 so well. Year in and year out this goes on, 
 and the timber-line recedes from the edge of 
 the water and marches back into the woods 
 beyond. 
 
 On these bald snags turtles lie in long 
 lines, or solitary, as it may chance. Some of 
 them are the soft-shelled kind, jelly-like in 
 appearance, awkward, reptilian, and hideous. 
 The " hard-shells " are not so ugly, but they 
 are all repulsive when they have attained any 
 size. The smaller turtles, the wee baby tur- 
 tles, especially the hard-shelled infants, are 
 smooth little fellows, and entirely without the 
 ugliness of those of a larger growth. These 
 
 139 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 turtle groups, piled on the snags, will " fol- 
 low their leader " when a boat draws near, 
 first one and then another slipping silently into 
 the water. Some of them are nearly as big 
 as the bottom of a wash-tub, and when they 
 are seen swimming under the surface you can 
 almost imagine you are wandering in the days 
 of the monster reptiles whose unpronounce- 
 able names and terrifying figures adorn the 
 books on natural history. Their long, snaky 
 necks stretch out and turn from side to side, 
 and their four legs oar vigorously as they 
 move about. If one of them happens to see 
 a dead fish below the surface he will rush for 
 it and nose and shoulder it down under the 
 snags with an energy that you would not 
 expect from the sluggish-looking specimens 
 who take their sun-baths on the snags at 
 noonday. 
 
 One of the most noticeable bits of life 
 about the river is the kildee, or ring-neck 
 plover. This bird, jerky of flight and queru- 
 lous in call, travels up and down the river 
 constantly. It lights on the sandbars which 
 jut out into the river, or on the shingly shores 
 where the willows have been washed away. 
 140 
 
DOWN THE ST. JOE RIVER 
 
 The kildee is essentially a graceful bird, fly- 
 ing with a wavy, irregular flight and run- 
 ning swiftly and easily when on land. It 
 has a curious habit of ducking down some- 
 times as a boat draws closer, and this means 
 that it is going to fly away. Its colors are 
 black, brown, russet, and white, and are very 
 clear and distinct when the bird is alive, and 
 for a few minutes after death. But once the 
 bright black eyes are glazed, the bird actu- 
 ally withers, as a flower might, and the 
 gleaming tints of its plumage grow rusty very 
 quickly. They fly singly, in pairs, and in 
 groups, and when disturbed take wing with 
 a piercing, melancholy cry. Sometimes they 
 follow the line of the river, and at other 
 times they are away over the surrounding 
 hills, mere specks in the sunlight. 
 
 They are scarcely worth shooting, for their 
 bodies are no bigger than those of blackbirds, 
 and their meat is hard and dry. But it is 
 great sport to take a small rifle and plant a 
 bullet close to them just to see them spring 
 into the air and dart away, their long wings 
 flashing in the sun and their strident cry of 
 " kildee, dee, kildee/' coming back as they 
 141 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 disappear. They do not associate with the 
 other birds that frequent the river-banks, the 
 little spotted sand-pipers that skim about the 
 sandy shores or dodge around the banks. 
 Sometimes the kildee comes like a sprite, 
 voiceless and gray, alighting on a bar and 
 standing absolutely motionless. At other 
 times he is particularly noisy and exceedingly 
 active. Later in the summer they get more 
 together in flocks and whirl up and down the 
 river and over the treetops, filling the air 
 with their cries. 
 
 It is not necessary to do much rowing when 
 on the St. Joe River if you are going down- 
 stream, except when you strike a sandbar. 
 The current will take you along fast enough, 
 and in some places with a rush. If you want 
 to go up the river, however, it will tax your 
 rowing abilities to their utmost. Snags must 
 be looked out for, and each riffle on the 
 river's current should be studiously watched 
 to avoid a possible upsetting of the boat. In 
 going up the river with a boat, if care is 
 taken to pick the water, there is always one 
 course that can be taken where the rowing 
 will be easiest. Sometimes it is on one side, 
 142 
 
DOWN THE ST. JOE RIVER 
 
 and sometimes on the other. Where the 
 water is still, whether deep or shallow, there 
 is the best rowing. 
 
 Sometimes a herd of cattle make a pretty 
 picture in the current, standing belly-deep in 
 the water and cooling their hides as the river 
 washes by. They will scramble ashore as a 
 boat drifts past, if it comes too near for their 
 comfort, and lazily chew the cud till the dis- 
 turbing element has passed. Then they will 
 slide into the water again. On the steep 
 banks of the river where the beech- and 
 maple-trees hang in clusters, the tinkle of 
 sheep-bells is heard and the blatant baaings 
 of the lambs. The old sheep call back and 
 the slopes resound with the echoes. 
 
 It is a drowsy, dreamy way of blotting 
 out a summer day drifting down with the 
 sun and shadows, with an occasional bump 
 against a half-submerged log to arouse one 
 to a sense of danger lowlands and high- 
 lands, wood, fields, and stream, and the wild- 
 blackberry vines clinging to rail fences that 
 straggle toward the tops of the hills. 
 
 143 
 
BROOK-TROUT FISHING 
 
 IN all the annals of fishing the trout has 
 held a distinguished place of honor. 
 In the gentle art of angling, as poet- 
 ically set forth by that prince of the noble 
 pastime, Izaak Walton, the trout is ap- 
 proached with a degree of reverence accorded 
 to no other of the fishes. In all English lit- 
 erature the trout is the subject of comment, 
 simile, and apt illustration. Books have been 
 written about him and poet and painter have 
 combined to do him proper honor. The rea- 
 sons for his prominence in piscatorial lore 
 and legend are many. He is easily the most 
 beautiful of American game - fishes. His 
 home, in the icy and clear-running brooks of 
 the mountain country, or the cool brooks and 
 streams of the northern pine-woods, is ro- 
 mantic and picturesque in the extreme. He 
 is to be found from the forests of Maine on 
 the east to the Rockies, and on to the farther 
 north and north-west 
 144 
 
BROOK-TROUT FISHING 
 
 "Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
 Save its own dashings." 
 
 The trout is a fighter from the start, and 
 it requires skill to land him as well as cun- 
 ning to hook him. And, last and least, he is 
 one of the most delicately flavored of food- 
 fishes to some epicures the best fish the mar- 
 ket affords. 
 
 The average trout-fisherman would scorn 
 to use anything but an artificial fly in the 
 sport. The different " flies," made of feath- 
 ers, tinsel, gimp, deer-hair, and various other 
 materials, have as many and as fancy names 
 as a string of trotting - horses. The trout- 
 fisherman of the old school is scientific and 
 precise to an appalling degree, and arrays 
 himself in proper costume of formal cut and 
 secures the regulation trout-fishing parapher- 
 nalia before stepping into a stream. 
 
 The trout is a cold-water crank, and will 
 not live in a brook or river unless the water 
 is up to a certain degree of coolness. In the 
 mountainous regions of the eastern states, in 
 the brooks running down the mountains, the 
 true salmo fontinalis is found in fairly plenti- 
 ful numbers, and the scenery is wonderfully 
 H5 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 beautiful. The aggressively scientific fly-fish- 
 erman I very seldom ran across there, but the 
 trout-fishing was good, especially after the 
 summer rains. 
 
 The fish were as active as cats, and when 
 once hooked they would show the greatest pos- 
 sible interest in the proceedings until the inci- 
 dent was closed by their going into the creel. 
 I used to get up early in the morning after a 
 rain and start up the mountain with a pole 
 over my shoulder and a lunch in my pocket. 
 The path led over the hill-side behind the 
 house, across the brook at a little bridge, and 
 from there windingly up the mountain. The 
 rains would wash the trout down from the 
 crannies and pools higher up on the mountain, 
 and it was necessary to walk only a mile or 
 two up the mountain before commencing to 
 fish. It was perfectly glorious on those cool 
 mornings climbing the mountain-side. Great 
 hemlocks, pines, and spruces rose on either 
 side of the path and bowlders along the way 
 were banded and mottled with close-clinging 
 gray and green moss. The music of running 
 waters came gurgling through alder bushes, 
 and in the clear spaces it was sounding fresh 
 146 
 
BROOK-TROUT FISHING 
 
 and free. The cows were abroad.betimes and 
 occasionally a brown hare would hop awk- 
 wardly away deeper into the thickets. Some- 
 times a covey of ruffed grouse, with a roar 
 of wings, would flush and scatter away to the 
 trees. 
 
 The path was never far away from the 
 brook, and after reaching a point about a 
 third of the way up, the turn to the brook was 
 only a matter of a few yards. Pushing 
 through the brush I would come to the 
 stream and begin operations. The rubber 
 knee-boots which I had brought along would 
 be transferred to my legs in a few seconds, 
 and I would fasten my line to the end of my 
 cane pole and select a hook from a cap-box 
 full in my pocket. The way I fished ha- 
 bitually for the noble and aristocratic salmo 
 fontinalis would have made " a follower of 
 the faithful " shudder. My fly-book, I am 
 compelled to say apologetically, was simply 
 a can of worms just plain angle-worms. 
 The trout in those brooks may or may not 
 have been acquainted with the virtues of the 
 various hackles, coachmen, millers, Seth 
 Green, grizzly king, bucktail, and other arti- 
 
 H7 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 ficial flies they were a retiring, rural kind 
 of fish, easily frightened, and yet hungry 
 after a rain but they certainly doted on 
 fish-worms. 
 
 And with a red and circumlocutory fish- 
 worm on my hook I seldom failed to lure the 
 gaudily tinted trout from his most secret ref- 
 uge among the rocks. The brook was full 
 of bowlders, big and little, and the water was 
 usually about a couple of feet deep. I fished 
 downstream, and it was easy enough to get 
 twenty fair-sized trout in a morning's fishing. 
 Sometimes two good fish would be taken out 
 of one pool. 
 
 There is nothing in out-door sport exactly 
 like the rush, tug, and get-away of a lusty 
 brook-trout. When he makes up his pisca- 
 torial mind that it is all right, he comes for 
 the twisting angle-worm like a hornet for a 
 small boy. He nails it, feels the barb, and 
 the trouble is on. He instantly develops a 
 wild yearning to climb trees, dig into the 
 banks, split the bowlders, pull the brook up 
 by the roots, spit out the hook, rasp the line 
 to a frazzle on the rocks, bolt through sub- 
 merged brush, and in numerous earnest ways 
 148 
 
BROOK-TROUT FISHING 
 
 disconnect himself from the end of your line. 
 It isn't one rush, but a dozen. He jumps out 
 of the water, ties himself into a double bow- 
 knot, unties himself, executes the grapevine 
 twist, and goes down again. His aerial gyra- 
 tions and subaqueous contortions are a com- 
 bination of the movements of a dodging bat 
 and a bucking broncho. 
 
 Keep a steady pressure on the line and 
 don't give him even a quarter of an inch of 
 slack. Of course, if you are fishing with a 
 rod and reel of approved fashion, you can 
 catch him in regulation style, which is prob- 
 ably a great balm to his feelings. It " grav- 
 els " a true salmo fontinalis to be hoisted out 
 with a cane pole, without a reel, and all on 
 account of a wriggling red fish-worm. To 
 snake them out with a " come-all-ye," not 
 playing them through a succession of mad 
 rushes, but yanking them aloft by main 
 strength, is considered extremely bad form by 
 both the trout and the aesthetic angler. 
 
 The brook-trout's colors are superb when 
 
 he first comes out of the water. A creel 
 
 should be carried, partly filled with wet grass 
 
 or leaves to lay the fish on. When a trout gets 
 
 149 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 dry he takes on a furniture-polish glaze that 
 spoils his beauty. In the mountain-streams 
 where I fished it was the rule to throw back 
 all under six inches long. They ran from a 
 third of a pound to nearly half a pound, and 
 on rare occasions I got several half-pounders 
 on one expedition. In a meadow reaching 
 up and into an intervale lying close to the 
 lower slopes of a New Hampshire mountain, I 
 caught a brook-trout of a trifle over a pound, 
 by tossing a grasshopper across an alder bush 
 into the brook where he was lurking. 
 
 The scientific fisher with his " flies " can 
 do great things in trout-fishing. It is not the 
 barefoot boy " with cheeks of tan " and bent 
 pin for hook who catches all the trout, ex- 
 cepting in the comic papers. One of these 
 " scientific fellers " fished with me one day, 
 and he caught trout right along. He would 
 stand and whip a fly into the brook, maybe a 
 half-dozen times in rapid succession, right* 
 under overhanging roots or projecting shelves 
 of rock by the pools, and the first thing I 
 would know some wily old half-pounder 
 would come out with a rush and nab the fly. 
 He certainly was a good fisherman. He told 
 150 
 
BROOK-TROUT FISHING 
 
 me in strict confidence and I repeat it in 
 the same spirit that long " casts " in trout- 
 fishing were not winners, but that they were 
 good for bass. In the north woods and in 
 the mountains of the west they get trout 
 with a bit of salt pork for bait, and grasshop- 
 pers are very attractive also to the speckled 
 beauties. In fly-fishing there are the devotees 
 of the long " cast " and of the short " cast," 
 but the short " cast " is probably the best 
 method in the small brooks. Real trout- 
 anglers are apt to be " cranks " on the sub- 
 ject, and are especially intolerant of the bait- 
 fishermen. They consider that any way ex- 
 cept fly-fishing for brook-trout is as bad as 
 dynamiting the fish. 
 
 Trout-fishing is a sport that takes you 
 where Druids might worship. In the vaulted 
 depths of the pine-woods there is a sense of 
 immensity coupled with the titanic calm of 
 the great hills beyond. You would not be 
 surprised to see signs of the mastodons in 
 those tremendous forest-arches. And the 
 sound of winds in the tops of the trees seems 
 as far away as the wash of surf on Atlan- 
 tic coasts. It is ghostly and strange in the 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 depths of such retreats primitive as crea- 
 tion, and lovely as the dawn. The air is 
 scented with the tang and spice of pine and 
 fir. The trailing arbutus with its delicate 
 rose-colored bloom lends fragrance to wooded 
 aisles, and wild red-raspberry vines cling to 
 the rocky shelves beside it. The sun is shut 
 from the brook by the tall green pillars of 
 ten thousand pines. No tongue can tell, nor 
 painter prove, how surpassingly beautiful are 
 
 "The hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; 
 The vales, stretching in pensive quietness between." 
 
 152 
 
A MASQUE OF THE 
 SEASONS 
 
 IN sheer midsummer the little lake in the 
 woods where I used to fish is as vari- 
 able as the winds that sweep across it. 
 Walled in by the hills, it glooms or bright- 
 ens under sun or shade, and glasses the 
 floating clouds above it. Lying under the 
 apple-trees in July days there is no need of 
 books to while the hours away. The first 
 striking characteristic of the season is a feel- 
 ing of utter peace tranquillity in a large 
 sense of wide-vaulted blue skies, dark masses 
 of distant woods, and the furled, yet glow- 
 ing, banners of the sun. 
 
 Almost all the color-plan is green. The 
 thick leaves of apple-trees, the fruit suspended 
 from the boughs, the timothy, the stretch of 
 waters below, the oaks at the foot of the hill, 
 the grasses at the marsh's rim, the field-flung 
 guidons of the corn, all are dressed in sum- 
 153 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 mer's garb, wind-varied shades and tints of 
 emerald. The red clover and the white are 
 lost in the maze, and only wild pinks and 
 the " nigger-heads " at the meadow's edges 
 can compel recognition. Even the creamy 
 water-lilies are overwhelmed by great quan- 
 tities of green pads, and shadowed by the 
 grass and leaves that mark the shores where 
 they dream. 
 
 The crow drifts over the woods, the red- 
 tailed hawk circles high above the crow, and 
 the buzzard blackens the spaces above where 
 the hawk flies. There is little of bird-music 
 save an occasional song-sparrow's sweet pip- 
 ing. Blue-jays scold and chase one another 
 along the stubby brush by the lake, and a 
 dandified kingfisher rattles by to perch on a 
 stake in a shallow bay near at hand. In the 
 orchard occasional shreds of breeze creep in 
 and out of the leaves, mousing about and let- 
 ting in the sunlight, and then they slip past, 
 out and on to the corn beyond. Crickets 
 creak in the grasses, and in the sun-throb- 
 bing waves of heat which seem to flutter on 
 the hills there is a hint of the " chink " of 
 importunate grasshoppers. Sometimes you 
 154 
 
A MASQUE OF THE SEASONS 
 
 can hear the pioneer echo of an axe. It leaps 
 across from a far-off slope with hollow sound, 
 and you can picture the swaying, bending, 
 crashing downfall of some sturdy oak or 
 hickory as the measured echoes are carried 
 past. Every hour is a dream, every dream a 
 delight. 
 
 For Summer's hand has rocked the world to sleep, 
 And smoothed the wrinkles in her brow of care. 
 
 When lily-pads begin to darken and grow 
 crisp, and waters change from green to amber 
 and brown, the view from the hill is vastly dif- 
 ferent. Now oftener the ripples at the lake's 
 edge are tipped with a feathery spume, beaten 
 out by the flailing, restless winds. Hickories 
 toss down yellow, irregularly shaped leaves, 
 and oaks turn to red and brown and glaze 
 smoothly under the glow of autumnal suns. 
 Sumach flames from fence-corners and on the 
 slopes, and the grass is rusty in spots and tak- 
 ing on a darker green. The wandering tern 
 go back and forth along the lake-shore, tack- 
 ing and veering on labored wing, and with 
 their creaking cry sounding harshly above the 
 bulrushes. The loon's black head appears on 
 
 155 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 the water and occasionally his mocking laugh- 
 ter sounds in the twilight. 
 
 Wild ducks go by, singly, in pairs, and in 
 flocks, and down on the " points " and around 
 sheltered coves the " decoys " of the hunters 
 are bobbing up and down. Bluebills, ring- 
 bill, red-heads, butterballs, and occasionally 
 a merganser, dip to the decoys and are met 
 with a whizzing hail of shot. In the woods 
 the fox-squirrel leaps nimbly along through 
 the leaves, or swings in the top of some tall 
 hickory. Hickory-nuts are ripening now, and 
 the thick green hulls begin to split and dis- 
 color as a late October sun searches them out 
 among the branches. Rabbits flit along the 
 roadside as evening approaches, and doves 
 and robins come past to roost in the swamp as 
 the sun goes down. The colors are myriad- 
 fold now red, green, yellow, brown, black, 
 and gray. 
 
 There is a richness of tinting that tells of 
 maturity where " the flying gold of the ruined 
 woodlands drives through the air." The ban- 
 ners of the corn have shrivelled into rusty tat- 
 ters, and golden-brown tassels peer out from 
 crackling husks. A woodchuck stands by his 
 
A MASQUE OF THE SEASONS 
 
 burrow, and notes the slant of the sun's rays> 
 the rippling wash of waters by the lake, and 
 the flight of wild-fowl. Breast-high the reeds 
 swim, and the hills are bathed in molten light. 
 There is a hint of even greater change in occa- 
 sional tingling gusts that flatten the bulrushes 
 to the water and go whistling up the slopes 
 a menace to all this color and life and glow- 
 ing landscape. So drift the days, so runs the 
 world away. 
 
 While autumn, like a sweet-faced, holy nun, 
 Shades with a trembling hand her sad brown eyes. 
 
 And as the bleak winds scatter drifted 
 snow under the old apple-trees still another 
 dream is spun from nature's loom. How 
 still the lake is! a shield of dazzling white 
 with never a trace or sign of life above its 
 barriers. Under the snow lies the armor of 
 December, blue ice of sixteen inches, and be- 
 low that the imprisoned waters, locked in the 
 grasp of winter. Yet even now in the days 
 when the sun shines bold and free there will 
 be found color and form in the woods, by the 
 fence-corners, and along the banks of the 
 creek blackened reeds, some vagrant leaves 
 157 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 with faint red splotches that have not yet 
 turned to russet, and in the fields a red- 
 bird's wing painted among the drifted thick- 
 ets. There never has been a wind too chill 
 to drive the crow from the country, and an 
 occasional blue-jay still braves wintry days in 
 the woods. 
 
 In the lanes and along and across the roads 
 and through the pastures and brush there are 
 innumerable rabbit-tracks on the snow, the 
 fresh ones clearly cut, the old tracks crumb- 
 ling away in the light of the sun. So, too, in 
 the heavier timber there are deep, rounded 
 spots in the snow at regular intervals, that 
 lead from tree to tree. These are where squir- 
 rels have jumped from one tree's base to an- 
 other with a succession of long leaps. 
 
 The wily mink's " pad " is seen around the 
 bridges across the streams, and sometimes the 
 snow on the creek is brushed where the ruffed 
 grouse has stood. Early in the morning, es- 
 pecially if snow has fallen the day before, the 
 woods are marked in all directions with the 
 traces of animals and birds that have set 
 their sign-manuals on the glittering expanses 
 among the trees. White and black are the 
 158 
 
A MASQUE OF THE SEASONS 
 
 predominating colors now. Snow-flakes hang 
 furrily from naked branches, and the trees 
 stand sombre among drifted banks of daz- 
 zling brightness. The land is tranced in icy 
 dreams. It is the stillness of death. 
 
 But when the days grow longer and the 
 bitter, wandering winds lose their keen-search- 
 ing qualities, the blossoming of earth's ten- 
 derest season comes. " Spring, with that 
 nameless pathos in the air," is arriving al- 
 ready. The sap in the heart of the hickory 
 and elm has stirred at the recurrence of softer 
 lights and less harsh breezes. Again the 
 roots of the grass unlock, like the fingers of 
 an awakened sleeper, and under the melting 
 snows the spirits of a thousand flowers are 
 yearning for the light. The last year's nests 
 in the hedges have lost their lonely look, for 
 how swiftly shall the living green speed from 
 thorn to thorn and all the land laugh into 
 blossom. The kildee's piercing cry will 
 sound above the pastures, and on the fence- 
 stakes the bluebird will warble, first messenger 
 and herald of March. A myriad of brooks 
 flow tawny in the sunlight. The lake's broad 
 shield shall crack and break and shiver into 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 smallest fragments, and these will melt rap- 
 idly and wash against foam-piled shores. 
 The wings of scurrying wild-fowl cut swiftly 
 across from cove to timber, and in long lines 
 and ribbons about the sky, and the clang of 
 Canada geese sounds harsh overhead. 
 
 And by the slope where apple-trees wait, 
 a mist of filmy lace weaves along the dead 
 leaves of a dead year, and the wing of a 
 jaybird flaunts saucily in the empty branches. 
 Surely in this season, of all others, nature 
 has shadowed forth hope, and garbed her in 
 many a color from the water's edge to the 
 wood coverts. There is a hint of mouse- 
 colored buddings on the willow twigs cat- 
 kins or " pussy-willows. " There are green 
 dottings along many a branch, and the snows 
 have melted and gone. The rabbit a gray 
 ghost now ambles haltingly along dim or- 
 chard spaces. The flicker's golden wing 
 flashes across and the sober brown of a rob- 
 in's pinion follows. There is a breath of 
 freshness that ripples in the sunshine and 
 dances in the winds and waters. And the 
 elusive spirit of April, with many a blossom 
 in her hair, leads onward through meadow 
 1 60 
 
A MASQUE OF THE SEASONS 
 
 and thicket, past stream and by sleeping 
 pools, till one might say with ^Eglamour: 
 
 " Here she was wont to go; and here, and here, 
 Just where these daisies, pinks, and violets grow, 
 The world may find the Spring by following her, 
 For other print her airy steps ne'er left; 
 Her treading would not bend a blade of grass 
 Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk; 
 But like the soft west wind she shot along 
 And where she went the flowers took thickest root, 
 As she had sowed them with her odorous foot." 
 
 161 
 
WOODCHUCKS 
 
 IF you happen to be walking along the 
 slopes around any of the northern or 
 eastern lakes or ponds, you may come 
 across a large hole in the ground. Or there 
 may be two holes. It looks like the burrow of 
 some animal, and possibly it is located close to 
 a stump of a tree. Or you may come across 
 such a hiding-place in a coign of the woods 
 not far from the water's edge. And in pas- 
 tures that are rolling and high, there are 
 found the same kind of burrows. These are 
 the chosen abodes of the woodchuck, some- 
 times called the ground-hog, famous for his 
 prognostications as to the weather. 
 
 He lives in these holes, and forages from 
 field to field in an unassuming effort to gain 
 an honest living. He has not a single friend 
 on earth, and his countenance is a melancholy 
 and serious one. Life for him is a constant 
 menace, for the hand of man and boy is 
 against him, and the teeth of dogs are ever 
 ready to close on his hide. The hawk which 
 162 
 
WOODCHUCKS 
 
 soars in even circles high above him he does 
 not fear, for he is too heavy to be carried 
 off as its prey. The big white owl he is not 
 afraid of for the same reason. Nor does he 
 fear dogs very much. 
 
 It takes a good dog to kill a full-grown 
 woodchuck, for the beast will fight desper- 
 ately when cornered, and is so tough and ten- 
 acious of life that he will take a deal of 
 killing before he is really dead. Sometimes 
 it is a drawn battle between him and his 
 canine enemy, each combatant being quite 
 willing to creep off, with various deep bites 
 and scratches to remind him of the fray. 
 And yet the woodchuck, despite his rather 
 formidable appearance, is the most peaceful 
 of animals. He prefers very much the soli- 
 tude of nature and the beauties of field, wood, 
 and lake to a duel with the dogs. He is a 
 quiet citizen of hill-sides and pastures, and 
 were it not for man and man's prowling and 
 aggressive companion, the dog, his days would 
 flow along as smoothly as the sun slides into 
 the west, when twilight darkens down the 
 shadowy ways and beckons to night with a 
 veiled and mystic gesture. 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 The woodchuck is long, large, heavy, and 
 hairy. He is neither hog, dog, nor rabbit, yet 
 having some characteristics of each. A large 
 one will measure nearly two feet in length, 
 with brownish and grayish tints on his upper 
 fur, and brown and red coloring on his belly. 
 He will eat gormandizingly like a hog, he will 
 fight viciously like a dog, and he burrows like 
 a rabbit in the hill-sides of the northern coun- 
 ties of the state. He lives almost entirely on 
 vegetables, but I have heard farmers accuse 
 him of carrying away young chickens when 
 the vegetable supply ran short. 
 
 Fortunately for him, he hibernates in the 
 winter, and when the jay and crow are flying 
 about for something to eat, and the rabbit 
 and ruffed grouse are picking up a precarious 
 living from the drifted woodland ways, the 
 woodchuck is comfortably asleep in his warm 
 burrow. He is curled up in there like a 
 bear, and not till spring will he come out to 
 forage for an existence, save on the historical 
 2d of February, when he emerges to decide 
 the momentous question of what the weather 
 will be for the next six weeks. 
 
 In the late summer days and early fall the 
 164 
 
WOODCHUCKS 
 
 woodchuck may be seen, a hairy philosopher 
 of the woods, sitting on top of his burrow or 
 on top of some stump close by, enjoying his 
 favorite occupation of sunning himself and 
 ruminating on the perfidy of man. Motion- 
 less as a monument, and yet warily observant 
 of his surroundings, he will sit in this way 
 for hours at a time. It is believed by many 
 people that the woodchuck really enjoys the 
 pleasures of woodland meditation. The soft 
 winds go by and the sun slants lingeringly 
 along the broad slopes about his home. 
 Swallows swing gracefully above the apple- 
 trees on the hill, and from a barkless limb 
 comes down the tattoo of the red-headed 
 woodpecker. Doves go past, swift as light, 
 their lead-colored wings striking sharply 
 across the treetops. The waters of the lake 
 drift idly in and as lazily recede. The sum- 
 mer dreams and dozes, and clouds of whitest 
 fleece lie furled in upper harbors of bluest 
 ether. And the brown stoic of the fields 
 looks out over all the peace and beauty of 
 this landscape, and wonders why man was 
 made to interrupt the thread of his mus- 
 ings, and waylay him with rifle and shot-gun, 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 or bring savage dogs to rend him limb from 
 limb. 
 
 One of the troubles the woodchuck gets 
 into is with the early boy the boy of four- 
 teen years or thereabout. This youth will 
 cheerfully study and plan for a month to 
 catch any particular woodchuck on the farm. 
 The " chuck " is his sworn prey, and when 
 such a boy has fully determined to get one, 
 the " chuck " might as well take his belong- 
 ings and depart for another locality. If the 
 burrow is near a lake or anywhere close to 
 water the boy will lug bucketful after bucket- 
 ful of water to the hole and drown the 
 prophet out. He will set traps for him 
 " dead-fall/' steel trap, or box-trap and if 
 all these arts avail not he will sit as patiently 
 as an Indian for hours near the hole. In his 
 hands he will have the family howitzer a 
 bored-out musket or a single-barrelled shot- 
 gun and when the woodchuck stealthily 
 creeps out he will be saluted with a deafening 
 roar of artillery, and a handful of good-sized 
 shot will come straight for his devoted car- 
 cass. 
 
 Shooting woodchucks with a rifle is quite 
 166 
 
WOODCHUCKS 
 
 exciting sport, for very choice stalking is 
 often required to get within shooting distance 
 of the game. A woodchuck can be seen a 
 long way off, and he can see a man about 
 twice as far away as a man can see him; so 
 that even in a region where they are fairly 
 plentiful there is no certainty of getting a 
 shot at one. One of the best ways to assassi- 
 nate one of them is to get acquainted with 
 him and learn something about his daily 
 walks in life. He is sure to be somewhat 
 methodical in his mode of living, and will 
 appear quite regularly at the door of his 
 home from day to day. He is only able to 
 face one way, but his powers of hearing are 
 remarkably developed. 
 
 But with a rifle of large calibre one 
 which will do execution at five hundred yards 
 a woodchuck can easily be killed by a good 
 marksman. However, a woodchuck at five 
 hundred yards is a very easy object to miss. 
 The rifle-shot of the galleries who is used to 
 the level shooting at targets, will find himself 
 very much at sea when shooting in the open. 
 So I would advise the ordinarily good shot 
 to creep up as near as possible before turn- 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 ing loose. It is a regrettable occurrence, of 
 course, for one to crawl about a quarter of 
 a mile through dusty surroundings in order 
 to gain a point of vantage, and on peering 
 out to discover that his fat friend has taken 
 the alarm and is now in the safety-deposit 
 vaults some twenty feet underground. But 
 maybe you arched your back a trifle when 
 you were edging through the timothy, or per- 
 haps you moved the top rail of that fence 
 you wormed through. Sit down and think it 
 over. The woodchuck is gone and will not 
 show his nose until to-morrow, likely. 
 
 A " chuck " is not good to eat, and his hide 
 is only good to make whip-lashes of, so far as 
 my experience goes. But they say that, along 
 with the rabbits, he gnaws the apple-trees, 
 and eats the turnips, and generally makes 
 himself obnoxious. And so, like the Indian, 
 he has to go. In some localities a price is on 
 his head, and wherever that is the case he is, 
 indeed, in a hard row of stumps. But much 
 persecution makes him all the warier, and 
 there are neighborhoods where the same 
 old woodchuck haunts a hill-side year after 
 year with a pertinacity and a cunning 
 168 
 
WOODCHUCKS 
 
 which certainly call for some degree of ad- 
 miration. 
 
 In the pictures of out-doors he is one of 
 the quaintest of objects harmless, medita- 
 tive, and grave as Solomon himself. He is 
 of no particular use, it may be cheerfully ad- 
 mitted, but he is certainly picturesque from 
 any point of view. In the spring, the sum- 
 mer, and the fall he takes his stand by the 
 side of his burrow or on a stump, and, all 
 statuelike, devotes himself strictly to his pas- 
 sion of contemplative musing. 
 
 When squatted on his burrow in the fall, 
 he hears the guns of the hunters on the points 
 where the " decoys " are floating, and sees 
 the lines of wild-fowl turn and scatter at the 
 sound. The cat-tails by the bridge have 
 turned sere and brown then, and the sun 
 shines with a more steady and persistent 
 glow on slope and pasture. The buzzard 
 swims in the blue like a black frigate on 
 far-away seas. Cattle graze at the edges of 
 meadows, and the fox-squirrel is preparing 
 his winter store. All day the winds are 
 . active and hickory-nuts come rattling to 
 the ground, and yet the woodchuck has no 
 169 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 need to take heed for the future. When the 
 cold winds come, and the surface of the lake 
 is shining emerald and the land is wrapped 
 in white blankets of finest snows he will be 
 in the Land of Nod, dreaming of days when 
 no blight is on the earth and there is no lack 
 of leaf and blossom. And so, careless of the 
 dying year, and knowing only of sun and 
 shower, bud, flower, and waving grass, the 
 woodchuck poises by his burrow; a graven 
 monk whose winter of discontent never comes ; 
 but who loses sight of the last blade of grass 
 that October's banners flourish, as he descends 
 into his earthy cloister for the winter, to find 
 it again in the rumpled, tossing tresses of the 
 spring, as his brown muzzle reconnoitres, for 
 the first time in the new year, the old remem- 
 bered landscapes. 
 
 170 
 
FROG-HUNTING 
 
 THE bull-frog and the meadow-frog 
 have a hard time of it. They are 
 pursued and persecuted by various 
 enemies. The snake family are partial to 
 frogs, and the subtle raccoon is also a frog- 
 eater who gathers in the nimble batrachians 
 and places them where they will do him the 
 most good. Boys, dogs, and men complete 
 the list of the frog's destroyers. 
 
 "Say, have fiends in shape of boys, 
 With wild halloo and dreadful noise, 
 Hunted thee from marshy joys, 
 With a dog, 
 Expiring frog?" 
 
 The reason for the capture of these sol- 
 emn-voiced croakers is that their hind legs, 
 or " saddles/' as they are called, are partic- 
 ularly delicious to eat. Broiled frog-saddles 
 are much more delicate and toothsome than 
 the most carefully selected spring chicken. 
 
 Frogs are found in the marshes and lakes 
 171 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 and in ponds and wet, boggy meadows. 
 Sometimes they are caught on a hook by fish- 
 ing for them with a piece of red flannel, 
 which excites their wrath when it is waved 
 before their noses. The adage regarding " a 
 red rag to a bull " seems to hold good in the 
 case of a bull-frog. But the two most com- 
 mon ways by which the hunters take the 
 frogs for the market are by spearing and 
 shooting. Spearing frogs is an art, and is 
 practised in the marshes and around the shal- 
 low shores of the lakes, where frogs are 
 plentiful. The hunter must necessarily be a 
 light-weight man, or a boy, considering the 
 craft he employs in the business. This is a 
 canoe or the smallest or lightest possible 
 duck-boat, pointed at both ends, and able to 
 run smoothly in a few inches of water. A 
 double-bladed paddle is dipped into the water 
 from side to side, and the little boat glides 
 over the surface as smoothly as a water-bug. 
 The hunter sits in the centre of the boat 
 and conducts operations from the right side. 
 He has a small box in front of him and a 
 short, sharp-bladed knife lying on the box. 
 This knife is used to cut off the saddles as the 
 172 
 
FROG-HUNTING 
 
 frogs are brought into the boat. The spear 
 used by the hunter is very light and with a 
 shaft fully eighteen feet long. At one end of 
 the shaft is fixed the spear, which has three 
 small barbs, each with an arrow-shaped head, 
 which prevents the frog from slipping off 
 when transfixed. The shaft or pole of the 
 spear is usually of pine, sometimes of cane, 
 and is absolutely straight and symmetrical. 
 It is balanced with the fingers and thumb of 
 the left hand and propelled by the fingers and 
 thumb of the right hand. The spear slides 
 along the left hand without leaving the hand, 
 and can be drawn back readily by that hand 
 after the throw is made. The boat is sent 
 noiselessly along the shallow stretches of wa- 
 ter by light dips of the paddle, and as the 
 hunter nears where the frog is floating in the 
 water he stops the boat with a turn of the 
 paddle. The spear is then raised, adjusted, 
 and literally sighted at the frog. 
 
 The stupid quarry is meanwhile looking 
 " all eyes " at the hunter. Nothing but the 
 top of his head showing above the water de- 
 notes that a frog is floating there. The spear 
 is darted toward and under the frog with a 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 " whish " as it slides along the fingers and 
 thumb of the left hand. It strikes the water 
 with a sound like " chuck," transfixing the 
 frog's body, and is then brought back quickly 
 by the left and right hands until the frog is 
 just over the box in the boat. A swift stroke 
 of the knife and the " saddle " is severed 
 and is in the box. The hunter may have seen 
 two or three frogs quite close together, and 
 if he is an adept with the spear he will har- 
 vest them all, one after another, without their 
 taking alarm. The best of tools and the 
 lightest of boats is required, and the hunter 
 must have had years of experience to be able 
 to handle the long, light spear with accuracy 
 and comparative silence. Splashing will spoil 
 everything. Frogs are not speared excepting 
 while they are in the water, and a skilful 
 hunter can pick up five or six dozen frogs in 
 a day easily when they are at all numerous. 
 
 Skill with the spear and paddle and a 
 knowledge where the best places are for the 
 game are the requisites for success. A 
 " cracker jack " with the spear will get a frog 
 ninety-nine times out of a hundred. The 
 frogs lie about in the very shallow water, and 
 174 
 
FROG-HUNTING 
 
 the coming in of a light boat does not seem 
 to alarm them. Frog-legs are sold in the 
 market according to size and by the dozen. 
 
 Shooting frogs is quite another matter, 
 and requires skill with the rifle and patience 
 in stalking. The bull-frog on the bank is 
 quite a different party from the bull-frog in 
 the pool, and he views with the utmost sus- 
 picion any attempt to cultivate his acquaint- 
 ance. When alarmed he will launch out into 
 space and dive down into the water with a 
 more or less resounding " plunk," according 
 to his size. He is morbidly alert to ap- 
 proaching footsteps, and is willing to vacate 
 a nice cool spot on the edge of a pond or lake 
 at any time when he hears a man or boy ap- 
 proaching, so that stalking him successfully 
 requires a keen eye and some knowledge of 
 the wily frog. Just as his stupidity in the 
 water is apparent, so is his sagacity on land 
 patent to his foes. Sometimes there will be a 
 dozen frogs squatted along one little stretch 
 beside a pond, and usually as one leaps into 
 the water the rest follow, one after another, 
 with hollow " plunks," until the shore is bare. 
 
 To shoot them before they jump is the 
 
 175 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 trick, and to do this from the bank requires 
 a cautious approach. They should be shot 
 through the head, as they are extremely tena- 
 cious of life, and often jump into the water 
 and sink if shot through the body. The best 
 way to get them with a rifle is to shoot them 
 from the water, wading along at the edge of 
 the shore, a little ways out, and shooting them 
 as they sit on the bank. A twenty-two-calibre 
 rifle is amply large enough for this kind of 
 shooting, and short twenty-twos or even the 
 half-size bulleted caps can be used. A man 
 should have rubber knee-boots or hip-boots 
 for this kind of wading and must move 
 slowly in the water, keeping a sharp lookout 
 for his game. In the spring and summer 
 days frog shooting is a sport which will 
 afford considerable amusement, besides giv- 
 ing practice with the rifle and the oppor- 
 tunity to loaf in the midst of pleasant sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 At the lake's edge the kingfisher patrols, 
 now clattering along over the bulrushes, and 
 now perching on a dead limb, or a stake by 
 the water. The hill-side oaks throw a veil of 
 shadows to the ripples and an occasional 
 
FROG-HUNTING 
 
 splash tells where a black bass leaped for a 
 roving dragon-fly. The surface of the lake, 
 alternately smoothed and ruffled by winds and 
 flecked by sun and shade, is an ever-changing 
 picture, framed by the massive hills. The 
 creak of a rowlock announces a passing boat, 
 and a lazy buzzard draws inky circles high 
 up in the blue. The sun shines in drowsy 
 meadows where katydids cling to the grasses, 
 and down in the woods the spirit of slum- 
 ber folds idle hands and dreams the long day 
 through. 
 
 If you want frogs for bait and what 
 more tempting bait can be offered to a big- 
 mouthed bass? you must take them alive. 
 This will require a small linen sack and 
 the " know how " of live-frog catching. 
 Meadow-frogs are your game now, and you 
 will find them in little boggy, damp spots on 
 the hill-side, or deep in the woods in grassy 
 " sloughs " that lie in the timber. There 
 you will find the meadow-frogs ready to be 
 caught. They can jump about seven feet at 
 a clip, and to catch them by hand requires 
 an eye for distance and some practice. It is 
 pretty good fun surrounding a lusty meadow- 
 177 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 frog in tall grass and trying to grab him be- 
 tween jumps. 
 
 These frogs make excellent bait for big- 
 mouth bass, and if the linen sack is kept wet, 
 they will live and be lively for several days. 
 The bull-frog is not good bait, being too 
 large to be engulfed, and too heavy to cast 
 successfully, when at his full growth. 
 
 It is a pity to shoot and spear the true 
 bull-frogs, for their sombre bellowing in the 
 evening is one of the oddest sounds in nat- 
 ure. When the dusk threads of twilight are 
 woven in with the afterglow of the west, the 
 bull-frogs sound sonorous chords, which re- 
 verberate along and over the reeds and rushes, 
 far-reaching down the night. Long ago, they 
 say, when Pan was driven from the marshes, 
 he called the frogs to him. They were his 
 favorites, 
 
 " And all around him on the wet, 
 
 Cool earth the frogs came up, and, with a smile, 
 He took them in his hairy hands and set 
 His mouth to theirs awhile, 
 
 " And blew into their velvet throats; 
 
 And ever from that hour the frogs repeat 
 The murmur of Pan's pipes; the notes 
 And answers strange and sweet/* 
 
 17.8 
 
THE CROW'S WING 
 
 FROM the Gulf to the Great Lakes, 
 from California's Golden Gate on 
 the west to Far Rockaway on the 
 east, a broad and sable wing beats the air. 
 In sun and shine, through rain, hail, or sleet, 
 long lines of black at the coming of twilight 
 mark the airy, distant trails where the crow 
 flies. The ebon pinions of his Ishmaelitish clan 
 darken the skies in most states of the Union. 
 He is himself an undaunted robber and pirate, 
 with the black-flag always flying and a harsh 
 challenge of sombre note that menaces and 
 beats back the fates. Every bird's beak is 
 against him, and he is at war with the rest 
 of the feathered tribes. Not in all of my 
 out-door life have I ever noticed sociability 
 on the part of the crow toward other birds. 
 He often robs their nests and kills their 
 young. When the kingbird, or bee-martin, 
 as he is sometimes called, attacks the crow, 
 that hardy freebooter spreads wing and is 
 179 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 away, scarcely noticing the assaults of his 
 bold little tormentor. But when a hawk or 
 an eagle appears on the scene, the crow him- 
 self becomes the aggressor, and he follows 
 the larger bird pertinaciously, plucking out a 
 feather now and then, and driving his enemy 
 down wind with resistless energy. 
 
 The hand of man is against him every- 
 where, and well might it be. 
 
 The crow descends on the fields in count- 
 less numbers, and as he must and will live, 
 however scanty the fare, his philosophy is 
 that of the conscienceless forager. He regu- 
 lates his conduct by u the good old rule, the 
 simple plan, that they shall take who have 
 the power, and they shall keep who can." In 
 cornfields, orchards, and in meadows he gleans 
 with a sharp bill whatever may be found. He 
 does not hesitate to attack young chickens and 
 rabbits, and even puny lambs, when reduced 
 to dire need. The world owes him a living, 
 according to his code, and he collects it in 
 person. 
 
 His is the most familiar figure in bird life, 
 because the most universal. His plumage is 
 coal black, but on the back and at the base of 
 180 
 
THE CROW'S WING 
 
 the wings and neck there is a purplish gloss 
 which is very noticeable, especially on the 
 younger birds. His eyes are brown, very 
 bright, and more than usually intelligent. 
 From the tip of his strong bill to the end of 
 his tail a full-grown crow will measure close 
 to nineteen inches in length. His wings are 
 broad and strong, and are remarkable for 
 their power of sustained and unflagging 
 flight. Crows build their nests in the timber, 
 rough-lined and coarse ones of sticks, and 
 the she-bird lays from three to six eggs. 
 These nests are in the tall trees as a rule, and 
 sometimes many of them are close together. 
 Carrion, crawfish, frogs, apples, corn, meat 
 almost anything he can get his thievish 
 claws on he will devour. And if necessary, 
 he will go hunting in the pastures for bugs, 
 worms, insects, field-mice, or even young rab- 
 bits. All he asks is an opportunity to forage. 
 There is no craven cowardice in his defiant 
 " caw, caw," and if winged by the hunter's 
 fire he will turn his shining dark eyes coura- 
 geously toward his arch-enemy man and 
 fight with wing, beak, and claw to the very 
 last. 
 
 181 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 Of the crow's flight much could be written. 
 
 Curving sweep of a burnished wing, 
 Black as the gloom of a winter night; 
 Strong in a sense of hardy flight 
 Over the woods and the mountain height, 
 Winds and the white moon following. 
 
 Along the larger rivers crows gather in 
 many thousands, and when twilight comes 
 stealing on, and the silvery sickle of the new 
 moon is etched pale against the curtains of 
 night, they go by in long lines and com- 
 panies to their distant roosts in some far- 
 away forest. They fly high as a rule, and 
 for hours their steady travel blots the red 
 glare of the sinking sun and throws sombre 
 streaks athwart the leaden tapestry of shad- 
 ows that follow. You will wonder where 
 they all come from, where they are all go- 
 ing, -and how they manage to exist. If all 
 mankind were as stout-hearted as these van- 
 dals of the waste places arid pathless high- 
 ways, what a race we would be ! The crow 
 is truly a survival of the fittest, if endurance 
 and sagacity be a test. Some of them live to 
 be eighty or one hundred years old. Little, 
 indeed, do those resolute pinions care for 
 182 
 
THE CROW'S WING 
 
 rain, hail, or sleet, the rattle of menacing 
 thunder, the lightning's crooked darts, or the 
 roar of gathering tempests. " As the crow 
 flies " has become a proverb for directness of 
 flight, for the nearest line between two dis- 
 tant points. His awkward sweep of wing 
 will carry him along without apparent effort 
 at a rate of from forty to fifty miles an hour, 
 and in staying powers there are few birds 
 which can match prowess with the crow. 
 
 His song is not a varied one. The queru- 
 lous, inquisitive " caw, caw " that he sends 
 out is loud and curt, and carries with it an 
 apprehensive tone, as though he would like 
 to hear a responsive and assuring cry from 
 one of his own kind. For with bullet, trap, 
 and shot-gun he is remorselessly sought, and 
 as he is more and more hunted he grows ex- 
 ceedingly cunning, and his habits of retiring 
 modesty become almost a mania with him. 
 About long rifle-range is as near as he is com- 
 fortable with a man in the average neighbor- 
 hood. Where a person is in a buggy or 
 wagon the crow, like many other birds, does 
 not get so suspicious of the occupants of the 
 vehicle as he would be of a pedestrian. And 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 yet if a man sets out deliberately to hunt 
 them day in and day out for any length of 
 time, on horseback or from a rig, they will 
 soon get the drift of his scheme and refuse to 
 be gulled. In only two states that I know of 
 are the crows mentioned in the game-laws, 
 and there they are named only as not being 
 protected. In many parts of the country 
 there is a bounty for them the year round. 
 
 From two to five cents a head is paid for 
 them in various sections of the states. The 
 boys and men of these particular localities 
 hunt them perseveringly. I hunted crows 
 with a double-barrelled shot-gun one summer, 
 with very fair success. The birds frequented 
 old orchards a good deal, which were usu- 
 ally inclosed by stone walls from three to 
 four feet high. I used to prowl around until 
 I saw a crow keeping a sharp lookout from 
 the top of an apple-tree. This bird was the 
 temporary chairman of the meeting of the 
 crows, a sort of " sentinel-am-I " crow. Af- 
 ter he had been up in the tree for a few 
 minutes he would fly down, and presently 
 another bird would fly up and take his place. 
 In this short interval between guard-duty I 
 184 
 
THE CROW'S WING 
 
 would make a run and crouch behind the 
 stone wall nearest me. It then became a cau- 
 tious stalk to get within range, by running a 
 little way each time the guard-mount was 
 shifted. It worked to a charm for some 
 time. I would approach within twenty or 
 thirty yards of them, and when a lone senti- 
 nel flew down after I had crept within range 
 I would get in one barrel at the bunch on 
 the ground and another shot as the survivors 
 rose. I averaged at least three crows to each 
 double discharge. Of course it was " pot- 
 hunting," but I considered the crows as " ver- 
 min," and shot them " on the wing, on the 
 head, on the tail anywhere." 
 
 It was very exciting stalking for a while, but 
 they stopped it by a simple method of bird- 
 reasoning. The sentinel-crow finally got to 
 waiting until his " relief " flew up into the 
 tree before he flew down to join the gang in 
 the orchard. With a " lookout " always in 
 the tree my occupation as a crow-hunter was 
 gone. I could not begin to get within shot- 
 gun range of them. The minute I tried to 
 make a sneak on them the alarm was given, 
 and away they went to some other part of 
 
 185 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 the township. I killed a few with a rifle 
 after that, but not many. 
 
 Since then I have not done any steady 
 crow-hunting. They fly over in the spring 
 and fall when a man is in the " blinds " hunt- 
 ing ducks over the decoys, and sometimes I 
 take a crack at one, but not so often as I used 
 to. They do say some of the wise ones 
 that he is a great friend of the farmer. I 
 don't think so. But for his pertinacity, sense, 
 love of freedom, strength of flight, and hon- 
 orable suit of black I nevertheless salute him, 
 and respect the best of what he stands for. 
 
 Send my soul on a sable wing, 
 Death, when the darkness falls on me; 
 Let me wander by land and sea 
 Free as the crow's flight; yea, as free 
 Winds and the white moon following. 
 
 186 
 
PRAIRIE-CHICKEN 
 SHOOTING 
 
 IN many of the states where prairie- 
 chickens were formerly found in the 
 prairies, there is now comparatively 
 little of that kind of cover left for the birds. 
 Agriculture has made farms of the wide- 
 rolling savannas, and these grouse nest in the 
 " slues " and meadows and feed in the stub- 
 bles and cornfields. In the far western and 
 northwestern states there are still prairies left, 
 but much of this kind of hunting is done 
 nowadays on oats and wheat stubbles, in corn- 
 fields, and in " slues " adjoining marshes. 
 
 The pinnated grouse is a splendid and 
 hardy bird, standing as high as the ordinary 
 good-sized barn-yard fowl, and weighing, 
 when full-grown, from three and one-half 
 to four and one-half pounds. He is of a 
 brownish color variegated with gray, lighter 
 on the breast and speckled, and with rich, 
 dark streaks of coloring on the back. His 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 head has a partial crest, and there are two 
 little tufts of feathers on the neck. The 
 tail is broad, and the legs are fairly well 
 feathered. He is capable of enduring a great 
 deal of cold weather, and will manage to 
 pick up a living in the fields, hedges, and or- 
 chards in severe winters when quail freeze. 
 He will feed on grain, insects, bugs, and pos- 
 sibly even buds, as the ruffed grouse does, 
 when hard pressed for food. He under- 
 stands the value of timber as a shelter dur- 
 ing cold weather, and will fly a long way to 
 get there from the piercing winds of the 
 prairies during winter months. He is a hand- 
 some bird, and lies well to the dogs. The 
 coveys run from eight to a dozen, fifteen, or 
 twenty-five birds. Years ago the coveys, or 
 aggregations of coveys, called " packs," made 
 flocks of hundreds no rare sight. 
 
 The flight of the prairie-chicken is rather 
 peculiar in the beginning. When the bird is 
 first flushed he rises with a rocking, cradle- 
 like motion, his wings beating the air 
 strongly. He presently steadies down to an 
 even, sailing movement, broken at short in- 
 tervals by a whirring of broad, strong pin- 
 188 
 
PRAIRIE-CHICKEN SHOOTING 
 
 ions. Long ago, when prairie-chickens were 
 not hunted so much, and there was more prai- 
 rie, the birds would fly a short distance when 
 disturbed and settle in the grass again. But 
 now they fly from a half-mile to a mile or 
 even farther, in localities where they are most 
 hunted. They are not hard birds to hit on 
 the wing, but the old ones can carry away 
 quite a grist of shot, so that a man must hit 
 them hard to kill them cleanly. 
 
 The main precaution in shooting chickens 
 is to take time when the birds rise, and not 
 shoot too quickly. They don't fly swiftly like 
 a quail, or make erratic twists, as a jack* 
 snipe does, and you will have plenty of time 
 to get in both barrels at a single bird, or 
 make " doubles " when the coveys get up, if 
 you don't spoil things by firing too soon. It 
 is a rare thing to have an entire covey of 
 chickens rise at once. Sometimes the main 
 bunch rises and then a few scattering ones 
 follow. Sometimes all but one fly at the first 
 alarm, and occasionally a stray bird flies up, 
 followed by the rest of the covey, except the 
 one which usually waits until the rest have 
 gone. This is a peculiarity of the pinnated 
 189 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 grouse. There is nearly always one bird 
 which waits until the covey has flown before 
 it gets up out of the cover. And so it pays 
 to hunt around when a covey has flown, in 
 search of this laggard bird before going on. 
 It is very laborious and difficult work hunt- 
 ing chickens without a dog, especially in Sep- 
 tember, when the birds are young and loath 
 to fly, and the cover is thick. Chickens will 
 skulk and hide and squat in the grass or 
 stubble and let you pass within a few feet 
 of them without their rising. A well-broken 
 dog, or even two dogs, must necessarily be 
 taken along. And a crippled prairie-chicken 
 can dodge along in the cover and sneak away 
 through corn-rows in a manner to defy any- 
 thing but a good dog. When a covey scatters 
 in corn and high grass or weeds a dog can 
 locate them one by one, and it is no trick at 
 all to bring them down in the open. In tall 
 grass it is not so easy. You are obliged to 
 shoot quickly then, and the waving blades 
 of corn on a windy day are not easy to see 
 through. But in stubble, or on the prairies, 
 a September chicken at from twenty to forty 
 yards is an easy mark. 
 190 
 
PRAIRIE-CHICKEN SHOOTING 
 
 They feed in the stubble in the morning 
 and in the evening, and generally take to the 
 cornfields in the middle of the day. They 
 lie in the shade there or roll around in the 
 cool dirt to rid themselves of vermin. It is 
 hot work forcing one's self through the heavy 
 green corn in September weather, and without 
 a dog a man would be almost helpless. Even 
 with the dog along the chickens will some- 
 times play " hide-and-seek " through the corn 
 and elude the dog in many ways. They will 
 run from the dog and not lie so that he can 
 point them always. If there are weeds in 
 the corn they will hide there and the shoot- 
 ing will be improved. The present genera- 
 tion of pinnated grouse nearly all dive into 
 the fields after being flushed from the stub- 
 ble, and you have to push right in there and 
 " dig them out " to get any shooting. The 
 only sensible way to hunt chickens is to have 
 a rig which will carry yourself and partner, 
 the driver, the lunch, and the dogs. Take 
 feed for the horses and water for the dogs. 
 In this way you can be driven from one place 
 to another and cover a vast deal of territory 
 in a day. You will find that you will have 
 191 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 to do that to get any shooting worth mention- 
 ing. As the birds sometimes fly a mile, it is 
 handy to have the team pick you up to get 
 to them again without walking yourself into 
 a state of combustion to reach them. 
 
 The gun for shooting chickens should be 
 a twelve-gauge gun, modified choke in the 
 right-hand barrel and full-choke in the left- 
 hand barrel. A six-and-a-half- to a seven- 
 and-a-half-pound gun is heavy enough. A 
 pair of heavy stubble boots is an advantage 
 in walking, and stout duck hunting-trousers 
 and coat will keep you dry while tramp- 
 ing through the wet weeds, grass, and stub- 
 ble, not to mention the corn. If you don't 
 wear stubble boots have a pair of strong and 
 thick duck leggings to wear over your trou- 
 sers. The best way is for two men to go 
 together, beating the cover about twenty-five 
 yards apart. They can then command close 
 to one hundred and fifty yards of space with 
 the two guns as to width, and, say, forty to 
 sixty-five yards ahead. This will give the 
 chickens a good opportunity to get in the 
 way of the shot, and as for the bird that gets 
 up within the inner circle between the men, 
 192 
 
PRAIRIE-CHICKEN SHOOTING 
 
 he is as good as dead, unless the hunters are 
 " duffers." 
 
 When a bird gets up in front of a man 
 that is his shot. If it gets up between the 
 men, the man who has invited his friend out 
 to shoot will give him the shot. And the 
 friend will insist on the inviter taking the 
 next shot of the kind when the dog makes a 
 point of that character. Should a covey rise, 
 each man will pick outside birds to prevent 
 both shooting at the same birds. It is per- 
 fectly allowable for a man to fire at a bird 
 his companion has missed with both barrels, 
 and to fire at either bird of " a double " which 
 his companion has missed. But if a man has 
 missed his first shot of a double rise and fol- 
 lows the bird shot at with the evident inten- 
 tion to get his second barrel in at the same 
 bird, then his companion can shoot at the 
 other bird of the double. Two men who 
 have hunted together never have any diffi- 
 culty about whose shot it is, or who should 
 take any particular shot. It is always as 
 much pleasure to see a friend make " a 
 double " as it is to make the shots yourself 
 oftentimes more. 
 
 193 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 In shots that go straight away hold so 
 that the gun is level with the chicken's back, 
 if the bird is sailing. If he is rising, hold a 
 trifle above him. If a quartering shot, hold 
 a few inches ahead of him, keeping the muz- 
 zle of the gun moving as you pull the trig- 
 ger. If the shot is a cross-shot, and a long 
 one, hold farther ahead. Just how far de- 
 pends on the speed the bird is going, the 
 velocity of the wind, how high he is, how 
 far away he is, and other things. Number 
 seven or eight shot is heavy enough for Sep- 
 tember birds, although some of the shooters 
 stick to number six shot for both barrels. 
 
 Take some dry hay along and draw your 
 birds as soon as they are shot. Stuff them with 
 the hay, and as soon as practicable get them to 
 the wagon and keep them in the shade. When 
 you get to your hotel or stopping-place have 
 them hung in a cool spot and dry until you go 
 home. If you are going to stay out for sev- 
 eral days " draw " and stuff the birds and 
 then express them to your friends. Never kill 
 over twelve birds in a day. A man cannot 
 comfortably carry more than a dozen birds, 
 and should not shoot more than he can carry. 
 194 
 
A FOX IN THE MERA- 
 MEC VALLEY 
 
 THE Meramec river flows down 
 through the Missouri hills with a 
 rush, speeding its way to the Mis- 
 sissippi with the ardor of a courier carrying 
 a reprieve. It is deep in places, and at a few 
 fords shallow, with a world of music where 
 its current babbles over the bars. It has a 
 distinct individuality among rivers, a sort of 
 turbulent energy, as though disdainful of all 
 the restraining influences of man. A wild 
 river always, seldom bringing with it any of 
 those peaceful, slumbrous influences so com- 
 mon to the lowland streams. Even where the 
 land slopes to the lesser levels the Meramec 
 shakes the ripples that crown it, like the mane 
 of an unruly colt, and leaps forward, as if 
 anxious to gain the sheltering shadows of 
 the hills. It is the type of restlessness, of 
 
 195 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 strength, and of activity. Like a lithe and 
 sinewy Indian runner, it stretches out for its 
 race to the sea, and night and day, with un- 
 swerving patience, it holds to the appointed 
 course. Around it rise the timber-covered 
 ridges of the south-west, studded thick with 
 hickory, oak, butternut, elm, sycamore, ash, 
 and other trees. Above it, in the autumn 
 days, shines the sun from the bluest of semi- 
 tropic skies. 
 
 Along these hills a hard-riding, hospitable 
 class of farmers live, and they ride to hounds 
 as their fathers did before them. To them 
 the life of a fox is sacred, except as caught 
 by the hounds and killed in honorable battle. 
 Their dogs are pedigreed and carefully bred, 
 and their lineage is proudly preserved both 
 in traditional and in book form. The horses 
 they use for the chase are not condemned to 
 the servile toil of the plough, but are only 
 taken for saddle uses, chief of which are the 
 fox-chases along the hills. In their homes is 
 still preserved that genuine, hearty hospital- 
 ity which includes friend or stranger, and is 
 the delight and wonder of those not to the 
 manner born a kindliness and simplicity of 
 196 
 
A FOX IN THE MERAMEC VALLEY 
 
 speech and deed which tells of real nobility 
 of character, unspoiled and still unspotted by 
 the world. 
 
 In the late October or early November days 
 a man can lie on one of these slumbering hills 
 and dream away the time, wrapped in an 
 Indian-summer haze which envelops the land 
 in a mantle of surpassing beauty. And if he 
 is fortunate enough to be near by to a fox- 
 chase he will have a variety of music and 
 color and conjecture to keep all his senses 
 keenly alive for hours. They hunt the fox 
 along the bluffs, and even down into the 
 thickets and woods which stand on the steep 
 banks below. Bold riders they certainly are, 
 taking risks which would appall the ordinary 
 sportsman. And on such a day, and with 
 such an opportunity, I once whiled away a 
 long October afternoon among the Meramec 
 hills. 
 
 The river wound past amid tall and abrupt 
 rises, dense timber covering each bank, with 
 the autumn sun streaming down on its cur- 
 rent as it went by. Where the light had full 
 sweep on the water a flood of molten gold 
 glittered, and where the leaves beat back the 
 197 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 sun a wall of shadows brooded. On the 
 slopes the sumach blazed, the wine of all the 
 seasons red-gleaming in its clusters, and be- 
 low, the severe gray of faded thistle-stalks 
 lent an ascetic contrast. Sometimes the 
 shadow of a hawk's wing etched a floating 
 picture on the grass, and occasionally a blue- 
 jay's bright pinion lit up a patch of sombre 
 shrubbery as a blue flame will shine in a 
 darkened chamber. The woodland road lay 
 breathless and dusty far below, and in dense 
 thickets the earth's pulsations heaved softly 
 or were still. In drowsy spaces along the hills 
 a soft wind drifted in and out, and the leaves 
 rose and fell as the breeze lifted or sank, and 
 a smell of burned vines and of ripening nuts 
 was in the air. 
 
 Suddenly there came from a distance the 
 bay of a hound " Woo - oo, woo - oop, 
 woop ! " It was in the indicative mood. It 
 conveyed the idea of a discovery. The sound 
 came nearer, and over a hill, opposite, passed 
 a silhouette of a dog, his nose to the ground, 
 his whole attention directed to the trail. After 
 him came others, and soon a livelier and 
 more eager chorus began as the trail became 
 198 
 
A FOX IN THE MERAMEC VALLEY 
 
 warmer. " Boo-oo-oo-woo-Boo-oop," swelled 
 the burst of dog-music. 
 
 "My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
 So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung, 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew, 
 Crook-kneed and dew-lapped, like Thessalian bulls. 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each." 
 
 The echoes weave in and out of the trees, 
 and that fox is certainly somewhere directly 
 across the river stealing sinuously among 
 those russet thickets, doubtless, and probably 
 calculating to a nicety where the dogs will be 
 at fault; for there is a small creek that runs 
 into the river at this point, a mere brook, in 
 fact, and it will not be presumed that Rey- 
 nard has not taken advantage of this. He 
 has run half-way across a log spanning it, 
 and then turned and jumped back to the same 
 bank from which he mounted the log. He 
 has wet his feet in the water and run along 
 in the shallow edges of the stream for a few 
 yards. Then he has jumped on a leaning 
 tree which half crosses the narrow current, 
 and from there he has jumped into the water 
 199 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 on the opposite side, and waded along for 
 a while before going up on the bank. What 
 a sly look he wears on his crafty countenance 
 as he goes into the brush! 
 
 Up on the hills, back in the fields and lanes 
 he has been leading the dogs a merry chase 
 for some time. He has run over ploughed 
 ground where the scent is hard to carry, and 
 he has taken a whirl through a flock of sheep 
 to throw the dogs from the trail. Along a 
 rocky hill-side, where the winds have swept 
 the stones bare, he has trotted, and on sev- 
 eral occasions he has mounted fences and 
 sprung wide from them, leaving the wisest of 
 the pack in perplexity for a while. All the 
 tricks and capers that his wily nature is sus- 
 ceptible of he has played, and still the pack 
 clings to the trail, loses it, regains it, and the 
 chorus of their baying comes by on the wings 
 of the autumn wind. 
 
 There is that in the intonation of a dog's 
 cries that tells the story of the chase. What 
 an eagerly voiced cry rolls out as the reeking 
 scent comes fresh upon his nostrils I Then 
 swells the sound of triumph, the exultant bay- 
 ing which foretells the approaching " death." 
 200 
 
A FOX IN THE MERAMEC VALLEY 
 
 But what a disappointed, mournful cry wells 
 up when the scent stops, and the baffled hound 
 comes to a pause. How complainingly he 
 starts again, the reproachful tone of his 
 music drifting along the hills. And when he 
 is running free, with the trail neither hot nor 
 cold, there is a businesslike twang to his bay- 
 ing, as if he were keeping the finer points 
 of his music for the more exciting phases of 
 the chase. Then there are the shorter barks 
 of the puppies, sanguine, saucy notes, with a 
 tenor ring in them. At times there is a 
 mingled uplifting of many hayings, as if 
 there were a canine council of ways and 
 means, with no moderator present. Then 
 will come the dying away of most of the 
 clamor and the grumbling bass of some old 
 hound as he takes up the puzzling trail once 
 more. 
 
 The trail leads over the top of the bluffs, 
 and presently all noise of the chase is gone. 
 A pair of gossiping red-headed woodpeck- 
 ers swing up to a dead sycamore's trunk and 
 quarrel petulantly, with short flights to other 
 trees and back again. A solitary nuthatch 
 dips, ducks, bobs, and hops about the green 
 201 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 girth of an old elm, and a buzzard sails over 
 like a loosened thunder-cloud. Sumachs burn 
 steadily on the hill-side, and along the lonely 
 road a farmer's wagon rattles past. The 
 scent of many woodland perfumes, scattered 
 from October's censer, swung by the restless 
 breeze, swims through the forest-aisles and 
 settles on the flaming leaves that splotch the 
 tawny earth. On the river the light descends 
 like a yellow leaf from above. 
 
 Now a new tumult sounds from the edge 
 of the bluffs farther on, a horseman appears 
 sharply outlined against the sky, and a hur- 
 tling group of dogs sprawl down the slope. 
 Again the cries of the hounds throng in the 
 woods, rising and falling " Boo-Roop, Boo- 
 oo-oo woorp, Woo-oo-oo-oop ! " The crash 
 of a horse's hoofs resounds through the 
 woods, and there are calls from above, where 
 other riders assemble. The line of dogs 
 spreads over the hill, ascends and swings 
 down the slope, and finally goes out and on 
 over the bluffs to the fields again. And now 
 once more the golden dreams of autumn set 
 sail from violet skies. Again a velvet veil 
 of utter languor falls, mistlike, from the 
 202 
 
A FOX IN THE MERAMEC VALLEY 
 
 clouds and all is silence, shot through with 
 myrrh and spice of wind-swept woods. 
 
 The noise dies out, and wood-birds call 
 From quiet, leafy coverts dim, 
 And acorns, from the oak-trees tall, 
 Drop, plummetlike, from topmost limb. 
 All now is hushed, sweet silence reigns, 
 And yet an echo seems to say, 
 Soft whispering through the fields and lanes, 
 Gone away, away, gone away. 
 
 203 
 
FALL JACK-SNIPE 
 SHOOTING 
 
 TO many hunters the sport of jack- 
 snipe shooting is the finest of all 
 field shooting. There are men who 
 have hunted the tiger in Ceylon, the elephant 
 in Africa, and moose, elk, grizzly-bear, and 
 antelope in America, who avow their prefer- 
 ence for wild-fowl shooting over any other 
 sport, and principally for snipe shooting at 
 its best. It is a separate and distinct kind 
 of shooting, and in the middle western states 
 it is best in the spring, although in the fall 
 the opportunity for using a dog is better. The 
 jack-snipe has what is termed a " cold scent," 
 as distinguished from quail and other upland 
 birds whose scent is much stronger and easier 
 to catch by the dog. In the spring the snipe 
 find cover in shorter grass and reeds, as a 
 rule, than they frequent in the fall, and do 
 not lie so close as the autumn birds do. In 
 both seasons they are hunted in the middle, 
 204 
 
FALL JACK-SNIPE SHOOTING 
 
 northerly and eastern states, and in the south 
 in the winter ; and thousands are killed every 
 year. 
 
 The jack-snipe is a most aristocratic and 
 handsome bird. He is about ten or eleven 
 inches long, and his wings will measure close 
 to twenty inches when spread. His back is 
 dark, almost black, intermingled with tawny 
 streaks, while his breast and sides are lighter, 
 the sides being light brown with darker 
 specks until the belly is reached, and that 
 is white. The tail is barred beautifully, 
 and when the bird stretches it, as he some- 
 times does when he is shot and falls to the 
 ground, it shows in a fan shape, something 
 like a ruffed grouse's tail when it, too, 
 spreads its tail in the death-agony. The 
 jack-snipe is built on race-horse lines, for 
 speed and agility. He is as light on his feet 
 as a thistle-down is in the air, and when dis- 
 turbed he is up and away in a quick dart that 
 puts the sportsman on his mettle. In the old 
 days it was supposed to be the proper thing 
 to shoot a jack-snipe at forty yards or so, the 
 calculation being that the bird by that time 
 would have concluded his course of twisting 
 205 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 and dodging and have settled down to a 
 steady flight. But the shooters of the new 
 school, for the most part, do not wait that 
 long. In the first place, the birds are appar- 
 ently a trifle better educated now than in the 
 days of " auld lang syne," and if a man 
 waited until they were forty yards away they 
 might take advantage of some convenient 
 clump of willows or a hay-stack or a bunch 
 of tall-growing cane or some one of a number 
 of different bits of cover to disappear from 
 sight. So, too, they are wilder, especially in 
 the spring, and, generally speaking, they are 
 advanced in their methods. The best way to 
 shoot snipe at ordinary ranges of from twenty- 
 five to forty yards is just when they jump. 
 
 Their flight is exceedingly elusive, and men 
 who are good quail, chicken, and duck shots 
 may be very poor performers on jack-snipe. 
 Once mastered, however, it is easy enough for 
 a crack shot to get his birds with quite a de- 
 gree of regularity. As a -rule that meets with 
 few exceptions, the average of three shells 
 to a bird when the snipe are at all wild is a 
 good average. But in the fall, when the 
 birds lie closer, and when they can be put 
 206 
 
FALL JACK-SNIPE SHOOTING 
 
 up before the dog, a man should do bet- 
 ter. In the fall snipe lie in higher, heavier 
 cover, especially on windy and cold days, and 
 it is beautiful sport then. Take some old 
 cow-pasture, wet and grown up with cat-tails 
 and a swampy and marshy growth, where 
 cattle have trampled down the cover, leav- 
 ing boggy spots here and there through the 
 field, and there the birds will always be found 
 when there are any snipe in the country. 
 Such spots will be found to be full of snipe 
 during the season, and even when the birds 
 are driven away they will come back again, 
 drifting in all day to such a favorite haunt. 
 On cold and blowy days they will lie well 
 to a dog, and a good setter or pointer will 
 be able to make a dozen points inside of 
 half an hour in such a field. One of the 
 great beauties about snipe shooting, so far as 
 the getting of the birds is concerned, is the 
 character of the shooting. It is all single or 
 double bird shooting, as jack-snipe do not 
 fly in flocks. Occasionally a wisp of from 
 three to five may be seen flying over the 
 meadows together, but when they light they 
 scatter, and when the hunter moves up to 
 207 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 their vicinity they will rise singly or in pairs. 
 This gives a man an opportunity to pick his 
 birds which no other shooting gives, for in 
 woodcock shooting the cover hinders the 
 shooting, and in other shooting the birds rise 
 often in a bunch, thus distracting the sports- 
 man's aim. 
 
 Not the least of the charms of this kind of 
 sport is the wonderful exhilaration of the 
 open country. The air comes fresh with the 
 breath and vigor of wide expanses, and the 
 sun beats full and free on waving grass and 
 bending reeds. The brown cat-tails stand 
 rusty and sere under autumnal skies, and the 
 winds dance past to the marsh edges and rip- 
 ple over amber waters to the water's edge 
 again. Marsh-hawks hover above, and some- 
 times a sparrow-hawk flutters for minutes at 
 a time without moving from one space in 
 the air. Sometimes a clumsy yellow bittern 
 scrambles out of the grass with a rush of 
 broad wings, stretching his long neck and 
 looking back as if he expected to be brought 
 down by the hunter before he could get out 
 of danger. 
 
 In the fall .the jack-snipe have less country 
 208 
 
FALL JACK-SNIPE SHOOTING 
 
 to feed in, for the summer suns have dried 
 up much of the ground they occupied in the 
 spring months. In some parts of the country 
 there is no shooting except in the spring. In 
 the autumn months these birds linger in the 
 country until sometimes the ice rims the 
 edges of the pools and chill winds sweep 
 across the pastures. But if the grass and 
 reeds afford cover high enough the snipe will 
 skulk in such cover, and many a dozen of 
 splendid, plump birds may be shot when the 
 morning of the day which gave them their 
 quietus was cold and stormy, with ice on the 
 spring holes. But when the sun comes out in 
 the afternoons and the ice melts, they seem 
 to come back, and as long as the ground sof- 
 tens and gives them good feeding, and the 
 cover shelters them from the winds, they 
 linger until the advent of the conquering 
 snows. 
 
 A good dog will not only enable a man 
 to find birds better in the fall, but he can 
 make " doubles " when he has a dog along, 
 trusting to the animal to find all the birds he 
 drops. In high, dense cover, the jack-snipe 
 is a very hard bird to find. Indeed, he is 
 209 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 often lost in comparatively open places be- 
 cause he is so like the cover he falls into. 
 But with a good dog, whether he is a re- 
 triever or not, a man will find about all of 
 the snipe he shoots. When snipe are fairly 
 plentiful the chance for making " doubles " 
 presents itself constantly, and yet, if a man 
 is hunting without a dog, he will lose many 
 birds, especially in thick cover, if he makes 
 "doubles" and tries to get the birds. The saf- 
 est way when shooting without a dog is to get 
 your birds one at a time, unless the hunter has 
 a chance to shoot in fairly open cover. He 
 can then take more chances. When he drops 
 his first bird of a pair, let him mark it down 
 by some particular weed, clump of cat-tails, 
 or other object, and then go to where his sec- 
 ond bird was shot and drop a handkerchief 
 where he thinks the bird fell. Then back to 
 the first bird and find that, if possible, at first. 
 In the meantime, if other birds get up, and 
 they are quite likely to, let him get them one 
 at a time, never forgetting the landmark that 
 he noticed in marking the first bird. If he 
 gets the first bird, the second is an easier 
 task. The handkerchief will be a base from 
 210 
 
FALL JACK-SNIPE SHOOTING 
 
 which to take observations, and by beating 
 around he can usually find his game. 
 
 If the birds are wild, it is a good scheme, 
 as I have found it, to use number six shot in 
 the left-hand barrel. Number eights in the 
 right-hand barrel are all right, but when you 
 shoot a second time at the same bird and 
 that is something that will happen to every 
 one you may have to shoot a long way at 
 your bird. Now on windy days the light shot 
 are at a disadvantage. And it is surprising, 
 and at the same time instructive, to see how 
 many birds a man can shoot with number sixes 
 if he holds his gun right. If you will hold 
 your gun so that a jack-snipe is in the centre 
 of the pattern of a load of sixes he will not 
 get away. Some of the shot will hit him, and 
 generally one is enough if it hits him in the 
 body, wing, or any place but the leg. 
 
 Some hunters invariably use hip-boots in 
 snipe shooting, while others stick to rubber 
 knee-boots. The water may not be very deep 
 along the " slues," or in the pastures and 
 around the marshes where the snipe lie, as 
 they feed in the vicinity of the shallowest 
 pools and wet spots. But you will sometimes 
 
 211 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 come to a place where you will want to go in 
 almost waist-deep, in order to reach other 
 territory. And at times you are obliged to 
 shoot a bird over water, where you would 
 lose him if you could not wade in and re- 
 trieve him. But rubber boots are hard on 
 the feet, and if you do not care to use the 
 mackintosh wading-trousers with a rubber 
 boot at the end, wear the heaviest leggings 
 you can get, firmly clamped down on a stout 
 shoe, and wade in and take whatever ducking 
 you happen to meet. Wear as light clothing 
 as possible, for the tramping will be exten- 
 sive. A sixteen-gauge gun will do nicely for 
 snipe shooting, although my preference is for 
 a twelve-gauge. 
 
 As to the number of birds to be killed in a 
 day, there are different restrictions in various 
 states, and divers ideas among sportsmen in 
 different parts of the country. No matter if 
 they are as thick as blackbirds and it is 
 wonderful how plentiful jack-snipe may be 
 at times twenty-five birds are enough for a 
 day's shooting for one man. 
 
 212 
 
IN DIM OCTOBER 
 
 BACK of the crumbling farm-house was 
 an orchard, and back of that, the 
 woods. We took a drink of well- 
 water from a bucket that had just been hauled 
 up, and then started for the timber. The trees 
 in the orchard were ruddy with fruit, and 
 some of it that had been blown down by 
 gusty winds had marks where the jaybirds 
 and woodpeckers had been sampling it. Be- 
 tween the woods and the orchard there was 
 a genuine stake-and-rider fence. As tedious 
 as it is to mount one of these, it is highly pref- 
 erable to the barb-wire monstrosities that scar 
 the land in so many places. A little stretch 
 of clover was at its edge, and from among a 
 strip of corn a crook-necked squash and two 
 pumpkins glowed. An old and half-blind dog 
 followed us to the fence and then turned 
 back. It was absolutely a perfect Indian- 
 summer day, a mass of color, a dream of sun- 
 shine. 
 
 213 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 As we got over the fence, a convenient log 
 lay at the edge of the oaks, and, resting there 
 a moment, we saw a chipmunk dart from a 
 crevice in the fence and poise himself on his 
 hind legs. How graceful he was! Striped, 
 alert, saucy, and inquisitive. He would run 
 with incredible swiftness for a few yards, 
 stop, arch his body, look back, and then glide 
 along again as smooth as a snake. He would 
 pick up an acorn or a nut, hold it after the 
 manner of the squirrel tribe, gnaw at it a 
 moment, release his hold, and then stand 
 with his beady eyes glittering. He would 
 run close to our log, and then slip into the 
 short bushes and disappear for a few mo- 
 ments, and then vary the performance by 
 running back and forth across the path. It 
 was like nothing so much as a small boy 
 " turning cart-wheels," " skinning the cat," 
 and showing off generally. 
 
 At the side of the path, as we turned into 
 the woods, a garter-snake, slender and bright- 
 colored, wormed into the short grass, and on 
 being closely approached, opened its mouth 
 and silently sent its tongue scintillating back 
 and forth in a series of quick movements. It 
 214 
 
IN DIM OCTOBER 
 
 was a badly frightened reptile, but as we 
 were mercifully inclined toward such a harm- 
 less member of the snake kingdom, it soon 
 dodged into taller cover and we saw it no 
 more. 
 
 On a slope among the heavy timber we 
 paused by a giant oak-tree and sat down to 
 wait. The trees here were mostly oaks, with 
 a few hickories scattered farther along, where 
 the hill beyond showed dimly through the 
 timber. The tints on the leaves were very 
 gorgeous. The foliage had not been thinned 
 to any extent by frosts and was yet thick 
 on the branches, and some of it was even yet 
 green with the youth of the late summer. 
 But for a long distance in every direction 
 there was a vast drapery of the most vivid 
 red, russet, yellow with hundreds of varia- 
 tions in these colors. It had the effect of a 
 painted wood. And there was something 
 of a funereal grandeur to it all, as though 
 autumn had flung herself on the funeral pyre 
 of a dead season to fill the spaces with the 
 glory of her blazing sacrifice. There were 
 aisles and niches hung thick with splendid 
 garlands, and paths brilliant with spendthrift 
 215 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 leaves, whose garish hues lent contrast to the 
 thick green grass. A jaybird's wing went 
 unnoticed across this panorama; the very 
 wing of a cardinal, were he flying past, would 
 have been swallowed in this sea of color. 
 
 The gnarled and twisted oaks were bathed 
 in a tide of yellow sunlight that dreamed 
 drowsily among all this beauty, and the air 
 was hushed and the winds folded down into 
 utter quiet. Only the tiny gray sapsuckers 
 dipped, ducked, and bobbed about on the 
 tree-trunks, and their movements were as 
 noiseless as those of spiders. There was a 
 cathedral-like nobility in these great spaces, 
 with a suggestion of stilled music, the faces 
 of sculptured saints, the ghosts of Druidical 
 ceremonies. The breath of morning brooded 
 in the shadowy places, and the steps of noon 
 came slowly up the eastern hills. It was a 
 day snatched from paradise a day of days. 
 
 Presently the harsh cry of a crow sounded 
 and his black wings for an instant flung a 
 shadow on the grass. Then the " skir " of 
 a hawk came in a challenging tone, and a 
 broader shadow followed where the crow's 
 flight had gone. Then all was deeper silence 
 216 
 
IN DIM OCTOBER 
 
 than before, and the woods dilated in the 
 streams of golden sunshine that ebbed and 
 flowed on a coast of shimmering leaves. Be- 
 low us, and to one side, a tamarack swamp 
 stood, some of the trees long since dead, 
 their bristly forms standing stark in the sun- 
 light. Back of them and on either hand there 
 were dense masses of living tamaracks, their 
 green colors sharply contrasting with the oaks 
 and hickories. At the edge of the swamp 
 there were great quantities of sumach, their 
 russet globes still partially hidden by the scar- 
 let leaves. In this swamp the sun had little 
 opportunity to enter, as the trees stood like 
 serried lances, thickly huddled and shadowy. 
 This swamp on one side was skirted by a 
 small pool, and there some rusted cat-tails 
 rose, their blades broken and drooping, their 
 heads rising stiff in the October air. 
 
 We moved deeper into the timber, and 
 everywhere was this lavish festooning, this 
 bewildering array of tints that shone and 
 glinted in the sun. A rabbit jumped up 
 from a glare of dazzling bushes and scurried 
 through the brush, the cover rustling as he 
 fled. Beyond the woods as we reached an 
 217 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 open space there was a glimpse of corn- 
 shocks standing brown and packed on a hill- 
 side. Still farther on was a rolling green 
 meadow, and beyond that a lake of consider- 
 able size. Turning to the left we found a 
 wood of small trees, their colorings as bright 
 as any in the larger timber. Every bush and 
 vine was in holiday attire. The occasional 
 green splotches added a pleasing variety to 
 the effect. 
 
 Overhead the skies were cloudless, a 
 never-ending expanse of blue. Sometimes in 
 this smaller timber there would be a rus- 
 tling ahead that told of the disturbing of a 
 rabbit, and once a fox-squirrel scampered 
 across a path and trailed up a hickory, jump- 
 ing from that to an oak, and finally going out 
 of sight around the trunk of the oak. We 
 followed him and finally discovered him at 
 the very top of the tree. The wind by this 
 time had blown up quite a breeze, and this 
 squirrel, a young one, was clinging to the 
 uppermost twigs. The wind blew him back 
 and forth, and he swayed a brown shadow 
 among the leaves. At times the wind would 
 swing his long, red tail out from his body, 
 218 
 
IN DIM OCTOBER 
 
 and then he was more plainly outlined. We 
 shouted at him and threw sticks at him, which 
 fell short of his retreat by many yards, but 
 he did not mind our efforts in the least. We 
 left him riding in the wind, his bushy tail 
 flaunted tauntingly down. 
 
 Cattle grazing in the woods stared at us 
 as we went along, and some of the more curi- 
 ous of the cows attended us to the next fence. 
 The quality of curiosity is very strongly de- 
 veloped in the lower animals, and a colt, a 
 cow, or a pig will often follow a person 
 patiently for a long time merely on that ac- 
 count. As we crossed a marshy strip of 
 ground between two reaches of timber, a 
 lank heron scrambled up from the reeds and 
 started away, its awkward flight and hanging 
 legs making a quaint picture as it went. On 
 the edges of this wet spot there were a num- 
 ber of small frogs, and it did not need a 
 shrewd guess to warrant the assumption that 
 the heron had been a-frogging. The grass 
 here was still thick and green, showing the 
 mildness of the season so far, and only here 
 and there was it tinged with russet or tawny 
 splotches. There was not a sign of a dragon- 
 219 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 fly, and there were no tadpoles to wriggle 
 inkily in the amber water. By the side of the 
 grass, where a single flower stood, a lone 
 butterfly poised, his bright variegated wings 
 moving slowly back and forth as he rested on 
 the flower. Here was a waif of summer 
 whose temerity was like to meet a killing 
 frost before long. 
 
 The paths among the trees were dimmed 
 by leaves of many colors, and yet the foliage 
 seemed thicker than in days of June. On 
 the one wagon-road that stretched through 
 the forest dust lay thick, and the trace of 
 wheels was indistinct occasionally and faintly 
 outlined sometimes again on the sod along 
 each side of the road. Once a farm-wagon 
 bounced and clattered past and when it was 
 gone the woods settled into a more positive 
 stillness. At the edge of the timber we came 
 across a troop of robins, and they flew over 
 the pastures and away toward the tamaracks. 
 At a pasture's corner, next to one strip of 
 woods, there came the sweet note of a blue- 
 bird for a brief moment, and eight of them, 
 their wings flashing in the sun, flew southward 
 high in air. 
 
 220 
 
IN DIM OCTOBER 
 
 As the day waned, long troops of black- 
 birds flew over, making for the marshes at 
 Grass Lake. They flew high, well out of the 
 range of guns for the most part, although 
 scattered groups would occasionally dip low 
 and sweep close in to the trees. Some of them 
 gossiped as they went by, but the cow-birds 
 came and went like shadows, leaving the 
 noisier red-wings to herald the flight. The 
 sun went down in red and gold. Then twi- 
 light crept after swiftly, and the woods began 
 to lose their glory in the haze of approaching 
 nightfall. 
 
 221 
 
RUFFED GROUSE 
 
 THE ruffed grouse, sometimes called 
 partridge, " cock of the woods," or 
 pheasant, have a wide range of hab- 
 itat in the United States, no less than twenty- 
 six of the states mentioning them in their 
 game-laws. They range from Maine on the 
 north to Dakota on the west, south to Vir- 
 ginia, and are in most of the central and 
 northern central states. They are probably 
 the hardiest birds in many respects of the 
 grouse family. I have never heard of one of 
 them being frozen, however severe the win- 
 ter, and have been out hunting when traces of 
 their scratching would be found, which indi- 
 cated that they were digging down over a 
 foot in the snow to get at buried rose-buds or 
 the roots of willows. What they live on 
 when the snow is deep is a mystery to many 
 of those who have travelled in the woods 
 where they are found; but live they do, and 
 apparently thrive. 
 
 222 
 
RUFFED GROUSE 
 
 The foliage in autumn is so thick in the 
 woods (and the ruffed grouse is rarely 
 found in the open) that hunting him is a very 
 difficult matter. In the places he frequents 
 the trees are usually close enough together to 
 make it practically a sheet of leaves during 
 much of the time he may be shot. And no 
 bird in the timber is harder to bring down 
 than this same ruffed grouse. His flight 
 is very swift, strong, and hard to stop as he 
 whizzes through the woods. He seems to be 
 able to get past the trees without the slightest 
 difficulty, and, like the woodcock, has the 
 happy faculty of putting a tree-trunk between 
 himself and the sportsman when opportunity 
 offers. The most difficult shot I know of, in 
 all the experience I have had in wing-shoot- 
 ing, is the shot at a ruffed grouse as he dives 
 from some tall tree to the cover below. It 
 is the hardest angle to gauge successfully that 
 I ever tackled. Ruffed grouse also make 
 very deceiving marks when they fly straight- 
 away, either up or down hill. If it is an up- 
 hill shot, the novice usually shoots too low, 
 and under the bird. If it is a down-hill shot, 
 he is apt to shoot behind the grouse. In a 
 223 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 number of the states they have become very 
 scarce where not many years ago they were 
 comparatively plentiful. Just why, it is not 
 so easy to determine. 
 
 Of course, they have been relentlessly 
 hunted; but so have the prairie-chickens. It 
 is not because they have been frozen out by 
 the severe winters, for the very Indians them- 
 selves have no more endurance and stoicism 
 than the ruffed grouse. The woods are there 
 yet, and to a great extent the chance for get- 
 ting a living is as good, but many thousands 
 of acres of timber-land near the railroads are 
 almost entirely deserted by the birds. It may 
 be that the gradual destruction of the under- 
 brush and the cleaning-up of the woods by 
 the habit of making them pasture-grounds 
 have made the birds leave. At any rate, they 
 are gone, where twenty years ago they were 
 found in very large numbers. Restocking 
 the woods might be the means of afford- 
 ing occasional shooting, but where the tim- 
 ber has been denuded of the brush ruffed 
 grouse will not stay in any numbers. They 
 are sometimes found in tamarack swamps 
 around lakes in the hilly portions of the 
 224 
 
RUFFED GROUSE 
 
 country and in the woods along streams and 
 rivers. 
 
 The ruffed grouse is a true game-bird, 
 lying well to the dog, and giving exciting 
 sport wherever found in numbers large 
 enough to furnish fair shooting. In some 
 states he is found in the same cover with 
 quail, and the hunters there get them when 
 hunting for the latter bird. In other regions 
 of America the quail have nearly all disap- 
 peared in the grouse-country, the cold winters 
 having frozen them out or driven them to 
 more temperate portions of the country. 
 Like that of the quail, his flesh is white, in- 
 clined to be a trifle dry, and very delicious 
 eating. Like other grouse, they go in coveys, 
 although in many places they have become so 
 scarce that a single old cock or a pair of 
 birds is about all a man will find in walking 
 through the average " neck of woods." 
 
 Their colors are dark brown, blended with 
 gray and with black, and they have a crest on 
 top of the head. The ruffs are a prominent 
 feature of the bird's appearance, and are 
 two in number, one on each side of the 
 neck. They are composed of from twenty to 
 225 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 thirty feathers each, and the bird takes its 
 name from them. The tail is long, broad, 
 and banded, and when stretched out and 
 dried makes a handsome fan. The ruffed 
 grouse is about sixteen to eighteen inches 
 long, and will weigh from two to two and 
 a half or three pounds. He is an exceed- 
 ingly handsome bird, excelling the pinnated 
 grouse or prairie-chicken vastly in this re- 
 spect. His wings are short and rounded and 
 capable of surprising bursts of speed. There 
 is no lumbering awkwardness when this bird 
 rises, as after the manner of the prairie- 
 chicken. He springs from the brush with the 
 speed of a rocket and it takes quick shooting 
 to get him. To make a " double " on ruffed 
 grouse in thick cover is one of the most diffi- 
 cult feats in shot-gun shooting. They are 
 strong birds and require to be hard hit to be 
 brought down, unless when a stray shot 
 breaks a wing or hits them on the head or 
 neck. Like other birds of the grouse family 
 and the quail, the ruffed grouse when struck 
 in the head, if not killed outright, will 
 " tower," as it is called, flying straight up 
 into the air to quite a height. When a hunter 
 226 
 
RUFFED GROUSE 
 
 sees a grouse " tower," all he has to do is to 
 watch where the bird falls. When he finds 
 the game it will be a case of " dead bird." 
 
 In the alder bushes and in the foot-hills 
 of eastern mountains I have found the birds 
 in flocks of from a dozen to twenty grouse. 
 The natives sometimes hunted them there 
 with a cur-dog and a shot-gun or rifle. The 
 dog ran ahead and scared the birds up into 
 the trees, barking at them vigorously after 
 they were treed. The grouse would not fly, 
 but would watch the dog. The hunter, ac- 
 cording to the stories told to me, would 
 slip along as soon as he heard the dog bark- 
 ing and " pot " the birds as they sat on the 
 limbs. When a shot-gun was used the flock 
 would generally fly after one or two shots; 
 but with a small rifle a number of birds could 
 be shot from one flock by shooting the under 
 birds first and the scattered ones and keeping 
 perfectly quiet. If these tales were true, it 
 was a murderous way of getting grouse, not 
 much better than snaring them with " twitch- 
 ups," and gave the birds not the slightest 
 chance for their lives. 
 
 The " drumming " of the ruffed grouse is a 
 227 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 peculiar habit of his, and has been the subject 
 of more discussion and dispute than almost 
 anything else except the merits of dogs. I 
 have heard this " drumming " in New Hamp- 
 shire forests, and in the woods of Iowa, Min- 
 nesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, and other states. 
 I have flushed grouse from near huge bowl- 
 ders, and from the vicinity of fallen logs, 
 but never saw one in the very act of " drum- 
 ming," although within a few feet of them 
 several times while the " drum-beats " rever- 
 berated through the timber. The " boom- 
 ing " of the prairie-chicken or pinnated grouse 
 is acknowledged to be produced from the 
 bird's throat, but how the partridge does his 
 " drumming " is a mooted question. But he 
 does " drum," and the resonant woodland 
 roll of the tattoo is one of the striking sounds 
 of nature, as are the sonorous notes of the 
 bull-frogs. 
 
 " The hills were brown, the heavens were blue; 
 
 A woodpecker pounded a pine-top shell, 
 While a partridge whistled the whole day through 
 
 For a rabbit to dance in the chaparral; 
 And a gray grouse drummed: 'All'swell! AH'swell!'" 
 
 Like the quail, the ruffed grouse is suscep- 
 228 
 
RUFFED GROUSE 
 
 tible to deceit, and he is trapped and snared 
 in the eastern and northern states particu- 
 larly in great numbers by farmer-boys and 
 by the market-hunters. He is especially fool- 
 ish about snares and puts his head into them 
 with a fatuous confidence that is rapidly thin- 
 ning out his numbers, even where he was once 
 numerous. Only the most rigid application 
 of a non-selling game-law will effect any ade- 
 quate improvement in the situation. When 
 the deep snows come he is sufficiently hard 
 pushed to take almost any chance to get food, 
 and box-traps and " figure fours " take him 
 in out of the inclement weather into the hos- 
 pitable frying-pan with dismal frequency. 
 Yet, like all the grouse family nearly, he 
 shows great cunning when wing-tipped, and 
 he is sagacious enough when hunted. But 
 the traps and the snares are too much for him 
 and are responsible in great measure for his 
 depreciated and depreciating numbers. 
 
 Hunting ruffed grouse requires about the 
 same paraphernalia as in ordinary quail shoot- 
 ing, except that number six shot instead of 
 nines or eights should be used. A twelve- 
 gauge gun is heavy enough, and a good dog 
 229 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 of either pointer or setter blood will answer. 
 The setter in ragged cover will stand the 
 going better, and in most ruffed grouse cover 
 there will be water enough so that a setter 
 can get a drink occasionally. 
 
 230 
 
IN PRAIRIE-LANDS 
 
 THE glory of the prairies of old, like 
 that of Ichabod, has departed, save 
 that in the far north-west there still 
 remains the wilderness, untrampled by the 
 hoofs of cattle, unscarred by the steel of the 
 ploughshare. In some of the Minnesota and 
 Dakota counties many a mile of virgin prairie 
 lies, with bronzed masses of true prairie-grass 
 waving about the sod, and ironweed and 
 resinweed mingling with its harsh masses. 
 There, in the remote solemnity of the hills, 
 walled in by the bluest of distant horizons, 
 the waste lands dream of the days that were, 
 when all the earth was wilderness and the 
 hand of the white man had not blotted out 
 the vision. On these huge mounds the buf- 
 falo roamed, cropping thick grasses and drink- 
 ing at the streams and pools that were scat- 
 tered among valleys which lay between the 
 slopes. Their numbers ranged into hundreds 
 of thousands, and now all that is left is tra- 
 231 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 dition and a leaven of dust from their bones 
 deep sunken in the yielding soil. 
 
 The deer and antelope were there then, 
 and the great gray wolf, fast following on 
 their trail. Millions of wild-fowl bred in or 
 frequented the lakes and rivers, and the roar 
 of their wings in the spring and the fall was 
 as the rumble of thunder before a summer 
 shower. The white bulk of swans, the wedge- 
 shaped phalanx of the wild-goose, dotted 
 the heavens in their annual flight, and the 
 darker hordes of brant swept down on the 
 bosom of the waters and gabbled among 
 the reeds of the northern wilderness. The 
 beaver built in the lakes and creeks and 
 the fox prowled among the thickets about 
 the lakes. The prairie-hens rose from the 
 grass in great coveys and sharp-tailed grouse 
 flew over and back from the surrounding 
 hills. The jack-rabbit, quaintest of the deni- 
 zens of the prairie-lands, sat with his long 
 ears extended, listening for the approach of 
 any one of his numerous foes. Game was 
 everywhere. In the lakes amid the dome- 
 shaped mounds the muskallunge, the giant 
 pike, sprang up from the lily-pads or lurked 
 232 
 
IN PRAIRIE-LANDS 
 
 close to sandy shores. Bass swarmed in the 
 colder lakes and wall-eyed pike were taken by 
 the Indians, with the bow or spear. 
 
 From one end of the land to the other the 
 Sioux roamed proud, revengeful, and suspi- 
 cious. Then the smoke of the council-fires 
 rose and the skin tepees of Indian villages 
 shone brown in the sun. Tethered-out ponies 
 cropped the prairies and little pappooses lay 
 wrapped in their curious pouches, silent and 
 stoical. War and pillage were the order of 
 those days. As the settlers began to drift in 
 and jealousies seethed and smoldered and 
 burned, the fire of passion sprang up in the 
 breast of both white man and red, and the 
 land was drenched in blood and ablaze with 
 the light of burning dwellings. The Sioux 
 uprising came like a searing flash of lightning 
 across the northern steppes and the edifice 
 of northern civilization was christened and 
 consecrated by the sacrifices of the early 
 pioneers. 
 
 The sword was beaten into the plough- 
 share, the bayonet into the reaping-hook, and 
 slowly but inevitably the course of progress, 
 stayed for a moment by the fierce hand of the 
 
 233 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 aborigine, swept resistlessly over the land. 
 Roads cut their way over the hills, and the 
 white-topped wagons of the early settlers 
 came eagerly in search of the unbroken acres 
 of the north. Log-houses, rude and one- 
 storied, topped the hills in scant force, and 
 from their clay-daubed chimneys the smoke of 
 a white race had followed the dying camp- 
 fires of the red men. Agriculture was level- 
 ling forests, building homes, ripping up the 
 prairies in every direction and driving before 
 it the buffalo, the bear, the wolf, antelope, 
 and beaver. Cattle drank at the streams 
 where the buffalo had wallowed, and the out- 
 lines of the first farms, faint but prophetic, 
 were spread upon the canvas of rolling and 
 lonely prairies. 
 
 The moccasined foot of the Indian turned 
 to the far west, and, except as an occasional 
 wanderer, he was seen no more. The teem- 
 ing life of the billowy plains went with him, 
 and the shriek of the locomotive came to 
 startle the wilds where the war-whoop had 
 sounded. The canvas covers of the " prairie- 
 schooners " faded from the roads, the free 
 acres of primal days were all taken up, and 
 
 234 
 
IN PRAIRIE-LANDS 
 
 as years rolled on the traces of the original 
 prairies were almost all blotted out. But 
 there still rests in remote corners of this region 
 the recollection of tameless tribes and ancient 
 days, the flavor of times when never a shod 
 hoof of beast dinted the grasses, and no face 
 but the copper-colored face of the savage was 
 ever seen. 
 
 Standing on one of the great hills of the 
 north-west and looking out over the yet 
 trackless miles of uncultivated prairies, there 
 is the glamour of the past in the air, a halo 
 of by-gone years faintly discernible in the 
 clouds that hang above. These vast amphi- 
 theatres have all the significance of banquet- 
 halls deserted, with floors of level grasses and 
 folding draperies of sky and cloud. What 
 panoramas of moving Indian villages and 
 battle-etched pages the old days furnish! 
 Now there are only long reaches of tumbled 
 hills, grass-lined, and the galloping tread of 
 the winds. There is here, and here only, 
 that sense of outdoors which ' the treeless 
 stretches of the prairie give, extending on as 
 a sea, till the far-off horizon drops like a cur- 
 tain to meet it. Great forests do not bring 
 235 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 this feeling, nor does the ocean, when one is 
 out of sight of land. It is not a feeling of 
 desolation, but one of age, as if the world 
 were a million times more ancient than man 
 had ever pictured it, and on the bosoms of 
 these hills lay brooding the shadows of un- 
 counted centuries. 
 
 When the sun shines here he seems to send 
 his beams down from remoter heights than 
 elsewhere. There is a strange familiarity in 
 the shapes of the rolling mounds, as though 
 they might be the forms of mighty mammoths 
 engulfed by some prehistoric tide, which lay 
 down as the floods swept across them, per- 
 ished there, and became encysted in the debris 
 of the cycles that followed. On still days 
 there is a mournfulness that appeals to the im- 
 agination keenly. Bird life is very rare, only 
 the black wake of the buzzard, the varying 
 slants of a hawk's wing, and the flights of 
 wild- fowl to paint the skies; no last-year's 
 nests or stray feathers to tell of song-birds 
 lingering there. There is something high, 
 austere, and calm about these dumb wastes. 
 Down in the valleys the winds sleep by shal- 
 low creeks or hide in the rushes that line the 
 236 
 
IN PRAIRIE-LANDS 
 
 shores of the secluded lakes among the hills. 
 On the tops of the mounds the ironweed 
 stands stiffly erect, the sun's rays beating 
 across until weeds and grasses both are burned 
 to darkest brown. 
 
 When the winds blow they will often con- 
 tinue all day long and in many moods and 
 keys. Sometimes they smooth the grass in 
 one direction as a mother might smooth her 
 children's hair; sometimes they tumble the 
 weeds and flowers and tilt the grass as if they 
 sought something which was hidden beneath. 
 But always the breath of these breezes is as 
 pure as spring-water. They come for hun- 
 dreds of miles, and bear on their wings an 
 aroma of flowers and streams, a tang of resin- 
 weeds, and the odor of nameless dried prairie- 
 grasses. When the sun catches the grass as 
 the wind sweeps it aside, myriad pictures flash 
 and fade. Steadily as the folds of a far- 
 flung banner the tall growth of the prairies 
 flaps in the gales that swing across the hills, 
 and sun and clouds beyond lift and dip as the 
 winds go by, and lend a change of form and 
 color to each flying moment. 
 
 Over it all the life that was casts spectral 
 237 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 shadows. The white top of a wagon goes 
 past, with tow-headed children peeping from 
 the sides; the smoke of a camp-fire steals up 
 in the colorless air; the ring of an axe sounds 
 faintly; the feathered war-bonnet of a Sioux 
 chief gleams in a tuft of sun-illumined grass; 
 vanished hordes of buffalo thunder down a 
 distant slope, and shots of battle echo in 
 one's ears; the gathering tumult of cities 
 smites on the senses, the far wastes disap- 
 pear, and a forest of chimneys and spires 
 rises to take their places. The sails of cloud- 
 armadas furl slowly in the harboring skies, 
 and the sheets of commerce float in and usurp 
 their anchorage. All about is change. Stand- 
 ing on these eternal hills there comes with 
 crushing power the realization of how insig- 
 nificant is man, how absolute is nature. A 
 thousand races may rise and fall; the plough- 
 shares of one tribe may scar the slopes, and 
 the hoofs of a following tribe's war-horses 
 may beat back the harvest into a wilderness. 
 Man alone is least to be reckoned with. For 
 time and tide here rest the prairies, supreme 
 in the sense of an immortal repose, unfretted 
 by the lapses of the years. 
 
 238 
 
HUNTING WITH 
 FERRETS 
 
 THE sport of hunting rabbits with a 
 ferret is bitterly inveighed against 
 by some hunters but it all de- 
 pends. In a country where there is plenty of 
 brush, and where the game stays in the cover 
 to a considerable extent, there is no need of a 
 ferret to rout them out. In some places a 
 man can go out and get all the rabbits he 
 wants even without a dog. And when rab- 
 bits are hunted with a dog they get a scare 
 that begins when they jump before the hound 
 and ends only when they are dropped by a 
 charge of shot. In using a ferret they are 
 given just one big fright, and then they bolt 
 and are killed by the hunter, who waits by 
 the burrow. It would be difficult to deter- 
 mine, from the rabbit's stand-point, which 
 mode of being killed it preferred. Long 
 pains are light ones; cruel ones are brief. 
 The chances are that it would infinitely pre- 
 239 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 fer that it should not be killed at all. But 
 there it would so unquestionably be wander- 
 ing from the point that all discussion would 
 be unprofitable. 
 
 I have hunted rabbits in some localities 
 where you might tramp all day and not see 
 hide or hair of one unless you " toted " a 
 ferret. In such parts of the country the un- 
 derbrush and cover have been pastured and 
 burned out, and a plentiful supply of brush is 
 not to be had. If you go out after a light 
 snow has fallen you will be surprised at the 
 number of rabbit-tracks which you will see, 
 and also mystified, if you are unfamiliar with 
 that kind of country, by the scarcity of rab- 
 bits. If you have a first-class dog you may 
 stir up a couple of bunnies out of the shocks 
 in some cornfield, or you may pick up two or 
 three in out-of-the-way corners of fences and 
 fields. But in the woods you will go along 
 over miles and miles of territory, literally car- 
 peted with rabbit-tracks, without jumping a 
 solitary rabbit. 
 
 Along some of the northern and north- 
 western rivers and among the woods and hills 
 through which they run, there are quite a 
 240 
 
HUNTING WITH FERRETS 
 
 number of rabbits. If you did not know how 
 to hunt them, and went there with or without 
 a dog, you would undoubtedly believe that it 
 was the poorest place on earth for the sport. 
 Yet, as a matter of fact, dozens of well-fed 
 and respectable rabbits are to be found com- 
 fortably stowed away in the bowels of the 
 earth underneath those same hills. They are 
 of the cave-dwelling brand, and feeding, as 
 rabbits do, almost entirely by night, they 
 retire to their burrows or holes in the day- 
 time and are not to be got out except by 
 means of the offices of the harmful, necessary 
 ferret. 
 
 The ferret is not a pleasing beast to look 
 upon, or to handle. He is a long, sinuous, 
 weasel-like looking " critter," of a dirty black 
 or tawny yellow color, and he is always out 
 for blood. He is very fond of rabbits in a 
 sanguinary way, and the sight of him, even 
 in the subterranean gloom of a burrow, gives 
 the average rabbit " the fan-tods." The fer- 
 ret's walk is a sort of creepy glide, very 
 snaky, very sinister; he pokes along, snuffing 
 the air stealthily, his beady black eyes wear- 
 ing a thoughtful expression, and his whole 
 241 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 attitude suggestive of extreme sleepiness. 
 But he is, when the occasion demands, as 
 swift as a rattlesnake to strike. His nar- 
 row head shoots out, and when he fastens his 
 keen teeth in anything it is with a bull-dog 
 grip and a tiger's thirst for blood. One of 
 the ferrets we used to hunt with we called 
 " Ivy " because he went " creeping, creeping 
 everywhere." 
 
 Hunting with ferrets is not always the easi- 
 est work in the world, for the beasts have an 
 ugly fashion of grabbing off a rabbit occa- 
 sionally for themselves. Rabbits have a habit 
 of snoozing away the days in their burrows, 
 and when a ferret finds one in a doze the 
 end comes quickly. And when he finishes 
 up the animal he takes a little nap him- 
 self, say, for two or three hours. Sitting out 
 on a bleak hill-side for a quarter of a day 
 waiting for a ferret to report for duty is one 
 of the most vexatious things in the annals of 
 sport. And at other times your ferret may 
 take it into his narrow head that it is more 
 comfortable down there than it is out in the 
 cold, cold world, and he will cuddle up in 
 the burrow and compose himself for a little 
 242 
 
HUNTING WITH FERRETS 
 
 siesta anyway, rabbit or no rabbit. This is 
 very distressing to the hunters, especially 
 when the thermometer is away below the zero 
 mark. On these occasions the blood can be 
 quickened by travelling over the hills to the 
 nearest farm-house and getting the tools with 
 which to dig the ferret out. When the ground 
 is frozen for some ten feet or so this is not 
 an easy job. Tying a chain or a stout cord 
 to the ferret's leg will not work, for there are 
 often labyrinthian twists in a rabbit's burrow, 
 and an attempt to drag out your assistant may 
 only result in fetching out part of him. This 
 ruins a ferret for hunting purposes, no matter 
 how much it may soothe your wounded feel- 
 ings. 
 
 By shouting down the burrow a moment 
 before the ferret is introduced into the aper- 
 ture you can almost always awaken the rab- 
 bit. This will do away with the dangers of 
 having the ferret fasten on to the rabbit while 
 both are underground. But for the inclina- 
 tion that a ferret will show to stay in the bur- 
 row sometimes, game or no game, there can 
 be no precautions taken except a large vocab- 
 ulary of uncomplimentary remarks for such 
 
 243 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 a brute. The tracks of a rabbit can easily be 
 followed to a hole, but often the holes are 
 drawn blank. A lively ferret will creep 
 through a burrow in a very short space of 
 time and be ready for another trip instanter. 
 Some of them are quite vicious to handle, and 
 great care should be taken not to be bitten. 
 They should be grabbed by the back of the 
 neck as they emerge from the hole and 
 chucked into the sack or box which is brought 
 along to keep them in. 
 
 The rabbit " bolts " when he hears or sees 
 the ferret coming. He does not wait upon 
 the order of his going, but literally darts 
 from the burrow at top-speed. Sometimes 
 there are two and even three rabbits in one 
 burrow, and then the shooting is exceedingly 
 lively. It is no great trick to bowl them over 
 as they come out of the burrow, although you 
 cannot tell which way they are going to come, 
 however nicely you calculate before sending 
 in the ferret. Sometimes there is a hid- 
 den entrance to the burrow, out of which the 
 rabbit will suddenly emerge, and before you 
 can bring your gun to bear he is away down 
 a steep hill-side. But you can easily follow 
 244 
 
HUNTING WITH FERRETS 
 
 him by his tracks to the next hole, and his 
 fate is seldom uncertain. 
 
 If a man, or two men, go out and shoot a 
 dozen rabbits in a day, using a ferret, and do 
 not keep up the sport day in and day out, but 
 take different localities and hunt about three 
 or four times in the season, they will not ex- 
 terminate the game. On a bright day and 
 not too cold it is first-rate and exciting shoot- 
 ing. A light twelve- or sixteen-gauge gun and 
 number six shot will answer for the rabbits. 
 A road-cart and a stout horse are extremely 
 important. The distances between favorable 
 places and the weight of a dozen or so rab- 
 bits will make a journey on foot a very un- 
 happy affair of it. 
 
 In the short winter days you must use your 
 time in " drawing " the holes, and coaxing 
 out the ferret, and not in walking. My rab- 
 bit shooting has been in country where it was 
 mostly hilly, and the shooting was generally 
 up- or down-hill. The rabbits are darker- 
 colored than where they stay above ground, 
 and they are usually of good size and fat. 
 One of the knacks of this kind of shooting is 
 to find holes or burrows when the snow has 
 245 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 been melted away and there is nothing to 
 guide you in locating the holes. You will find 
 them on the hill-sides and often near the 
 edges of a creek or a ravine. You will also 
 discover them under tree-trunks and around 
 stumps. It is safe to try almost any hole. It 
 is unsafe to send a hungry ferret into a hole 
 where there is no outlet, for he will have too 
 much of an opportunity to seize the rabbit and 
 gorge himself under such circumstances. 
 
 All sport has an element of cruelty in it, 
 viewed from the sentimental stand-point. I 
 once heard an eloquent discourse against hunt- 
 ing rabbits delivered by a gentleman of tender 
 sensibilities, his mouth full of a turkey whose 
 head he had hacked off with a dull axe to 
 grace the Thanksgiving feast. The sensible 
 way to look at this branch of sport is that 
 rabbits were created for man and not man for 
 the rabbits. 
 
 246 
 
THE BARE, BROWN 
 FIELDS 
 
 WIDE stretches of rolling country, 
 with here and there a clump of 
 leafless trees, where the farm- 
 houses stand, and scattered hay-stacks adja- 
 cent. On the slopes sometimes are lines of 
 yellowish corn-shocks that rise like tents silent- 
 ly against the clear horizon. Around those 
 shocks may be found, when a hunter happens 
 to draw near, signs of industrious rabbits, 
 inquisitive field-mice, and foraging prairie- 
 chickens. Occasionally there is a slight whorl 
 of faint snow drifted in the spaces between 
 the shocks, and if this be so the tiny tracks of 
 the mice dot the place, and perhaps the tracks 
 of the prairie-chickens. The wind dallies 
 with the loose blades that project from the 
 shocks, and a whistling of fluttering strips 
 marks the flight of northern breezes. The 
 soil is hard and crumbly to the heel, and the 
 infrequent little ditches or pools of water are 
 247 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 often rimmed with ice, and more especially in 
 the early morning. Then the sun comes up 
 redly enough, a burning disk that lights the 
 by-ways and ridges of the bare, brown fields. 
 
 When prairie-chickens are seen it is usually 
 early or quite late, skirmishing in spots where 
 cornstalks have been left standing, and rising 
 with a splendidly strong sweep of pinion as 
 they spring from the ground. They " pack " 
 now, bunching together in the open meadows 
 and pastures, and being exceedingly wary of 
 man. They are hardy and fearless of the 
 approaching inclemencies of the season, for 
 when storms blow up they will seek the timber 
 and thickets, and shelter themselves from 
 drifting snow and biting winds. 
 
 In the little " slues " that extend through 
 the fields the sumach-stalks are blackened and 
 denuded of their leaves, and thistle-stalks 
 cluster in gray masses on the sides and slopes 
 of ravines. The cover in these places 
 blackberry vines and a tangle of low brush 
 extends thickly along the edges of the 
 " slues," affording splendid hiding-places for 
 quail. Sometimes there is a clump of wil- 
 lows where the " slue " widens, and farther 
 248 
 
THE BARE, BROWN FIELDS 
 
 along toward the timber scattered trees and 
 sparse patches of brush dot the line of the 
 depression in the field. Rabbits are always 
 found in these places, and especially where 
 there is a cornfield at hand, or an old or- 
 chard. The grass along the " slues " is rusty 
 brown and crisp underfoot and burrs stick 
 in the clothing of the passer-by, and " beggar 
 lice/' the most pestiferous form of clinging 
 weed, gathers in great quantity on coats and 
 trousers. Tall weeds, some of them disput- 
 ing the way, and others broken and scarred 
 by the frosts, rise in all directions. 
 
 Over open pastures the crows stalk, perch- 
 ing on fences, walking about the bare spots, 
 persistent gleaners of edible trifles, and cer- 
 tain of a living where aught can live. The 
 birds have mainly flown south, all but the 
 resolute jaybird; he flies across the fields, 
 over thickets, and through the woods alert, 
 mischievous, and confident. His bright blue 
 wings trail glintingly among sombre tree- 
 tops; his challenging cry echoes amid the 
 autumn silences. The robins are to the south- 
 ward, the swallow no longer dips in the 
 meadows, the thrush's spotted breast is ab- 
 249 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 sent from the woody lanes, the bluebird and 
 song-sparrow have fled with earlier days ; but 
 the jay still lingers to brave the elements and 
 carry a herald of resistance to the snows. 
 
 Where a seed may be plucked from a 
 fence-rail, or a frosted apple dinted with his 
 strong bill, he wanders a feathered Ishmael- 
 ite with little heed for chill winds or dark 
 skies. 
 
 Where the ploughs have cut their wake 
 through the land long furrows lie dark in the 
 shadow. There a plough-boy has followed 
 once, the blackbirds in his train. One lone 
 harrow has been marooned on a waste of 
 clods and slanted sideways toward the north. 
 Miles and miles of this ploughed ground 
 stretch away in all directions, and under and 
 over it all, even in this iron dearth, there is 
 a promise of harvest. The fences, the barbed- 
 wire ones, are monotonously practical, and 
 the weeds and vines shun them. But where 
 rail-fences separate the fields the grass hugs 
 the line, and divers vines and weedy growths 
 rise by corners and along the route. Here 
 black-capped chickadees dodge about; and 
 here, too, the rabbits lurk, with rolling eyes 
 250 
 
THE BARE, BROWN FIELDS 
 
 and timid ears, palpitating at the least sound 
 of approaching footsteps. The old rail-fence 
 has assumed new dignity and individuality 
 since the wire strands came into use. Each 
 is now a pioneer, with a history of its own, 
 reminiscent of the old red school-house, the 
 husking-bee, the snow-drifts piled against it. 
 
 Above shorn stubbles, now blackening in 
 the advancing season, the hawk flies, paint- 
 ing broad circles in the skies, surveying his 
 dominion below with regal deliberation. The 
 fields are his demesne. The wandering mouse 
 may well hesitate to emerge from his covert, 
 the defenceless rabbit has in him an enemy 
 vigilant and hungry. Even the farm-yard is 
 not exempt from his levies, and the squall of 
 hens, the fluttering of wings, and a rush for 
 the family artillery form an accompaniment 
 of his daily round for food. Betimes he sits 
 on some dead limb in a pasture conveniently 
 near the timber, and meditates serenely. A 
 pirate of the upper air, a wandering free- 
 booter, he has no excuses to make, no morals 
 to mend. 
 
 In one corner of a pasture an old windmill 
 creaks in blasts that drive westward, and 
 251 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 around a trough where the cattle drink the 
 mud is ridged with many hoof-marks. It is 
 the bleakest corner of the fields. There is no 
 grass here, and the wind has a free sweep 
 on the boldest days that sets the mill dole- 
 fully wailing under steel-blue skies. Farther 
 along, and near a pair of bars, stands a lone 
 walnut-tree. Under it are scattered the hulls, 
 and on a smooth bowlder near by is a dark 
 stain which accounts for a heap of shells close 
 at hand. Here the harvesters have loitered 
 and cracked the nuts, and sticks and clubs 
 lying about tell of various assaults on the old 
 tree to bring down the coveted prizes. 
 
 On one sandy rise, when later rains wash 
 the soil into gullies and polish pebbles and 
 bits of flint that are exposed, there have been 
 Indian arrow-heads found. Here, then, the 
 savage wandered, and before him the mas- 
 todon, maybe. But against the sky, however 
 the flint-points tell of primitive days, there 
 comes the figure of the sower. Always on 
 these rises this figure seems to pass or wait, 
 the right hand outstretched, the left carrying 
 a bag of grain. In the day of the scythe 
 and cradle, the by-gone days of boyhood, 
 252 
 
THE BARE, BROWN FIELDS 
 
 this picture was a familiar one and was seen 
 usually on the higher ridges. A patient form 
 and a steady one, with awkward rhythmic 
 motion scattering the seed. And so even in 
 these times, when he is but a memory, he is a 
 vivid one enough to stand apparition-like in 
 the gray November weather, the right palm 
 thrown sideways, the left hand holding a 
 sack of grain. 
 
 Where the stubbles lie in deep-rusted, wide 
 stretches from cornfield to country road, the 
 ploughs have tumbled them into bristly fur- 
 rows now, and nothing but the winds may 
 glean a stray kernel from them. The winds 
 are seldom quiet in the fields after October 
 has passed; even on the stillest days there 
 is always some mousing zephyr dipping down 
 now and then to dance a dusty saraband 
 with a stray cornstalk, or whirl a miniature 
 funnel of dust along a road-side rut. Winds 
 go in flocks and vary as birds do in their 
 movements and peculiarities. In dry standing 
 stalks they flutter and chase about in great 
 glee, rattling dangling shreds of stalks and 
 sometimes shaking the whole field furiously. 
 Or they will capriciously bend the tops of a 
 
 253 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 clump of willows in a " slue " amid the fields 
 and not lift a leaf from the ground below. 
 They harvest the oak-leaves and the yellow 
 leaves of hickories and then disperse them 
 in flying windrows, sticking them in thorny 
 hedges or wasting them over the fields. 
 
 But always to the keener sense of one who 
 loves and is familiar with outdoors there is a 
 mirage of harvest even on the gloomiest days. 
 There is sight of waving tassels of cornsilk 
 and bending sheen of wheat; there are buck- 
 wheat blossoms and dronings of the bee, 
 the flash of swallows in the sunshine, the 
 clatter of reapers on the hill. In the fence- 
 corners there are gay bits of color the pur- 
 ple of the thistle, the green of the hedges, 
 and the slate-hued shyness of a prying cat- 
 bird. There is music in many keys, pictures 
 from every side. So even now, with a harp 
 of wailing November breezes to mock the 
 vision, one can stand by naked meadow and 
 " scarecrow " guarded spaces and find Ely- 
 sium in the bare, brown fields. 
 
 254 
 
QUAIL SHOOTING 
 
 IF a vote were to be taken among the men 
 who hunt with dog and gun from the 
 Mississippi valley to the Atlantic coast 
 and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, to 
 determine the question of the most popular 
 game-bird, the quail would get the overwhelm- 
 ing majority of the votes. " Bob-white " is 
 a bird who fully deserves his popularity. No 
 bird in America gives as great sport with the 
 dog, the opportunity for fine work in the field 
 being unlimited in quail shooting. The quail 
 is a bird that has a friendly feeling for man, 
 and is found following the march of civiliza- 
 tion and the confines of the farms. The val- 
 ley- and mountain-quail of the west and 
 south-west cannot be compared to the true 
 " bob-white " for sport, being birds which 
 depend a great deal upon their legs to elude 
 the hunters, and living in a country where 
 good work by the dogs is almost impossible. 
 Then, too, these western and south-western 
 
 255 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 quail go in bunches of from fifty to two hun- 
 dred birds, and will not lie nearly so well to 
 the dogs as their brown cousins of the east- 
 ern, southern, and middle states do. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great increase of 
 hunters and the introduction of breech-load- 
 ing guns, the quail in the middle states are 
 holding their own in point of numbers. This 
 is mainly owing to the strictness of the game- 
 laws and a general feeling among sportsmen 
 that these birds, above other upland game, 
 must be protected at all hazards. One of the 
 chief pleasures of quail shooting is to have a 
 good dog along that has been well broken to 
 this kind of shooting. A quail-dog or " bird- 
 dog/' as he is often called, takes as much in- 
 terest in the sport as his master does. 
 
 In hunting the average run of country most 
 of the birds will take to the thickest cover 
 they can get to after the bevy has been 
 flushed. They feed in the morning, and after 
 about ten o'clock retire to the thickets. Dis- 
 putes have risen from time immemorial as 
 to whether they feed again regularly, late in 
 the afternoon. Frank Forester says that they 
 do. That they sometimes do I believe to be 
 
 256 
 
QUAIL SHOOTING 
 
 true, but that they make a regular practice of 
 feeding in the afternoon I doubt. To a man 
 who has hunted quail for years the country 
 wherever he goes is an open book, so far as 
 the best place to go for the birds is concerned. 
 He can tell at a glance where the likeliest 
 places are. In a wheat and corn country the 
 birds will be found in the edges of the stub- 
 bles and in the cornfields up to nine or ten 
 o'clock, and after that in the sloughs, thick- 
 ets, woods, or hedges adjoining their feeding- 
 grounds. They are birds that require water, 
 and as a rule they will be found along bushy 
 creeks next to the fields after feeding-time. 
 Old orchards are fine places for them, espe- 
 cially around deserted farm-houses. In a 
 strictly prairie country the osage orange 
 hedges are their favorite haunts after feed- 
 ing in the morning. 
 
 When a bevy rises, with that rush of wings 
 so characteristic of the birds, the novice may 
 think there is going to be a great destruction 
 of quail. But the first shots may be the last at 
 that particular bunch. Or maybe one or two 
 other shots may be had, and no more. The 
 quail is a very puzzling bird at times, and a 
 257 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 bevy occasionally scatters all over the adjoin- 
 ing country when it gets up. Of course, with 
 a good dog a man will generally start a few 
 birds from each bevy, but in heavy cover, and 
 where the birds have been shot at several 
 times, they get " educated " and play tricks 
 with the hunters. It is not at all uncommon 
 to put up a bevy of twenty-five or thirty birds 
 and then only get two or three quail out of it. 
 The bevy scatters in all directions on first ris- 
 ing, but most of them will drop down in one 
 direction. A few stray birds may go in an 
 entirely different direction from the main 
 body of the flock, and they may be hunted 
 later. Quail do not fly far as a rule, gener- 
 ally darting into cover again at from two to 
 three or four hundred yards. Sometimes they 
 will fly farther, and again drop in closer. It 
 depends on whether they have been hunted 
 and on the nature of the cover. 
 
 It is simply amazing what a small bit of 
 cover will hide a quail, and how he will stick 
 to his hiding-place. Sometimes he will hug 
 the ground in the open woods under a tree 
 where the leaves are thickly scattered on the 
 ground, and although the dog is fairly slob- 
 
 258 
 
QUAIL SHOOTING 
 
 bering with excitement as he points the bird, 
 you will not be able to see " bob-white " 
 until he flies. They have a great trick of slip- 
 ping under the overhanging fringe of bank 
 along a creek when driven into that kind of 
 cover, and a dog is needed to get them out 
 of these hiding-places always. Sometimes 
 they will fly into the trees and fool a hunter, 
 and they will take advantage of fences and 
 tree-trunks when they get up, putting such 
 objects between the hunter and themselves. 
 They will get up back of you, too, after you 
 have passed, and sometimes fly close to the 
 ground, or spring straight up through the 
 trees at times, and in many ways elude the 
 hail of shot. 
 
 They get into full speed from the jump, 
 and yet a quail is not a hard bird to shoot, 
 excepting in thick cover or in tall standing 
 corn. It takes quick shooting, but at close 
 range, as most of the work is done, a man 
 should get three out of five in fairly open 
 cover right along. The birds are fully grown 
 by the first of November, and well able to 
 take care of themselves. It is curious to note 
 the difference between birds that are found 
 259 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 in the prairie country and " timber-quail," as 
 they are called, that are found in the creek 
 and river-bottoms, and which feed to some 
 extent on acorns. The timber-quail are 
 darker colored and perceptibly larger than 
 the prairie birds, and are swifter and stronger 
 on the wing. Timber-quail are, generally 
 speaking, remarkably fine birds big, strong, 
 and affording splendid sport. There is, of 
 course, absolutely nothing to differentiate the 
 quail in the timber and the quail of the prai- 
 ries, excepting these points of size and gener- 
 ally darker coloring. Their flight is stronger 
 and swifter because they are bigger birds. 
 
 For quail shooting a sixteen-gauge gun, 
 cylinder-bored in both barrels, is the best gun. 
 Nine-tenths of the shots are made within 
 forty-five yards, most of them within thirty 
 or thirty-five yards. The choke-bored gun in 
 quail shooting cuts the bird to ribbons or 
 smashes the flesh into a jelly. A straight- 
 stocked, cylinder bore, six to seven pounds in 
 weight, with nitro powder and number eight 
 shot, is the right combination for this kind of 
 shooting. You don't have to hold ahead of 
 a quail much with the nitro powder, except 
 260 
 
QUAIL SHOOTING 
 
 in cross-shots. In the quartering shots a few 
 inches ahead is enough in twenty or thirty 
 yards. In the straightaway shots the bird is 
 usually rising at first, and the gun should be 
 held a trifle over. Quail, when full-grown, 
 can carry away quite a few shot, and even 
 when hit hard will manage to flutter off and 
 hide. Give them the centre of the charge. 
 On the cross-shots you should hold ahead 
 several inches when the birds are close, and 
 farther whence bird is some distance away. 
 Either a setter or a pointer dog will do the 
 work acceptably if broken to quail shooting. 
 Don't keep shouting at your dog. Be patient 
 with him, even if he does poor work, and try 
 to help him do better. Nothing in field 
 shooting is quite so disagreeable as the spec- 
 tacle of a man shouting at his dog and 
 making every one along feel uncomfortable. 
 " Jolly " the man who has the dog by raptur- 
 ous exclamation at every point the dog 
 makes. Tell him that you wish you had a 
 camera along to take the picture; the most 
 suspicious man on earth will accept as gospel- 
 truth any flattery you may give him about 
 his dog. Get him to talk about his dog when 
 261 
 
OUTDOORS 
 
 you stop for lunch, and tell any strangers that 
 you happen to meet that the dog is the great- 
 est dog on earth. The dog will know bet- 
 ter, but his owner won't. 
 
 Never travel more than three in a crowd. 
 Two are plenty, but more than three are dan- 
 gerous. Some enthusiastic member in a quar- 
 tet is apt to pepper you with a few pellets of 
 shot in a moment of temporary aberration 
 and his " By George, old man, I'm awfully 
 sorry! " is only partially soothing to the vic- 
 tim. Do not, above all things, clean out a 
 bevy of birds, even if quail are scarce. Leave 
 a few for next season. Twenty quail to a 
 man are as many as should be shot, even in 
 a country where fifty or more could be bagged. 
 
 262 
 
IN WINTER WOODS 
 
 THE prevailing tints of white and 
 black in the January woods give 
 an erroneous idea of solemnity to 
 one who views them at a distance. The 
 bleakness, the isolation, and the staring colors 
 which lend such sharp contrasts emphasize 
 this feeling. To those who are strangers to 
 the delights of a tramp through snowy for- 
 ests, the wintry wastes hold no mysteries of 
 sound and silence, no revelations or sugges- 
 tions. But to those who have for many a 
 long year followed the gun, the woods in 
 winter are especially significant of life and 
 wonder, of beauty and of music. 
 
 To begin with, there are everywhere the 
 microscopic effects of the season. Each tree, 
 stripped of its foliage, stands nakedly in the 
 crisp and clear atmosphere as a mast with all 
 sails furled stands out at sea. Here and there 
 perhaps a brown leaf clings to a branch of 
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OUTDOORS 
 
 some old oak or hickory, but the impression 
 in general is that of absolute starkness. The 
 drifts below add to this, and under them the 
 summer's greenery has long since been disin- 
 tegrating and assuming new form and sub- 
 stance. The clearness of the atmosphere is 
 very marked near at hand, but farther away, 
 and particularly if the surrounding country 
 rises into hills, a faint blue haze gathers like 
 the smoke flung from a farm-house chimney. 
 Stillness is what will be found paramount in 
 the by-paths and thickets unless one is dis- 
 posed to be curious and plunge deeper into 
 the woods in search of its life and inhabitants. 
 The birds for the most part are gone. The 
 robin, the bluebird, the blackbirds, the wood- 
 peckers, cat-birds, thrushes, and orioles, have 
 fled away before the hurrying vanguards of 
 the north. But down along the creek-bot- 
 toms the blue-jay's challenge still sounds, and 
 his bright blue wings flit through the dusky 
 treetops. Wind blow north or wind blow 
 south, his hardy nature rises equal to the test 
 of either burning sun or driving snows. The 
 hawk, at odd times, may be seen circling high 
 up, but he is an infrequent sight during the 
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IN WINTER WOODS 
 
 colder weather. The owls couch in the thick 
 brush or perch in sheltered crevices in the 
 hollow trees. The chickadees pert, black- 
 capped gossips dodge about at the edges of 
 the woods and busy themselves along the rail- 
 fences by the fields. Nowhere is the iron 
 hand of winter felt so harshly as in the mead- 
 ows and fields. There a few broken and 
 discolored cornstalks flap or creak in the 
 winds that sweep by, and the winding-sheet 
 of snow is unrelieved by aught to break the 
 cheerless monotony. Overhead in the timber 
 a shadow sometimes falls across the snow, 
 the shade of a broad and wandering wing, 
 and the hoarse, harsh cry of a foraging crow 
 echoes raucously in the trees. The course of 
 a crow's flight through heavy timber is hardly 
 discernible, so well do the dark branches 
 blend with his dusky pinions. Most brilliant 
 of all colors in the woods of middle America 
 during the winter months is the red-bird's 
 wing and the jaunty set of his crested head. 
 Alert, saucy, and suspicious, he appears in 
 the thicket beyond, drops from sight, reap- 
 pears, and again is gone. His beautiful flam- 
 ing flight is a line of fire along the drifted 
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OUTDOORS 
 
 brush-wood " the light that never was on 
 sea or land." 
 
 The philosophy and inner revealments of 
 snow-enveloped woods are not to be enjoyed 
 with a gun. If you bring the gun along the 
 hunter's instinct will urge you on, and some 
 things will escape you, however successful 
 you are with the game you seek. A stout 
 stick, a lunch, and three or four apples are 
 all you need for one of these tramps through 
 the timber. The snowy whiteness of a creek's 
 frozen surface is a page where all sorts of 
 pothooks and hieroglyphics are written by 
 the animals and birds that haunt the woods. 
 Chief of all of these indications is the rab- 
 bit's track. Here, there, and everywhere these 
 tracks turn and cross, and in some places they 
 are crowded as closely together as the tracks 
 of a flock of sheep are sometimes massed. 
 The mink's track will be found there, and 
 the foot-note jotted down by the wily " Br'er 
 Coon." Sometimes a sweeping aside of the 
 snow and the marks of a bird's feet will show 
 where a ruffed grouse has stood on the ice 
 and brushed the snow away with his tail- 
 feathers. Mice-tracks, wee dots on the snow, 
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IN WINTER WOODS 
 
 lead up to some harboring log, and the sign- 
 manual of the quail is seen crossing over to 
 disappear in a neighboring thicket. Where 
 the chickadees have been dodging about on 
 the thinly strewn creek's bed their tiny claws 
 have etched sharp little marks which fade 
 quickly when the sun comes up and over to 
 investigate. 
 
 Out in the heavier woods you will find oc- 
 casionally where bowl-like depressions in the 
 snow at regular intervals lead from tree to 
 tree. These mark where a squirrel has 
 jumped along. In the winter days when the 
 sun shines and the woods begin to warm up a 
 trifle a fox-squirrel will be tempted out to 
 make society calls, and he goes bouncing 
 along at such times in a series of undignified 
 jumps. If you care to rout a rabbit out, go 
 into the thickets and around fallen logs in 
 the timber where the' underbrush is pretty 
 thick, and you will find one there some-, 
 where. He will soon put a good distance 
 between your path and his, and will, doubt- 
 less, wonder at not hearing the crack of a 
 gun or the bark of a dog as he scurries 
 away. 
 
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OUTDOORS 
 
 Down along the creek's edge, under old 
 logs, you may find mullein leaves, still soft 
 and the lower leaves yet unblackened by the 
 frosts. And there, too, will sometimes be 
 found moss which is still green and vigor- 
 ous. The grass for the most part is abso- 
 lutely dead and of a tawny brown color, and 
 yet it lies thick and heavy underneath the 
 snows. Hickory-nuts and acorns are scattered 
 through this withered growth, and many a 
 patient woodland forager has knowledge of 
 that fact. Below the icy shield over the creek 
 the current flows ; and cold as the water is it 
 holds the music of summer in its minors and 
 trebles. Every day when the sun shines there 
 is a glamour of April in the air, a mirage of 
 brighter and sunnier hours. That black reed 
 by the frozen pool the red-wing is tilting it 
 down, and his whistle sounds as clear as run- 
 ning water. The sh'aft of sunshine across 
 that limb was it a golden-winged wood- 
 pecker's wing? Even the woods themselves, 
 blackened though they be, seem only slumber- 
 ing and waiting for the clarion of March to 
 blow them into sap drapery of green leaf 
 again. Only when the days are dull and the 
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IN WINTER WOODS 
 
 drifts pile high are the woods wrapped 'in 
 gloom. Then, when the skies are gray and 
 skeleton clouds hang like cobwebs on a wintry 
 ceiling, and the bitter winds blow desolation 
 of wraith-like snow-flurries along the paths, 
 the tall trees mourn. Their branches creak 
 and sway sadly in the blasts. Then the kindly 
 evidence of beast and bird is blotted out by 
 the shifting, furry blankets which tumble 
 among the tree-trunks. And the lack of sun- 
 light is the loss of life. The jay and red- 
 bird dive into densest cover, and the grim 
 old crow huddles somewhere out of the storm 
 as best he can. 
 
 But when the wind dies away and the gen- 
 erous sun dips down to the earth once more 
 the woods are glad again, and many a subtle 
 hint of change is heralded and shadowed 
 forth. There is promise and suggestion in 
 the sun's light whether in January or June. 
 And desolate aisles of the forest flame up as 
 the sleeping colors of some old cathedral's 
 art-stained windows wake when the western 
 fire flares across. Bud and blossom seem near 
 at hand, and a feathery drift of toppling 
 snows might almost be a bank of daisies 
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OUTDOORS 
 
 Sweet daisies, by the vagrant seasons thinned, 
 Born of the sun and cradled in the wind. 
 
 Color then there surely is, and life and 
 beauty and music in the lilt of hidden water,, 
 of wailing branches and aeolian harps above. 
 But surely not to the careless or unthinking 
 natures, nor to those who do not feel uplifted 
 and exhilarated by the dreams and fancies that 
 lurk beneath this hood and shade of winter, 
 which, after all, is only the mask of spring. 
 
 If you care to, you may find enough to 
 make a bouquet of as you stroll through the 
 woods on a bright day, even if the season of, 
 snow has already entered on its reign. The 
 violets and wind-flowers are mere ghostly 
 memories, of course, and the harebells have 
 faded. The blue flag-lilies of the marshy pools 
 and the primroses of the slopes are under the 
 snows. The dainty honeysuckles are dreams 
 of a summer yet to be. Notwithstanding all 
 these absences, there are still color and life 
 and beauty if one but will seek for them. 
 
 Gray thistle-pods, all rifled of their seeds, 
 Swaying and trembling in each passing gust; 
 December grasses, tarnished deep with rust, 
 And fluffy blooms of nameless tufted weeds; 
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IN WINTER WOODS 
 
 And here, where shelvingly a slope recedes 
 Down to the prisoned marsh's icy crust, 
 Thorn twigs are seen, their daggers outward thrust, 
 And blackened stems of brittle river reeds. 
 
 These you may gather; all are nature's own, 
 Touched by the sunlight, gladdened by the rain; 
 And beautiful if you should deem them so, 
 As here they dream among the byways lone, 
 Illumined by the bitter-sweet's bright stain, 
 Red as a winter sunset's afterglow. 
 
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