Wisconsin one hundred miles long and from three to ten miles wide.
Every tree, some of them quite low and scrubby, had from one to fifty
nests on each. Some of the nests overflow from the oaks to the hemlock
and pine woods. When the pigeon hunters attack the breeding-places they
sometimes cut the timber from thousands of acres. Millions are caught
in nets with salt or grain for bait, and schooners, sometimes loaded
down with the birds, are taken to New York where they are sold for a
cent apiece.”
VToC
YOUNG HUNTERS
American Head-hunters—Deer—A Resurrected Woodpecker—Muskrats—Foxes and
Badgers—A Pet Coon—Bathing—Squirrels—Gophers—A Burglarious Shrike.
In the older eastern States it used to be considered great sport for an
army of boys to assemble to hunt birds, squirrels, and every other
unclaimed, unprotected live thing of shootable size. They divided into
two squads, and, choosing leaders, scattered through the woods in
different directions, and the party that killed the greatest number
enjoyed a supper at the expense of the other. The whole neighborhood
seemed to enjoy the shameful sport especially the farmers afraid of
their crops. With a great air of importance, laws were enacted to
govern the gory business. For example, a gray squirrel must count four
heads, a woodchuck six heads, common red squirrel two heads, black
squirrel ten heads, a partridge five heads, the larger birds, such as
whip-poor-wills and nighthawks two heads each, the wary crows three,
and bob-whites three. But all the blessed company of mere songbirds,
warblers, robins, thrushes, orioles, with nuthatches, chickadees, blue
jays, woodpeckers, etc., counted only one head each. The heads of the
birds were hastily wrung off and thrust into the game-bags to be
counted, saving the bodies only of what were called game, the larger
squirrels, bob-whites, partridges, etc. The blood-stained bags of the
best slayers were soon bulging full. Then at a given hour all had to
stop and repair to the town, empty their dripping sacks, count the
heads, and go rejoicing to their dinner. Although, like other wild
boys, I was fond of shooting, I never had anything to do with these
abominable head-hunts. And now the farmers having learned that birds
are their friends wholesale slaughter has been abolished.
We seldom saw deer, though their tracks were common. The Yankee
explained that they traveled and fed mostly at night, and hid in
tamarack swamps and brushy places in the daytime, and how the Indians
knew all about them and could find them whenever they were hungry.
Indians belonging to the Menominee and Winnebago tribes occasionally
visited us at our cabin to get a piece of bread or some matches, or to
sharpen their knives on our grindstone, and we boys watched them
closely to see that they didn’t steal Jack. We wondered at their
knowledge of animals when we saw them go direct to trees on our farm,
chop holes in them with their tomahawks and take out coons, of the
existence of which we had never noticed the slightest trace. In winter,
after the first snow, we frequently saw three or four Indians hunting
deer in company, running like hounds on the fresh, exciting tracks. The
escape of the deer from these noiseless, tireless hunters was said to
be well-nigh impossible; they were followed to the death.
Most of our neighbors brought some sort of gun from the old country,
but seldom took time to hunt, even after the first hard work of fencing
and clearing was over, except to shoot a duck or prairie chicken now
and then that happened to come in their way. It was only the less
industrious American settlers who left their work to go far a-hunting.
Two or three of our most enterprising American neighbors went off every
fall with their teams to the pine regions and cranberry marshes in the
northern part of the State to hunt and gather berries. I well remember
seeing their wagons loaded with game when they returned from a
successful hunt. Their loads consisted usually of half a dozen deer or
more, one or two black bears, and fifteen or twenty bushels of
cranberries; all solidly frozen. Part of both the berries and meat was
usually sold in Portage; the balance furnished their families with
abundance of venison, bear grease, and pies.
Winter wheat is sown in the fall, and when it is a month or so old the
deer, like the wild geese, are very fond of it, especially since other
kinds of food are then becoming scarce. One of our neighbors across the
Fox River killed a large number, some thirty or forty, on a small patch
of wheat, simply by lying in wait for them every night. Our wheat-field
was the first that was sown in the neighborhood. The deer soon found it
and came in every night to feast, but it was eight or nine years before
we ever disturbed them. David then killed one deer, the only one killed
by any of our family. He went out shortly after sundown at the time of
full moon to one of our wheat-fields, carrying a double-barreled
shotgun loaded with buckshot. After lying in wait an hour or so, he saw
a doe and her fawn jump the fence and come cautiously into the wheat.
After they were within sixty or seventy yards of him, he was surprised
when he tried to take aim that about half of the moon’s disc was
mysteriously darkened as if covered by the edge of a dense cloud. This
proved to be an eclipse. Nevertheless, he fired at the mother, and she
immediately ran off, jumped the fence, and took to the woods by the way
she came. The fawn danced about bewildered, wondering what had become
of its mother, but finally fled to the woods. David fired at the poor
deserted thing as it ran past him but happily missed it. Hearing the
shots, I joined David to learn his luck. He said he thought he must
have wounded the mother, and when we were strolling about in the woods
in search of her we saw three or four deer on their way to the
wheat-field, led by a fine buck. They were walking rapidly, but
cautiously halted at intervals of a few rods to listen and look ahead
and scent the air. They failed to notice us, though by this time the
moon was out of the eclipse shadow and we were standing only about
fifty yards from them. I was carrying the gun. David had fired both
barrels but when he was reloading one of them he happened to put the
wad intended to cover the shot into the empty barrel, and so when we
were climbing over the fence the buckshot had rolled out, and when I
fired at the big buck I knew by the report that there was nothing but
powder in the charge. The startled deer danced about in confusion for a
few seconds, uncertain which way to run until they caught sight of us,
when they bounded off through the woods. Next morning we found the poor
mother lying about three hundred yards from the place where she was
shot. She had run this distance and jumped a high fence after one of
the buckshot had passed through her heart.
Excepting Sundays we boys had only two days of the year to ourselves,
the 4th of July and the 1st of January. Sundays were less than half our
own, on account of Bible lessons, Sunday-school lessons and church
services; all the others were labor days, rain or shine, cold or warm.
No wonder, then, that our two holidays were precious and that it was
not easy to decide what to do with them. They were usually spent on the
highest rocky hill in the neighborhood, called the Observatory; in
visiting our boy friends on adjacent farms to hunt, fish, wrestle, and
play games; in reading some new favorite book we had managed to borrow
or buy; or in making models of machines I had invented.
One of our July days was spent with two Scotch boys of our own age
hunting redwing blackbirds then busy in the corn-fields. Our party had
only one single-barreled shotgun, which, as the oldest and perhaps
because I was thought to be the best shot, I had the honor of carrying.
We marched through the corn without getting sight of a single redwing,
but just as we reached the far side of the field, a red-headed
woodpecker flew up, and the Lawson boys cried: “Shoot him! Shoot him!
he is just as bad as a blackbird. He eats corn!” This memorable
woodpecker alighted in the top of a white oak tree about fifty feet
high. I fired from a position almost immediately beneath him, and he
fell straight down at my feet. When I picked him up and was admiring
his plumage, he moved his legs slightly, and I said, “Poor bird, he’s
no deed yet and we’ll hae to kill him to put him oot o’
pain,”—sincerely pitying him, after we had taken pleasure in shooting
him. I had seen servant girls wringing chicken necks, so with desperate
humanity I took the limp unfortunate by the head, swung him around
three or four times thinking I was wringing his neck, and then threw
him hard on the ground to quench the last possible spark of life and
make quick death doubly sure. But to our astonishment the moment he
struck the ground he gave a cry of alarm and flew right straight up
like a rejoicing lark into the top of the same tree, and perhaps to the
same branch he had fallen from, and began to adjust his ruffled
feathers, nodding and chirping and looking down at us as if wondering
what in the bird world we had been doing to him. This of course
banished all thought of killing, as far as that revived woodpecker was
concerned, no matter how many ears of corn he might spoil, and we all
heartily congratulated him on his wonderful, triumphant resurrection
from three kinds of death,—shooting, neck-wringing, and destructive
concussion. I suppose only one pellet had touched him, glancing on his
head.
Another extraordinary shooting-affair happened one summer morning
shortly after daybreak. When I went to the stable to feed the horses I
noticed a big white-breasted hawk on a tall oak in front of the
chicken-house, evidently waiting for a chicken breakfast. I ran to the
house for the gun, and when I fired he fell about halfway down the
tree, caught a branch with his claws, hung back downward and fluttered
a few seconds, then managed to stand erect. I fired again to put him
out of pain, and to my surprise the second shot seemed to restore his
strength instead of killing him, for he flew out of the tree and over
the meadow with strong and regular wing-beats for thirty or forty rods
apparently as well as ever, but died suddenly in the air and dropped
like a stone.
We hunted muskrats whenever we had time to run down to the lake. They
are brown bunchy animals about twenty-three inches long, the tail being
about nine inches in length, black in color and flattened vertically
for sculling, and the hind feet are half-webbed. They look like little
beavers, usually have from ten to a dozen young, are easily tamed and
make interesting pets. We liked to watch them at their work and at
their meals. In the spring when the snow vanishes and the lake ice
begins to melt, the first open spot is always used as a feeding-place,
where they dive from the edge of the ice and in a minute or less
reappear with a mussel or a mouthful of pontederia or water-lily
leaves, climb back on to the ice and sit up to nibble their food,
handling it very much like squirrels or marmots. It is then that they
are most easily shot, a solitary hunter oftentimes shooting thirty or
forty in a single day. Their nests on the rushy margins of lakes and
streams, far from being hidden like those of most birds, are
conspicuously large, and conical in shape like Indian wigwams. They are
built of plants—rushes, sedges, mosses, etc.—and ornamented around the
base with mussel-shells. It was always pleasant and interesting to see
them in the fall as soon as the nights began to be frosty, hard at work
cutting sedges on the edge of the meadow or swimming out through the
rushes, making long glittering ripples as they sculled themselves
along, diving where the water is perhaps six or eight feet deep and
reappearing in a minute or so with large mouthfuls of the weedy tangled
plants gathered from the bottom, returning to their big wigwams,
climbing up and depositing their loads where most needed to make them
yet larger and firmer and warmer, foreseeing the freezing weather just
like ourselves when we banked up our house to keep out the frost.
They lie snug and invisible all winter but do not hibernate. Through a
channel carefully kept open they swim out under the ice for mussels,
and the roots and stems of water-lilies, etc., on which they feed just
as they do in summer. Sometimes the oldest and most enterprising of
them venture to orchards near the water in search of fallen apples;
very seldom, however, do they interfere with anything belonging to
their mortal enemy man. Notwithstanding they are so well hidden and
protected during the winter, many of them are killed by Indian hunters,
who creep up softly and spear them through the thick walls of their
cabins. Indians are fond of their flesh, and so are some of the wildest
of the white trappers. They are easily caught in steel traps, and after
vainly trying to drag their feet from the cruel crushing jaws, they
sometimes in their agony gnaw them off. Even after having gnawed off a
leg they are so guileless that they never seem to learn to know and
fear traps, for some are occasionally found that have been caught twice
and have gnawed off a second foot. Many other animals suffering
excruciating pain in these cruel traps gnaw off their legs. Crabs and
lobsters are so fortunate as to be able to shed their limbs when caught
or merely frightened, apparently without suffering any pain, simply by
giving themselves a little shivery shake.
The muskrat is one of the most notable and widely distributed of
American animals, and millions of the gentle, industrious, beaver-like
creatures are shot and trapped and speared every season for their
skins, worth a dime or so,—like shooting boys and girls for their
garments.
Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings
will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals
in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners. In the
mean time we may just as well as not learn to live clean, innocent
lives instead of slimy, bloody ones. All hale, red-blooded boys are
savage, the best and boldest the savagest, fond of hunting and fishing.
But when thoughtless childhood is past, the best rise the highest above
all this bloody flesh and sport business, the wild foundational animal
dying out day by day, as divine uplifting, transfiguring charity grows
in.
Hares and rabbits were seldom seen when we first settled in the
Wisconsin woods, but they multiplied rapidly after the animals that
preyed upon them had been thinned out or exterminated, and food and
shelter supplied in grain-fields and log fences and the thickets of
young oaks that grew up in pastures after the annual grass fires were
kept out. Catching hares in the winter-time, when they were hidden in
hollow fence-logs, was a favorite pastime with many of the boys whose
fathers allowed them time to enjoy the sport. Occasionally a stout,
lithe hare was carried out into an open snow-covered field, set free,
and given a chance for its life in a race with a dog. When the snow was
not too soft and deep, it usually made good its escape, for our dogs
were only fat, short-legged mongrels. We sometimes discovered hares in
standing hollow trees, crouching on decayed punky wood at the bottom,
as far back as possible from the opening, but when alarmed they managed
to climb to a considerable height if the hollow was not too wide, by
bracing themselves against the sides.
Foxes, though not uncommon, we boys held steadily to work seldom saw,
and as they found plenty of prairie chickens for themselves and
families, they did not often come near the farmer’s hen-roosts.
Nevertheless the discovery of their dens was considered important. No
matter how deep the den might be, it was thoroughly explored with pick
and shovel by sport-loving settlers at a time when they judged the fox
was likely to be at home, but I cannot remember any case in our
neighborhood where the fox was actually captured. In one of the dens a
mile or two from our farm a lot of prairie chickens were found and some
smaller birds.
Badger dens were far more common than fox dens. One of our fields was
named Badger Hill from the number of badger holes in a hill at the end
of it, but I cannot remember seeing a single one of the inhabitants.
On a stormy day in the middle of an unusually severe winter, a black
bear, hungry, no doubt, and seeking something to eat, came strolling
down through our neighborhood from the northern pine woods. None had
been seen here before, and it caused no little excitement and alarm,
for the European settlers imagined that these poor, timid, bashful
bears were as dangerous as man-eating lions and tigers, and that they
would pursue any human being that came in their way. This species is
common in the north part of the State, and few of our enterprising
Yankee hunters who went to the pineries in the fall failed to shoot at
least one of them.
We saw very little of the owlish, serious-looking coons, and no wonder,
since they lie hidden nearly all day in hollow trees and we never had
time to hunt them. We often heard their curious, quavering, whinnying
cries on still evenings, but only once succeeded in tracing an
unfortunate family through our corn-field to their den in a big oak and
catching them all. One of our neighbors, Mr. McRath, a Highland
Scotchman, caught one and made a pet of it. It became very tame and had
perfect confidence in the good intentions of its kind friend and
master. He always addressed it in speaking to it as a “little man.”
When it came running to him and jumped on his lap or climbed up his
trousers, he would say, while patting its head as if it were a dog or a
child, “Coonie, ma mannie, Coonie, ma mannie, hoo are ye the day? I
think you’re hungry,”—as the comical pet began to examine his pockets
for nuts and bits of bread,—“Na, na, there’s nathing in my pooch for ye
the day, my wee mannie, but I’ll get ye something.” He would then fetch
something it liked,—bread, nuts, a carrot, or perhaps a piece of fresh
meat. Anything scattered for it on the floor it felt with its paw
instead of looking at it, judging of its worth more by touch than
sight.
The outlet of our Fountain Lake flowed past Mr. McRath’s door, and the
coon was very fond of swimming in it and searching for frogs and
mussels. It seemed perfectly satisfied to stay about the house without
being confined, occupied a comfortable bed in a section of a hollow
tree, and never wandered far. How long it lived after the death of its
kind master I don’t know.
I suppose that almost any wild animal may be made a pet, simply by
sympathizing with it and entering as much as possible into its life. In
Alaska I saw one of the common gray mountain marmots kept as a pet in
an Indian family. When its master entered the house it always seemed
glad, almost like a dog, and when cold or tired it snuggled up in a
fold of his blanket with the utmost confidence.
We have all heard of ferocious animals, lions and tigers, etc., that
were fed and spoken to only by their masters, becoming perfectly tame;
and, as is well known, the faithful dog that follows man and serves
him, and looks up to him and loves him as if he were a god, is a
descendant of the blood-thirsty wolf or jackal. Even frogs and toads
and fishes may be tamed, provided they have the uniform sympathy of one
person, with whom they become intimately acquainted without the
distracting and varying attentions of strangers. And surely all God’s
people, however serious and savage, great or small, like to play.
Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small
mischievous microbes,—all are warm with divine radium and must have
lots of fun in them.
As far as I know, all wild creatures keep themselves clean. Birds, it
seems to me, take more pains to bathe and dress themselves than any
other animals. Even ducks, though living so much in water, dip and
scatter cleansing showers over their backs, and shake and preen their
feathers as carefully as land-birds. Watching small singers taking
their morning baths is very interesting, particularly when the weather
is cold. Alighting in a shallow pool, they oftentimes show a sort of
dread of dipping into it, like children hesitating about taking a
plunge, as if they felt the same kind of shock, and this makes it easy
for us to sympathize with the little feathered people.
Occasionally I have seen from my study-window red-headed linnets
bathing in dew when water elsewhere was scarce. A large Monterey
cypress with broad branches and innumerable leaves on which the dew
lodges in still nights made favorite bathing-places. Alighting gently,
as if afraid to waste the dew, they would pause and fidget as they do
before beginning to plash in pools, then dip and scatter the drops in
showers and get as thorough a bath as they would in a pool. I have also
seen the same kind of baths taken by birds on the boughs of silver firs
on the edge of a glacier meadow, but nowhere have I seen the dewdrops
so abundant as on the Monterey cypress; and the picture made by the
quivering wings and irised dew was memorably beautiful. Children, too,
make fine pictures plashing and crowing in their little tubs. How
widely different from wallowing pigs, bathing with great show of
comfort and rubbing themselves dry against rough-barked trees!
Some of our own species seem fairly to dread the touch of water. When
the necessity of absolute cleanliness by means of frequent baths was
being preached by a friend who had been reading Combe’s Physiology, in
which he had learned something of the wonders of the skin with its
millions of pores that had to be kept open for health, one of our
neighbors remarked: “Oh! that’s unnatural. It’s well enough to wash in
a tub maybe once or twice a year, but not to be paddling in the water
all the time like a frog in a spring-hole.” Another neighbor, who
prided himself on his knowledge of big words, said with great
solemnity: “I never can believe that man is amphibious!”
Natives of tropic islands pass a large part of their lives in water,
and seem as much at home in the sea as on the land; swim and dive,
pursue fishes, play in the waves like surf-ducks and seals, and explore
the coral gardens and groves and seaweed meadows as if truly
amphibious. Even the natives of the far north bathe at times. I once
saw a lot of Eskimo boys ducking and plashing right merrily in the
Arctic Ocean.