|THE man unacquainted with the joys of the chase would be surprised if
told, as he sauntered through some city market, that there was far more
pleasure in hunting those plump little brown birds hanging in bunches
around the stalls than in pursuing that imposing beast whose antlers
reach the pavement. Yet it would be true.
Deer hunting under its usual conditions leaves something, often much, to
be desired. If a dozen men are placed on isolated “stands” the solitary
hours of waiting are long and weary. And should you happen to be a tyro
the knowing ones hide you away in some unlikely spot, where hardly
by any possibility will the chance come to you of seeing and, in the
shivers of “buck ague,” missing the game. “Still hunting,” another mode,
is well named. As a rule it may be depended upon to afford no end of
stillness, and little else. And to be rowed up by a hired guide on a
lake to within a few feet of a poor, helpless buck, swimming for dear
life, and blow out his brains is almost as bad as shooting pheasants in
an English preserve or poultry in a barnyard. Under all these methods
deer hunting lacks what is the conspicuous charm of partridge (quail)
shooting--vivid and continuous excitement.
For, from the moment when you enter, on a sparkling autumn morning, a
brown stubble field, fresh of limb and eager for the fray, till you limp
back at sunset, wolfish for dinner, and broken with a delicious fatigue,
you have not had one dull moment. You may not have been firing steadily;
the birds may even have been a little scarce; but every instant of the
day, as you have watched your dogs sweeping to and fro, you have been
buoyed up by an ever lively hope that the next moment your heart will be
gladdened by seeing them halt--frozen as it were--in their tracks. Ah,
there they are! You hurry up, you and your friend, breathing short. Up
bursts the brown covey, with startling buzz! You bang away--innocuously
it may be, but no matter, you have made a prodigious noise, at any
rate--that's some comfort. And see now! The little brown balls have
dropped into the weeds, one here, one there, along the ditch, and a
little bunch, all together, in that clump of briars on the hillside.
Better luck next time!
Still, after all, “Bob White,” for all his bustle, is but a small chap.
It would take hundreds, nay, bushels of him, to outweigh one “antlered
monarch.” Toothsome though he be (on toast) he tips the scales at a
beggarly half pound. On the other hand, it often takes you a week or so
to get one chance at a deer.
Now, it so happens that it was once my fortune to take part in a deer
hunt, where the excitement was as continuous as that in a stubble field,
and, naturally, far more intense. This was years ago, and in Scott
County, Mississippi, two days' journey on horseback from our plantation.
Every November, as a child, I had eagerly hailed the return from the
camp hunt of the big four-mule wagon, laden with tents, cooking utensils
and provisions, and upon which were piled high the noble bucks and sleek
does. At last, when I had reached the age of sixteen, the longed-for
permission was granted me, and one crisp, frosty morning my father and I
mounted our horses and set out for Scott County, followed by Beverly and
the great covered wagon. Both Beverly and Ned, his whitish-gray saddle
mule, had their peculiarities, as will appear later.
As we journeyed on we were joined at successive cross roads by others
of our hunting party, and when we reached the ground we numbered, with
those already arrived by other routes, about fifteen. The tents were
soon pitched and a roaring fire of logs six feet long was sending up
its merry sparks into the starry vault above us. Would supper never be
ready?
Meanwhile the tents flashed in the fire light, the ruddy glow of which
battled with the hosts of darkness that advanced upon us under cover
of the primeval, mysterious forest that surrounded us far and wide. And
that forest teeming with deer and wolves. Oh, how delightful! And
my Latin grammar miles and miles away! And dust accumulating on my
arithmetic!
“Why, where is Billy?”
“Detained by business; he will join us in a day or two.”
“Good! A hunt without Billy Blount is no hunt at all.”
At the mere mention of his name every eye brightened. Mr. Blount had
more than one peculiarity, all of them pleasant. He was just one of
those mortals whom mothers in their fatuity christen William. If ever
there was a man born with an inalienable right to be called Billy it was
he. A stranger meeting him in the road would know by intuition that that
was his name. His twinkling eye suggested it. His ruddy brown dimpled
cheek, his breadth of smile proclaimed it, and when he laughed every
well-lined rib shouted aloud, “Our name is Billy!”
But he was not with us; so the next best thing was to tell stories of
his exploits. To these I listened with wide-eyed delight. I will give
one as a sample. But that it may be understood, it will be necessary
to show beforehand the very unusual method of hunting that obtained in
Scott County.
That portion of Mississippi was in those days almost uninhabited and was
covered by a forest--it would be almost correct to call it a grove--of
post oaks, beneath which grew waist high underbrush. The oaks which
covered the ground almost to the exclusion of other trees stood so far
apart that one had an outlook of perhaps a couple of hundred yards in
every direction, so that a good rider could gallop in comfort along the
open spaces. This tree bears a small but sweet nutritious acorn; hence
the great store of deer that frequented these forests.
Such being the nature of the ground the chase is conducted as follows:
The hunters throw themselves into a skirmish line at intervals of sixty
or eighty yards. In the centre rides the leader of the hunt with a
compass fixed upon the pommel of his saddle. The line advances through
the woods due north, let us say, for a few hours; then wheels at right
angle and moves east; then south, then west--back to camp, venison
steaks and wild turkey; for, in the interests of better fare, it was
permitted to knock over a gobbler if he were too hospitably saucy to
get out of the way. The deer were not equally abundant year after year.
Occasionally it was found that “black tongue” had worked havoc among
them since the preceding hunt. But they were always numerous enough to
maintain a continuous and intense glow of expectation in the breast of
every hunter. As a rule you rode straight ahead, swerving neither to the
right nor the left, every nerve on the alert, from sunrise till' sunset.
But if you saw a little out of your path an upturned tree you bent your
course toward it, your heart in your mouth. I have known as many as
seven deer to bound forth from the brown-leaved “lap” of one fallen oak.
But at any moment during the day you were liable to be startled by a
buck springing up out of the undergrowth, often from beneath the very
feet of your horse.
Only an inexperienced hunter would ask: “Why not shoot them where they
lie?” You do not know they are there. The detective eye that can make
out the form of a deer crouched down on a bed of brown leaves and veiled
with a fringe of underbrush is given to few. Among these favored ones
was our friend Billy. It was generally believed in camp that he shot
most of his game in their beds. Billy himself was at no pains, of
course, to spread this view. In his highly-illustrated accounts of his
achievements the quarry was always going like the wind; he had not been
sure, in fact, what he fired at; he saw a brown flash, that was all;
banged away, and down came that thumping buck. Never was so surprised in
his life; thought it was a hawk or something. But this is the story of
Mr. Jennings, brother of the leader of the hunt: “Blount rides on my
right, and I don't know how I shall get on without him, even for a day
or two. However, I may live longer if he is not there, for he sows his
buckshot broadcast. Three years ago--I never knew the deer so thick as
they were that season--happening to look in his direction, I saw him
dismounting with an agility that was surprising considering his 225
pounds. He halted me with an eager wave of his hand and began advancing
on tiptoe; every fibre of his vast form tense, his eyes riveted upon
some object in front, finger on trigger. Barely had he crept forward
ten yards when up sprang a buck hardly twenty feet in front of him
and darted to the rear, between Blount and me. Instantly, without once
removing his eyes from the game upon which he was stealing, he whirled
his gun to the right and pulled the trigger. The buck passed on, while
twigs and bark rained on me from the whizzing buckshot. Would you
believe it?--but you all know him--not a moment did he halt or once
remove his eyes from whatever it was that had fascinated his gaze in
front. He still danced forward, light as an Indian, with eyes starting
from their sockets. Presently up jumps a doe. She, too, bounded to the
rear, but on Blount's left this time. Again, with his staring eyes
still glued to the something in front--bang! 'What in the ------ are
you about?' roared Parrish from Blount's left; 'you will be shooting
somebody the first thing you know. Here is one of your crazy shot
through my hat.' To all which our wild man paid not the least attention.
'Jennings! Jennings! come here! come here! come here! quick! quick!
quick! For God's sake, man, hurry!'
“I dismounted and ran up to him. 'There! there! give it to him! Good
Lord, man, can't you see him? There, in that lap!' I strained my eyes
in vain. I could see nothing. 'Why, don't you see him turning his head?
He is looking at us! My Lord, Jennings, gimme the gun! gimme the gun!
gimme the gun!' Just as I did so a noble buck sprang from the lap and
bounded off. Blount drew down upon him. Bound after bound, and still
Blount did not fire, though he seemed to be pulling away for dear life
at the triggers. Presently the deer, passing behind a clump of trees,
disappeared. I carried my gun at half cock. This Blount did not know or
remember. He bent both my triggers. Any other man might very well have
bagged all three deer with such a chance. And what do you suppose he
then said? 'At any rate, I laid out two of the rascals. Come, Jennings,
help me find 'em.'”
Dogs were not used on these hunts. Two or three trusty old hounds, it is
true, hung about the heels of our leader's horse, but they were employed
only in running down badly-wounded animals. For the first day or so
these dogs were hard to control, so rich was the scent that met their
nostrils at every turn; but after the third day they grew too _blasé_ to
take any interest in any trail not sprinkled with blood. We had a number
of horn signals. If a gun was heard, followed by a long blast (every man
wore a horn), the line halted. A deer had been killed in its tracks.
A second blast indicated that the quarry had been strapped behind the
saddle of the lucky man; and once more the line moved forward. But if
three or four short, excited toots, mingled with shouts, rang out upon
the frosty air, a wounded deer was being pursued, and the leader of the
hunt galloped up, followed by his little pack, who soon pulled down the
game.
After all my boasting about the abundance of deer in these post-oak
forests the reader is, I dare say, prepared to learn that with a party
of fifteen the spoil of a ten-days hunt would be one thousand head at
the very least. Great will be his surprise therefore to learn that
at the close of our first day's hunt we returned to camp without one
solitary buck or doe to show to our disgusted cooks. Never had the game
been so scarce, and yet not a man of us all had the same loads in his
gun with which he had sallied gaily forth full of hope in the morning.
One fine buck alone had emptied just thirty barrels for us. Flushed on
the extreme right, he had bounded along in front of the whole line, a
trifle out of range, perhaps, and each one of us had given him a roaring
double salute. As the rolling thunder approached me I almost ceased
to breathe. What were conjugations and declensions and rules of three
compared with this! It was like a battle, as I have since discovered,
with the notable difference that our side made all the noise, and the
deer did not shoot back. But none of us had been able, in the language
of Mr. Sam Weller's Dick Turpin ditty, to “prewail upon him for to
stop.” Other shots at other deer all of us had, but we supped on bacon
that evening.
[Illustration: 0075]