From the sowing and planting of his seed, almost indeed from the turning
of the furrow, the farmer enters upon a contest with the weeds, for a
place in which his crops may grow, and if he or the crops are not
vanquished, as the weeds never are, the warfare continues till harvest
time.
While he, with infinite labor, prepares the ground and sows his seed
with all care, praying that drouth may not wither nor floods drown it,
and that frosts may not cut down the tender plants, the winds of heaven
and the fowls of the air scatter broadcast the seeds of the noxious
weeds, or these lie dormant in the ground awaiting opportunity. They
germinate in sterile places, fence corners and nooks of the wayside, and
flourish alike in scorching sunshine and in sodden soil.
Weeds defy the latest and the earliest frosts, grow with their roots in
the air; and cut down, spring up, grow on, blossoming and ripening their
seed in creeping stealth and ever unscathed by blight; and so flourish
in spite of all unkindliness of man or stress of nature, that the
husbandman wishes that they might by some freak of demand become the
useful plants, his present crop the undesired ones.
Somewhat the same position in which weeds stand opposed to the plants
which the husbandman depends upon for his livelihood, vermin hold toward
the beasts and birds upon which the sportsman depends for his
recreation. While they whose protection men endeavor to maintain during
the season of procreation, and at times when scarcity of food prevails,
decrease often to complete extinction, the vermin, whom the hand of man
is always against, continue to increase and multiply, or at least hold
their own. With them as with the weeds nature seems to deal with a
kinder hand. She spares and nourishes them, while she destroys their
betters.
The snow crust, which walls the quail in a living tomb, makes a royal
banqueting hall for the pestiferous field mice, where they feast and
revel in plenty, secure from all their enemies, feathered or furred. It
impounds the deer, but gives free range to the wolf and to his as
pitiless two-legged brother, the crust hunter.
The wet seasons that drown the callow woodcock and grouse work no harm
to the ravenous brood of the hawk and owl, nor to the litter of fox,
mink, or weasel. Wet or dry, hot or cold, the year fosters them
throughout its varied round.
Winged ticks kill the grouse, but the owl endures their companionship
with sedate serenity and thrives with a swarm of the parasites in the
covert of his feathers.
The skunk has always been killed on sight as a pest that the world would
be the sweeter for being rid of. In later years the warfare against him
has received an impetus from the value of his fur, but though this has
gone on relentlessly for many years, his tribe still live to load the
air with a fragrance that incites the ambitious trapper to further
conquest.
All the year round, farmers and their boys wage war upon the crows, but
each returning autumn sees the columns of the black army moving
southward with apparently unthinned ranks, while, year by year, the
harried platoons of ducks and geese return fewer and less frequent.
Those detested foreigners, the English sparrows, increase and multiply
in spite of bitter winters and righteous persecution, while our natives,
the beloved song-birds, diminish in numbers. On every hand we find the
undesirable in animated nature, the birds and beasts that we would
gladly be rid of, maintaining their numbers, while those whose increase
we desire are losing ground and tending toward extinction.
The prospect for the sportsman of the future is indeed gloomy, unless he
shall make game of the pests and become a hunter of skunks and a shooter
of crows and sparrows. Who can say that a hundred years hence the
leading sportsmen of the period will not be wrangling over the points
and merits of their skunk and woodchuck dogs and bragging of their bags
of crows and sparrows?