HUNTING LORE
It has been my good-luck to kill every kind of game properly belonging
to the United States: though one beast which I never had a chance to
slay, the jaguar, from the torrid South, sometimes comes just across
the Rio Grande; nor have I ever hunted the musk-ox and polar-bear in
the boreal wastes where they dwell, surrounded by the frozen desolation
of the uttermost North.
I have never sought to make large bags, for a hunter should not be a
game butcher. It is always lawful to kill dangerous or noxious animals,
like the bear, cougar, and wolf; but other game should only be shot
when there is need of the meat, or for the sake of an unusually fine
trophy. Killing a reasonable number of bulls, bucks, or rams does no
harm whatever to the species; to slay half the males of any kind of
game would not stop the natural increase, and they yield the best
sport, and are the legitimate objects of the chase. Cows, does, and
ewes, on the contrary, should only be killed (unless barren) in case
of necessity; during my last five years’ hunting I have killed but
five--one by a mischance, and the other four for the table.
From its very nature, the life of the hunter is in most places
evanescent; and when it has vanished there can be no real substitute
in old settled countries. Shooting in a private game preserve is but
a dismal parody; the manliest and healthiest features of the sport
are lost with the change of conditions. We need, in the interest of
the community at large, a rigid system of game laws rigidly enforced,
and it is not only admissible, but one may almost say necessary, to
establish, under the control of the State, great national forest
reserves, which shall also be breeding grounds and nurseries for wild
game; but I should much regret to see grow up in this country a system
of large private game preserves, kept for the enjoyment of the very
rich. One of the chief attractions of the life of the wilderness is
its rugged and stalwart democracy; there every man stands for what he
actually is, and can show himself to be.
There are, in different parts of our country, chances to try so many
various kinds of hunting, with rifle or with horse and hound, that it
is nearly impossible for one man to have experience of them all. There
are many hunts I long hoped to take, but never did and never shall;
they must be left for men with more time, or for those whose homes are
nearer to the hunting grounds. I have never seen a grisly roped by
the riders of the plains, nor a black bear killed with the knife and
hounds in the Southern canebrakes; though at one time I had for many
years a standing invitation to witness this last feat on a plantation
in Arkansas. The friend who gave it, an old backwoods planter, at one
time lost almost all his hogs by the numerous bears who infested his
neighborhood. He took a grimly humorous revenge each fall by doing
his winter killing among the bears instead of among the hogs they had
slain; for as the cold weather approached he regularly proceeded to
lay in a stock of bear-bacon, scouring the canebrakes in a series of
systematic hunts, bringing the quarry to bay with the help of a big
pack of hard-fighting mongrels, and then killing it with his long,
broad-bladed bowie.
Again, I should like to make a trial at killing peccaries with the
spear, whether on foot or on horseback, and with or without dogs. I
should like much to repeat the experience of a friend who cruised
northward through Bering Sea, shooting walrus and polar bear; and that
of two other friends who traveled with dog-sleds to the Barren Grounds,
in chase of the caribou, and of that last survivor of the Ice Age,
the strange musk-ox. Once in a while it must be good sport to shoot
alligators by torchlight in the everglades of Florida or the bayous of
Louisiana.
If the big-game hunter, the lover of the rifle, has a taste for kindred
field sports with rod and shotgun, many are his chances for pleasure,
though perhaps of a less intense kind. The wild turkey really deserves
a place beside the deer; to kill a wary old gobbler with the small-bore
rifle, by fair still-hunting, is a triumph for the best sportsman.
Swans, geese, and sandhill cranes likewise may sometimes be killed
with the rifle; but more often all three, save perhaps the swan, must
be shot over decoys. Then there is prairie-chicken shooting on the
fertile grain prairies of the Middle West, from Minnesota to Texas; and
killing canvas-backs from behind blinds, with the help of that fearless
swimmer, the Chesapeake Bay dog. In Californian mountains and valleys
live the beautiful plumed quails; and who does not know their cousin
bob-white, the bird of the farm, with his cheery voice and friendly
ways? For pure fun, nothing can surpass a night scramble through the
woods after coon and possum.
The salmon, whether near Puget Sound or the St. Lawrence, is the
royal fish; his only rival is the giant of the warm Gulf waters, the
silver-mailed tarpon; while along the Atlantic coast the great striped
bass likewise yields fine sport to the men of rod and reel. Every
hunter of the mountains and the northern woods knows the many kinds
of spotted trout; for the black bass he cares less; and least of all
for the sluggish pickerel, and his big brother of the Great Lakes, the
muscallonge.
Yet the sport yielded by rod and smooth-bore is really less closely
kin to the strong pleasures so beloved by the hunter who trusts in
horse and rifle than are certain other outdoor pastimes, of the
rougher and hardier kind. Such a pastime is snowshoeing, whether with
webbed rackets, in the vast northern forests, or with skees, on the
bare slopes of the Rockies. Such is mountaineering, especially when
joined with bold exploration of the unknown. Most of our mountains
are of rounded shape, and though climbing them is often hard work, it
is rarely difficult or dangerous, save in bad weather, or after a
snowfall. But there are many of which this is not true; the Tetons, for
instance, and various glacier-bearing peaks in the Northwest; while the
lofty, snow-clad ranges of British Columbia and Alaska offer one of
the finest fields in the world for the daring cragsman. Mountaineering
is among the manliest of sports; and it is to be hoped that some of
our young men with a taste for hard work and adventure among the high
hills will attempt the conquest of these great untrodden mountains of
their own continent. As with all pioneer work, there would be far more
discomfort and danger, far more need to display resolution, hardihood,
and wisdom in such an attempt than in any expedition on wellknown
and historic ground like the Swiss Alps; but the victory would be a
hundred-fold better worth winning.
The dweller or sojourner in the wilderness who most keenly loves and
appreciates his wild surroundings, and all their sights and sounds, is
the man who also loves and appreciates the books which tell of them.
Foremost of all American writers on outdoor life is John Burroughs; and
I can scarcely suppose that any man who cares for existence outside the
cities would willingly be without anything that he has ever written.
To the naturalist, to the observer and lover of nature, he is of course
worth many times more than any closet systematist; and though he has
not been very much in really wild regions, his pages so thrill with the
sights and sounds of outdoor life that nothing by any writer who is
a mere professional scientist or a mere professional hunter can take
their place, or do more than supplement them--for scientist and hunter
alike would do well to remember that before a book can take the highest
rank in any particular line it must also rank high in literature
proper. Of course, for us Americans, Burroughs has a peculiar charm
that he can not have for others, no matter how much they, too, may
like him; for what he writes of is our own, and he calls to our minds
memories and associations that are very dear. His books make us
homesick when we read them in foreign lands; for they spring from our
soil as truly as “Snowbound” or “The Biglow Papers.”[1]
As a woodland writer, Thoreau comes second only to Burroughs.
For natural history in the narrower sense there are still no better
books than Audubon and Bachman’s Mammals and Audubon’s Birds. There are
also good works by men like Coues and Bendire; and if Hart Merriam, of
the Smithsonian, will only do for the mammals of the United States what
he has already done for those of the Adirondacks, we shall have the
best book of its kind in existence. Nor, among less technical writings,
should one overlook such essays as those of Maurice Thompson and Olive
Thorne Miller.
There have been many American hunting-books; but too often they have
been very worthless, even when the writers possessed the necessary
first hand knowledge, and the rare capacity of seeing the truth. Few
of the old-time hunters ever tried to write of what they had seen and
done; and of those who made the effort fewer still succeeded. Innate
refinement and the literary faculty--that is, the faculty of writing a
thoroughly interesting book, full of valuable information--may exist in
uneducated people; but if they do not, no amount of experience in the
field can supply their lack. However, we have had some good works on
the chase and habits of big game, such as Caton’s “Deer and Antelope
of America,” Van Dyke’s “Still-Hunter,” Elliott’s “Carolina Sports,”
and Dodge’s “Hunting Grounds of the Great West,” besides the Century
Company’s “Sport with Rod and Gun.” Then there is Catlin’s book, and
the journals of the explorers from Lewis and Clark down; and occasional
volumes on outdoor life, such as Theodore Winthrop’s “Canoe and
Saddle,” and Clarence King’s “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.”
Two or three of the great writers of American literature, notably
Parkman in his “Oregon Trail,” and, with less interest, Irving in his
“Trip on the Prairies,” have written with power and charm of life in
the American wilderness; but no one has arisen to do for the far
Western plainsman and Rocky Mountain trappers quite what Hermann
Melville did for the South Sea whaling folk in “Omoo” and “Moby Dick.”
The best description of these old-time dwellers among the mountains
and on the plains is to be found in a couple of good volumes by the
Englishman Ruxton. However, the backwoodsmen proper, both in their
forest homes and when they first began to venture out on the prairie,
have been portrayed by a master hand. In a succession of wonderfully
drawn characters, ranging from “Aaron Thousandacres” and “Ishmael
Bush,” Fenimore Cooper has preserved for always the likenesses of these
stark pioneer settlers and backwoods hunters; uncouth, narrow, hard,
suspicious, but with all the virile virtues of a young and masterful
race, a race of mighty breeders, mighty fighters, mighty commonwealth
builders. As for Leather-stocking, he is one of the undying men of
story; grand, simple, kindly, pure-minded, staunchly loyal, the type of
the steel-thewed and iron-willed hunter-warrior.
Turning from the men of fiction to the men of real life, it is worth
noting how many of the leaders among our statesmen and soldiers have
sought strength and pleasure in the chase, or in kindred vigorous
pastimes. Of course field sports, or at least the wilder kinds, which
entail the exercise of daring, and the endurance of toil and hardship,
and which lead men afar into the forests and mountains, stand above
athletic exercises; exactly as among the latter, rugged outdoor games,
like football and lacrosse, are much superior to mere gymnastics and
calisthenics.
With a few exceptions, the men among us who have stood foremost in
political leadership, like their fellows who have led our armies, have
been of stalwart frame and sound bodily health. When they sprang from
the frontier folk, as did Lincoln and Andrew Jackson, they usually
hunted much in their youth, if only as an incident in the prolonged
warfare waged by themselves and their kinsmen against the wild forces
of nature. Old Israel Putnam’s famous wolf-killing feat comes strictly
under this head. Doubtless he greatly enjoyed the excitement of the
adventure; but he went into it as a matter of business, not of sport.
The wolf, the last of its kind in his neighborhood, had taken heavy
toll of the flocks of himself and his friends; when they found the deep
cave in which it had made its den it readily beat off the dogs sent in
to assail it; and so Putnam crept in himself, with his torch and his
flint-lock musket, and shot the beast where it lay.
When such men lived in long settled and thickly peopled regions, they
needs had to accommodate themselves to the conditions and put up
with humbler forms of sport. Webster, like his great rival for Whig
leadership, Henry Clay, cared much for horses, dogs, and guns; but
though an outdoor man he had no chance to develop a love for big-game
hunting. He was, however, very fond of the rod and shotgun. Mr. Cabot
Lodge recently handed me a letter written to his grandfather by
Webster, and describing a day’s trout fishing. It may be worth giving
for the sake of the writer, and because of the fine heartiness and zest
in enjoyment which it shows:
SANDWICH, June 4,
Saturday mor’g
6 o’clock
DEAR SIR:
I send you eight or nine trout, which I took yesterday, in that
chief of all brooks, Mashpee. I made a long day of it, and with good
success, for me. John was with me, full of good advice, but did not
fish--nor carry a rod.
I took 26 trouts, all weighing 17 lb. 12 oz.
The largest (you have him) weighed at Crokers 2 ” 4 ”
The 5 largest 3 ” 5 ”
The eight largest 11 ” 8 ”
I got these by following your advice; that is, _by careful &
thorough_ fishing of the difficult places, which others do not fish.
The brook is fished, nearly every day. I entered it, not so high up as
we sometimes do, between 7 & 8 o’clock, & at 12 was hardly more than
half way down to the meeting-house path. You see I did not hurry. The
day did not hold out to fish the whole brook properly. The largest
trout I took at 3 P.M. (you see I am precise) below the meeting-house,
under a bush on the right bank, two or three rods below the large
_beeches_. It is singular, that in the whole day, I did not take
two trouts out of the same hole. I found both ends, or parts of the
Brook about equally productive. Small fish not plenty, in either. So
many hooks get everything which is not hid away in the manner large
trouts take care of themselves. I hooked one, which I suppose to be
larger than any which I took, as he broke my line, by fair pulling,
after I had pulled him out of his den, & was playing him in fair open
water.
Of what I send you, I pray you keep what you wish yourself, send three
to Mr. Ticknor, & three to Dr. Warren; or two of the larger ones,
to each will perhaps be enough--& if there be any left, there is Mr.
Callender & Mr. Blake, & Mr. Davis, either of them not “averse to
fish.” Pray let Mr. Davis _see_ them--especially the large one.--As
he promised to come, & fell back, I desire to excite his regrets. I
hope you will have the large one on your own table.
The day was fine--not another hook in the Brook. John steady as a
judge--and everything else exactly right. I never, on the whole, had so
agreeable a day’s fishing tho’ the result, in pounds or numbers, is not
great;--nor ever expect such another.
Please preserve this letter; but rehearse not these particulars to the
uninitiated.
I think the Limerick _not_ the best hook. Whether it pricks too
soon, or for what other reason, I found or thought I found the fish
more likely to let go his hold, from this, than from the old-fashioned
hook.
YRS.
D. WEBSTER.
H. CABOT, ESQ.
The greatest of Americans, Washington, was very fond of hunting,
both with rifle and fowling-piece, and especially with horse, horn,
and hound. Essentially the representative of all that is best in our
national life, standing high as a general, high as a statesman, and
highest of all as a man, he could never have been what he was had he
not taken delight in feats of hardihood, of daring, and of bodily
prowess. He was strongly drawn to those field sports which demand in
their follower the exercise of the manly virtues--courage, endurance,
physical address. As a young man, clad in the distinctive garb of the
backwoodsman, the fringed and tasseled hunting-shirt, he led the life
of a frontier surveyor; and like his fellow adventurers in wilderness
exploration and Indian campaigning, he was often forced to trust to the
long rifle for keeping his party in food. When at his home, at Mount
Vernon, he hunted from simple delight in the sport.
His manuscript diaries, preserved in the State Department at
Washington, are full of entries concerning his feats in the chase;
almost all of them naturally falling in the years between the ending
of the French war and the opening of the Revolutionary struggle
against the British, or else in the period separating his service as
Commander-in-chief of the Continental armies from his term of office as
President of the Republic. These entries are scattered through others
dealing with his daily duties in overseeing his farm and mill, his
attendance at the Virginia House of Burgesses, his journeys, the drill
of the local militia, and all the various interests of his many-sided
life. Fond though he was of hunting, he was wholly incapable of the
career of inanity led by those who make sport, not a manly pastime,
but the one serious business of their lives.
The entries in the diaries are short, and are couched in the homely
vigorous English, so familiar to the readers of Washington’s journals
and private letters. Sometimes they are brief jottings in reference
to shooting trips; such as: “Rid out with my gun”; “went pheasant
hunting”; “went ducking,” and “went a-gunning up the Creek.” But far
more often they are: “Rid out with my hounds,” “went a fox hunting,”
or “went a hunting.” In their perfect simplicity and good faith they
are strongly characteristic of the man. He enters his blank days
and failures as conscientiously as his red-letter days of success:
recording with equal care on one day, “Fox hunting with Captain
Posey--catch a Fox,” and another, “Went a hunting with Lord Fairfax ...
catched nothing.”
Occasionally he began as early as August and continued until April; and
while he sometimes made but eight or ten hunts in a season, at others
he made as many in a month. Often he hunted from Mt. Vernon, going out
once or twice a week, either alone or with a party of his friends and
neighbors; and again he would meet with these same neighbors at one of
their houses, and devote several days solely to the chase. The country
was still very wild, and now and then game was encountered with which
the fox-hounds proved unable to cope; as witness entries like: “found
both a Bear and a Fox, but got neither”; “went a hunting ... started
a Deer & then a Fox but got neither”; and “Went a hunting and after
trailing a fox a good while the Dogs raized a Deer & ran out of the
Neck with it & did not some of them at least come home till the next
day.” If it was a small animal, however, it was soon accounted for.
“Went a Hunting ... catched a Rakoon but never found a fox.”
The woods were so dense and continuous that it was often impossible
for the riders to keep close to the hounds throughout the run; though
in one or two of the best covers, as the journal records, Washington
“directed paths to be cut for Fox Hunting.” This thickness of the
timber made it difficult to keep the hounds always under control; and
there are frequent allusions to their going off on their own account,
as “Joined some dogs that were self hunting.” Sometimes the hounds got
so far away that it was impossible to tell whether they had killed or
not, the journal remarking “catched nothing that we knew of,” or “found
a fox at the head of the blind Pocoson which we suppose was killed in
an hour but could not find it.”
Another result of this density and continuity of cover was the frequent
recurrence of days of ill success. There are many such entries as:
“Went Fox hunting, but started nothing”; “Went a hunting, but catched
nothing”; “found nothing”; “found a Fox and lost it.” Often failure
followed long and hard runs: “Started a Fox, run him four hours, took
the Hounds off at night”; “found a Fox and run it 6 hours and then
lost”; “Went a hunting above Darrells ... found a fox by two dogs but
lost it upon joining the Pack.” In the season of 1772–73 Washington
hunted eighteen days and killed nine foxes; and though there were
seasons when he was out much more often, this proportion of kills
to runs was if anything above the average. At the beginning of 1768
he met with a series of blank days which might well have daunted a
less patient and persevering hunter. In January and the early part of
February he was out nine times without getting a thing; but this diary
does not contain a word of disappointment or surprise, each successive
piece of ill luck being entered without comment, even when one day he
met some more fortunate friends “who had just catched 2 foxes.” At
last, on February 12th, he himself “catched two foxes”; the six or
eight gentlemen of the neighborhood who made up the field all went home
with him to Mt. Vernon, to dine and pass the night, and in the hunt of
the following day they repeated the feat of a double score. In the next
seven days’ hunting he killed four times.
The runs of course varied greatly in length; on one day he “found a
bitch fox at Piney Branch and killed it in an hour”; on another he
“killed a Dog fox after having him on foot three hours & hard running
an hour and a qr.”; and on yet another he “catched a fox with a bobd
Tail & cut ears after 7 hours chase in which most of the Dogs were
worsted.” Sometimes he caught his fox in thirty-five minutes, and
again he might run it nearly the whole day in vain; the average run
seems to have been from an hour and a half to three hours. Sometimes
the entry records merely the barren fact of the run; at others a few
particulars are given, with homespun, telling directness, as: “Went a
hunting with Jacky Custis and catched a Bitch Fox after three hours
chase--founded it on ye. ck. by I. Soals”; or “went a Fox hunting with
Lund Washington--took the drag of a fox by Isaac Gates & carrd. it
tolerably well to the old Glebe then touched now and then upon a cold
scent till we came into Col. Fairfaxes Neck where we found about half
after three upon the Hills just above Accotinck Creek--after running
till quite Dark took off the dogs and came home.”
The foxes were doubtless mostly of the gray kind, and besides going
to holes they treed readily. In January, 1770, he was out seven days,
killing four foxes; and two of the entries in the journal relate to
foxes which treed; one, on the 10th, being, “I went a hunting in the
Neck and visited the plantn. there found and killed a bitch fox after
treeing it 3 t. chasg. it abt. 3 hrs.,” and the other on the 23d: “Went
a hunting after breakfast & found a Fox at muddy hole & killed her (it
being a bitch) after a chase of better than two hours and after treeing
her twice the last of which times she fell dead out of the Tree after
being therein sevl. minutes apparently.” In April, 1769, he hunted four
days, and on every occasion the fox treed. April 7th, “Dog fox killed,
ran an hour & treed twice.” April 11th, “Went a fox hunting and took
a fox alive after running him to a Tree--brot him home.” April 12th,
“Chased the above fox an hour & 45 minutes when he treed again after
which we lost him.” April 13th, “Killed a dog fox after treeing him in
35 minutes.”
Washington continued his fox hunting until, in the spring of 1775, the
guns of the minutemen in Massachusetts called him to the command of
the Revolutionary soldiery. When the eight weary years of campaigning
were over, he said good-by to the war-worn veterans whom he had led
through defeat and disaster to ultimate triumph, and became once more
a Virginia country gentleman. Then he took up his fox-hunting with as
much zest as ever. The entries in his journal are now rather longer,
and go more into detail than formerly. Thus, on December 12th, 1785,
he writes that after an early breakfast he went on a hunt and found
a fox at half after ten, “being first plagued with the dogs running
hogs,” followed on his drag for some time, then ran him hard for an
hour, when there came a fault; but when four dogs which had been thrown
out rejoined the pack they put the fox up afresh, and after fifty
minutes’ run killed him in an open field, “every Rider & every Dog
being present at the Death.” With his usual alternations between days
like this, and days of ill-luck, he hunted steadily every season until
his term of private life again drew to a close and he was called to the
headship of the nation he had so largely helped to found.
In a certain kind of fox-hunting lore there is much reference to a
Warwickshire squire who, when the Parliamentary and Royalist armies
were forming for the battle at Edgehill, was discovered between the
hostile lines, unmovedly drawing the covers for a fox. Now, this placid
sportsman should by rights have been slain offhand by the first trooper
who reached him, whether Cavalier or Roundhead. He had mistaken means
for ends, he had confounded the healthful play which should fit a man
for needful work with the work itself; and mistakes of this kind are
sometimes criminal. Hardy sports of the field offer the best possible
training for war; but they become contemptible when indulged in while
the nation is at death-grips with her enemies.
It was not in Washington’s strong nature to make such an error.
Nor yet, on the other hand, was he likely to undervalue either the
pleasure, or the real worth of outdoor sports. The qualities of heart,
mind and body, which made him delight in the hunting-field, and which
he there exercised and developed, stood him in good stead in many a
long campaign and on many a stricken field; they helped to build that
stern capacity for leadership in war which he showed alike through the
bitter woe of the winter at Valley Forge, on the night when he ferried
his men across the half-frozen Delaware to the overthrow of the German
mercenaries at Trenton, and in the brilliant feat of arms whereof the
outcome was the decisive victory of Yorktown.
ENDNOTE
[1] I am under many obligations to the writings of Mr. Burroughs
(though there are one or two of his theories from which I should
dissent); and there is a piece of indebtedness in this very volume of
which I have only just become aware. In my chapter on the prong-buck
there is a paragraph which will at once suggest to any lover of
Burroughs some sentences in his essay on “Birds and Poets.” I did
not notice the resemblance until happening to reread the essay after
my own chapter was written, and at the time I had no idea that I was
borrowing from anybody, the more so as I was thinking purely of
Western wilderness life and Western wilderness game, with which I knew
Mr. Burroughs had never been familiar. I have concluded to leave the
paragraph in with this acknowledgment.
APPENDIX
In this volume I have avoided repeating what was contained in either of
my former books, the _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_ and _Ranch
Life and the Hunting Trail_. For many details of life and work in
the cattle country I must refer the reader to these two volumes; and
also for more full accounts of the habits and methods of hunting such
game as deer and antelope. As far as I know, the description in my
_Ranch Life_ of the habits and the chase of the mountain-sheep
is the only moderately complete account thereof that has ever been
published. The five game-heads figured in this volume are copied
exactly from the originals, now in my home; the animals were, of
course, shot by myself.
There have been many changes, both in my old hunting-grounds and my old
hunting-friends, since I first followed the chase in the far Western
country. Where the buffalo and the Indian ranged, along the Little
Missouri, the branded herds of the ranchmen now graze; the scene of my
elk-hunt at Two-Ocean Pass is now part of the National Forest Reserve;
settlers and miners have invaded the ground where I killed bear and
moose; and steamers ply on the lonely waters of Kootenai Lake. Of my
hunting companions some are alive; others--among them my staunch and
valued friend, Will Dow, and crabbed, surly old Hank Griffen--are dead;
while yet others have drifted away, and I know not what has become of
them.
I have made no effort to indicate the best kind of camp kit for
hunting, for the excellent reason that it depends so much upon the kind
of trip taken, and upon the circumstances of the person taking it. The
hunting trip may be made with a pack-train, or with a wagon, or with a
canoe, or on foot; and the hunter may have half a dozen attendants, or
he may go absolutely alone. I have myself made trips under all of these
circumstances. At times I have gone with two or three men, several
tents, and an elaborate apparatus for cooking, cases of canned goods,
and the like. On the other hand, I have made trips on horseback, with
nothing whatsoever beyond what I had on, save my oilskin slicker, a
metal cup, and some hardtack, tea, and salt in the saddle pockets;
and I have gone for a week or two’s journey on foot, carrying on my
shoulders my blanket, a frying-pan, some salt, a little flour, a small
chunk of bacon, and a hatchet. So it is with dress. The clothes should
be stout, of a neutral tint; the hat should be soft, without too large
a brim; the shoes heavy, and the soles studded with small nails, save
when moccasins or rubber-soled shoes are worn; but within these limits
there is room for plenty of variation. Avoid, however, the so-called
deer-stalker’s cap, which is an abomination; its peaked brim giving no
protection whatsoever to the eyes when facing the sun quartering, a
position in which many shots must be taken. In very cold regions, fur
coats, caps, and mittens, and all-wool underclothing are necessary. I
dislike rubber boots when they can possibly be avoided. In hunting in
snow in the winter I use the so-called German socks and felt overshoes
where possible. One winter I had an ermine cap made. It was very good
for peeping over the snowy ridge crests when game was on the other
side; but, except when the entire landscape was snow-covered, it was
an unmitigated nuisance. In winter, webbed snowshoes are used in the
thick woods, and skees in the open country.
There is an endless variety of opinion about rifles, and all that can
be said with certainty is that any good modern rifle will do. It is
the man behind the rifle that counts, after the weapon has reached a
certain stage of perfection. One of my friends invariably uses an old
Government Springfield, a 45-calibre, with an ounce bullet. Another
cares for nothing but the 40–90 Sharps’, a weapon for which I myself
have much partiality. Another uses always the old 45-calibre Sharps’,
and yet another the 45-calibre Remington. Two of the best bear and
elk hunters I know prefer the 32 and 38-calibre Marlin’s with long
cartridges, weapons with which I myself would not undertake to produce
any good results. Yet others prefer pieces of very large calibre.
The amount of it is that each one of these guns possesses some
excellence which the others lack, but which is in most cases atoned
for by some corresponding defect. Simplicity of mechanism is very
important, but so is rapidity of fire; and it is hard to get both of
them developed to the highest degree in the same piece. In the same
way, flatness of trajectory, penetration, range, shock, and accuracy
are all qualities which must be attained; but to get one in perfection
usually means the sacrifice of some of the rest. For instance, other
things being equal, the smallest calibre has the greatest penetration,
but gives the least shock; while a very flat trajectory, if acquired by
heavy charges of powder, means the sacrifice of accuracy. Similarly,
solid and hollow pointed bullets have, respectively, their merits and
demerits. There is no use of dogmatizing about weapons. Some which
prove excellent for particular countries and kinds of hunting are
useless in others.
There seems to be no doubt, judging from the testimony of sportsmen
in South Africa and in India, that very heavy calibre double-barreled
rifles are best for use in the dense jungles and against the
thick-hided game of those regions; but they are of very little value
with us. In 1882, one of the buffalo hunters on the Little Missouri
obtained from some Englishman a double-barreled ten-bore rifle of the
kind used against rhinoceros, buffalo, and elephant in the Old World;
but it proved very inferior to the 40 and 45-calibre Sharps’ buffalo
guns when used under the conditions of American buffalo hunting, the
tremendous shock given by the bullet not compensating for the gun’s
great relative deficiency in range and accuracy, while even the
penetration was inferior at ordinary distances. It is largely also a
matter of individual taste. At one time I possessed a very expensive
double-barreled 500 Express, by one of the crack English makers; but
I never liked the gun, and could not do as well with it as with my
repeater, which cost barely a sixth as much. So one day I handed it
to a Scotch friend, who was manifestly ill at ease with a Winchester
exactly like my own. He took to the double-barrel as naturally as I did
to the repeater, and did excellent work with it. Personally, I have
always preferred the Winchester. I now use a 45–90, with my old buffalo
gun, a 40–90 Sharps’, as spare rifle. Both, of course, have specially
tested barrels, and are stocked and sighted to suit myself.
END OF VOLUME TWO
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
- Clear typos and wrong punctuation were corrected.
- The footnote was moved to the end of the book.
- A redundant “Appendix” heading was removed.
- Some inconsisent hyphenation was retained.
- Text between _underscores_ represent italics.