hunting lore. Hunters are like the Medes and Persians in that they have
laws which alter not; and I suppose if you met ancient Nimrod in the
flesh, his admonition would be, “Keep to leeward and stalk carefully,
breaking no twig, for your game will run away if it winds or hears
you.” That is the first rule I learned for big-game hunting, and it is
founded on fact. But there are two other facts I have observed these
many years, which Nimrod will never mention: the first, that when you
are keenly hunting, it often happens that game breaks away in alarm
before it winds or sees or hears you; and the second, that when you are
not hunting, but peaceably roving the woods, going carelessly and
paying no attention to the wind, you often come very close to wild
game, which stops to watch you curiously after it has seen you and
heard your step or voice and sampled your quality in the air. These two
facts, implying some kind of mental or emotional contact between the
natural man and the natural brute, are probably not accidental or
unrelated, and we are here trying to find the natural law or principle
of which they are the occasional and imperfect expression.
This whole matter of silent communication may appear less strange if we
remember that most wild creatures are all their lives accustomed to
matters which sense-blinded mortals find mysterious or incredible. Why
a caterpillar, which lives but a few hours when all the leaves are
green, should make a cocoon of a single leaf and with a thread of silk
bind that leaf to its stem before he wraps himself up in it, as if he
knew that every leaf must fall; or why a spider, adrift for the first
time on a chip, should immediately send out filaments on the air
currents and, when one of his filaments cleaves to something solid
across the water, pull himself and his raft ashore by it; or why a
young bear, which has never seen a winter, should at the proper time
prepare a den for his long winter sleep,—a thousand such matters, which
are as A B C to natural creatures, are to us as incomprehensible as
hieroglyphics to an Eskimo. That a sensitive animal should know by
feeling (that is, by the reception of a silent message) whether an
approaching animal is in a dangerous or a harmless mood is really no
more remarkable than that he should know, as he surely does, when it is
time for him to migrate or to make ready his winter quarters.
This amazing sensitiveness, resulting, I think, from the reception of a
wordless message, was brought strongly home to me one day as I watched
a flock of black mallards, forty or fifty of them, resting in the
water-grass within a few yards of my hiding-place. A large hawk had
appeared at intervals, circling over the marshes and occasionally over
the pond; but, beyond turning an eye upward when he came too near, the
ducks apparently paid no attention to him. He was their natural enemy;
they had paid toll of their number to satisfy his hunger; but now,
though plainly seen, he was no more regarded or feared than a
dragon-fly buzzing among the reeds. Presently another hawk appeared in
the distance, circling above the meadows. As a wider swing brought him
over the pond a watchful duck uttered a single low quock! On the
instant heads came from under wings; a few ducks shot into the open
water for a look; others sprang aloft without looking, and the whole
flock was away in a twinkling. I think the hawk did not see or suspect
them till they rose in the air, for at the sudden commotion he swooped,
checked himself when he saw that he was too late, and climbed upward
where he could view the whole marsh again.
Now these two hawks were of the same species, and to my eyes they were
acting very much alike. One was hungry, on the lookout for food; the
other was circling for his own amusement after having fed; and though
the eyes of birds are untrustworthy in matters of such fine
distinction, in some way these ducks instantly knew or felt the
difference between the mood of one enemy and that of another. Likewise,
when I have been watching deer in winter, I have seen a doe throw up
her head, cry an alarm and bound away; and her action became
comprehensible a few moments later when a pack of hunting wolves broke
out of the cover. But I have watched deer when a pack of wolves that
were not hunting passed by in plain sight, and beyond an occasional
lift of the head for an alert glance the timid creatures showed no sign
of alarm, or even of uneasiness, in presence of their terrible enemies.
I say confidently that one wolf pack was hunting and the other not
hunting because the northern timber-wolf naturally (that is, in a wild
state and dealing with wild animals) hunts or kills only when he is
hungry. I ran the trails of both packs, and one showed plainly that the
wolves were in search of food; while the other said that the brutes
were roaming the country idly, lazily; and when I ran the back trail of
this second pack I found where they had just killed and eaten. The deer
were not afraid of them because they were for the time quite harmless.
At first I thought that these ducks and deer perceived the mood of
their enemies in a simple way through the senses; that they could infer
from the flight of a hawk or the trot of a wolf whether he were
peaceable or dangerous; and at times this is probably the true
explanation of the matter. The eyes of most birds and beasts, strangely
dull to objects at rest, are instantly attracted to any unusual motion.
If the motion be quiet, steady, rhythmical, they soon lose interest in
it, unless it be accompanied by a display of bright color; but if the
motion be erratic, or if it appear and disappear, as when an
approaching animal hides or creeps, they keep sharp watch until they
know what the motion means or until timidity prompts them to run away.
Thus, chickens or ducks show alarm when a kite slants up into the air;
they lose interest when the kite sits in the wind, and become alert
again when it begins to dive or swoop. It is noticeable, also, that on
a windy day all game-birds and animals are uncommonly wild and
difficult of approach, partly because the constant motion of leaves or
grass upsets them, and partly (in the case of animals) because their
noses are at fault, the air messages being constantly broken up and
confused. But such a “sensible” explanation, suitable as it may be for
times or places, no longer satisfies me, and simply because it does not
explain why on a quiet day game should be unconcerned in presence of
one hawk or wolf, and take to instant flight on the appearance of
another enemy of the same species.
It should be noted here that these “fierce” birds and beasts are no
more savage in killing grouse or deer than the grouse is savage in
eating bugs, or the deer in seeking mushrooms at the proper season;
that they simply seek their natural meat when they are hungry, and that
they are not bloodthirsty or ferocious or wanton killers. Only men, and
dogs trained or spoiled by men, are open to that charge. The birds and
beasts of prey when not hungry (which is a large part of the time,
since they feed but once a day or sometimes at longer intervals) live
as peaceably as one could wish. After feeding they instinctively seek
to be with their own kind and very rarely attempt to molest other
creatures. At such times, when they are resting or playing or roving
the woods, the smaller wood folk pay no more attention to them than to
harmless fish-hawks or porcupines. [4] Repeatedly I have watched
game-birds or animals when their enemies were in sight, and have
wondered at their fearlessness. The interesting question is, how do
they know, as they seemingly do, when the full-fed satisfaction of
their enemy changes to a dangerous mood? Why, for example, are deer
alarmed at the yelp of a she-wolf calling her cubs to the trail, and
why do they feed confidently in the dusk-filled woods, as I have seen
them do, when the air shivers and creeps to the clamor of a wolf pack
baying like unleashed hounds in wild jubilation?
I have no answer to the question, and no explanation except the one
suggested by human experience: that the hunting animal, like the
hunting man, probably sends something of his emotional excitement in a
wave ahead of him, and that some animals are finely sensitive enough to
receive this message and to be vaguely alarmed by it.
The mating of animals, especially the calling of an unseen mate from a
great distance, brings us face to face with the same problem, and
perhaps also the same answer. Sometimes the mating call is addressed to
the outer ear, as in the drumming of a cock-grouse or the whine of a
cow-moose; but frequently a mate appears when, so far as we can hear,
there is no audible cry to call him. How do the butterflies, for
example, know when or where to seek their other halves? That their
meeting is by chance or blunder or accident is a theory which hardly
endures an hour’s observation. In the early spring I take a cocoon from
a certain corner of shrubbery and carry it to my house, and there keep
it till the end softens, when I put it into a box with a screened top
and hang it out under the trees. Presently a gorgeous moth crawls out
of the cocoon; and hardly has she begun to wave her wings to dry them
when the air over the screen is brilliant with dancing wings, the wings
of her would-be mates. And the thing is more puzzling to me because I
have never found a cocoon of that kind in my immediate neighborhood;
nor have I seen a single cecropia this season until the captive called
them.
How they find her so promptly is a problem that I cannot solve. It may
be that the call is wholly physical or sensible, that some fine dust or
aroma is sent forth on the air currents, and the sensitive nerves of
other moths receive and respond to it; but it is still amazing that
wind-blown creatures can follow an invisible air-trail through what
must be to them a constant tempest and whirlwind of air currents, until
they come unerringly to the one desired spot in a limitless universe. I
have shown that pretty sight of dancing wings to many audiences, after
predicting what would happen; and always they saw it with wonder, as if
there were magic in it.
The moth mystery may be dissolved by some such purely physical formula;
but what physical sense will explain the fact that when I turned a
modest hen-pheasant loose in the spring, in a region where my
wide-ranging setter and I never discovered a pheasant, she was
immediately joined by a gloriously colored mate, and soon there was a
hidden nest and then young pheasants to watch? Most birds and beasts
are questing widely in the mating season, and their senses seem to be
more keen at this time, or more concentrated on a single object. On
grounds of what we thoughtlessly call chance, therefore, they would be
more apt to find mates when they are keenly looking for them; but
giving them every possible chance in a wide region where the species is
almost extinct, and then multiplying that chance a hundred times, I
still find it hard to believe that the meeting of two rare animals is
either accidental or the result of ordinary sense-perception. Out of
several examples that occur to me, here are two which especially
challenge the attention:
One early spring a she-fox was caught in her den, some five miles from
the village where I then harbored. She was carefully bagged, carried a
few rods to an old wood road, placed in a wagon and driven over country
highways to the village, where she was confined in a roomy pen in a
man’s dooryard. A few nights later came a snowfall, and in the morning
there were the tracks of a male fox heading straight to the vixen and
making a path round about her pen. She was his mate, presumably, and
when we found his tracks our first feeling of admiration at his
boldness was soon replaced by the puzzling question of how he had found
her so quickly and so surely. To answer that question, if possible, I
followed his back trail.
Now the trail of a fox in the wilderness, where he is sometimes hunted
by wolves or other hungry prowlers, is a bewildering succession of
twistings and crisscrosses; in a settled region, where his natural
enemies are extinct, his trail is bolder, more straightforward, easier
to read; and in either case you can quickly tell by the “signs” whether
your fox is male or female, whether hunting or roaming, or hungry or
satisfied. Also you can tell whether he is just “projeckin’ around,” as
Uncle Remus says, or whether his mind is set on going somewhere. In the
latter event he almost invariably follows runways, or fox roads, which
are as well known to him as are footpaths and stream-crossings to a
country lad. But the trail of this particular fox was different from
any other that I ever followed. That he was a male and was “going
somewhere” was evident enough; but he was not following runways or
paying any attention to them. He left no signs at places where any
ordinary dog-fox would surely have left them, and he was stopping to
listen or to ward himself at uncommonly frequent intervals. So, running
it backward, I read the story of his journey mile after mile, till the
oncoming trail changed to the devious, rambling trot of a questing fox;
and beyond that I had no interest in it.
The place where the fox seemed to have found his bearings, or where he
stopped his rambling to head straight for his mate, was some four miles
distant from the captive in a bee-line. The course he took was entirely
different from that taken by the man who brought the vixen home, thus
excluding the theory that he followed the trail by scent; and the
latter part of his way led through the outskirts of a village, where
the track of a fox had not been seen for many years. From the distant
hills he had come down through sheltering woods at a stealthy trot;
across open pastures on the jump; over a bridge and along a highway,
where he traveled behind a friendly stone wall; then very cautiously
through lanes and garden fringes, where the scent of men and dogs met
him at every turn; turning aside here for a difficulty or there for a
danger, but holding his direction as true as if he followed a compass,
till he came at last with delicate steps to where his mate was silently
calling him. For except on the assumption that she called him, and with
a cry that was soundless, I know not how to explain the fact that he
found her in a place where neither he nor she had ever been before.
It is possible, you may reason, that this was not his first visit; that
unknown to us, venturing among his human and canine enemies, he had by
a lucky chance stumbled upon his mate on an evening when the bare
ground did not betray his secret to our eyes; and that for his next
visit he had cunningly laid out a different trail through manifold
dangers. It was the latter trail, made without doubt or question of
what lay at the end of it, which I had followed in the telltale snow.
That is a good armchair argument, but a very doubtful explanation of
the fox action, since it calls for more reasoning power than we
commonly find in a brute. Remember that this male fox was far away on
his own affairs when his mate was captured, and he had no means of
knowing where she had gone: he simply missed her from her accustomed
haunts, and sought till he found her. Remember also that a male fox is
never allowed to come near his mate’s den; that when she is heavy with
young, as this vixen was when caught, he may join her of an evening and
hunt for her, or bring her food that he has killed, but always, I
think, at a distance from the place where she intends to bring forth
her cubs. That the male, after missing his mate and yapping for her in
vain through the woods, should at last seek her at the forbidden den,
and there find the scent of men and conclude that they had taken her
away; that he should follow the scent of a wagon-wheel over five miles
of country roads, or else explore all the neighboring villages till he
found what he sought; that he should then lay out a different trail,
more secret and more reasonably safe, for his second visit,—all this is
to me more ingenious, more unnatural and more incredible than that his
mate should silently call him, as his mother had probably many times
called him from the den when he was a cub, and that he should feel and
answer her summons.
Such reasoning is purely speculative, but there are certain facts which
we must keep in mind if we are to explain the matter. The first, a
general fact which is open to observation, is that it is fox nature at
certain seasons to come to a captive; for what reason or with what
self-forgetful motive it would be hard to say. I have known mother
foxes and mother wolves to come where their cubs were imprisoned by
men. I have heard a straight record of one male wolf that appeared at a
ranch the second night after his wounded mate was captured by the
ranchman. And I have seen a male fox come to the rescue of a female
when she was driven by dogs and too heavy with young to make a long
run, and wait beside her trail till the dogs appeared, and then lead
them off after him while she made her escape. The second fact, which
may imply some power of silent communication, is that when snow fell
about the pen of this captive fox, a few nights after she was taken,
there were the tracks to show that her mate already knew where she was.
That he found and came to her in the midst of his enemies may be quite
as significant as how he found her, by way of giving a new direction or
interest to our skin-and-bones study of natural history.
In this first example the fox was perhaps moved by the mating impulse,
which sharpened his wit and encouraged his will; but at times a wild
creature may seek and find his mate when no such “call of the blood”
urges him, when he comes with his life in his hand in response to some
finer or nobler motive, something perhaps akin to loyalty, which is the
sum of all virtues. Witness the following:
A friend of mine was hunting one October day when his shot wing-tipped
a quail, apparently the old female of the flock, which his dog caught
and brought to him almost uninjured. What to do was the next question.
It is easy, because thoughtless, to cut down a bird in swift flight;
but when the little thing nestles down in your hand or tries to hide
under your fingers; when you can feel its rapid heart-beat, and its
eyes are big and wondrous bright,—well, then some hunters bite the
head, and some wring the neck, and some would for the moment as lief be
shot as to do either. So to avoid the difficulty my friend put the
quail carefully away in a pocket of his hunting-coat, and brought her
home with some vague idea of taming her, and some dream of trapping a
mate in the spring and perhaps raising some little bob-whites of his
own. At night he put the captive into a coop just inside the barn
window, which was open wide enough to admit air but not a prowling cat;
for he was already beginning to learn that a quail is a most lovable
little pet, and he was bound that she should not again be hurt or
frightened.
Before sunrise next morning he heard low, eager whistlings in the yard;
and there was another quail, a male bob-white, where never one was seen
before nor since. He was perched warily on the window-sill of the barn,
looking in at his captive mate, telling her in the softest of quail
tones (for there were enemies all about) that he had found her and was
glad; while from within the barn came a soft piping and gurgling which
seemed to speak welcome and reassurance. The opening of a door
frightened him; he buzzed away to the orchard, and presently from an
apple-tree came the exquisite quoi-lee! quoi-lee! the assembly-call of
the bob-white family.
The first quail had been caught miles away from the man’s house; there
were no other birds of her own kind within hearing distance, so far as
my friend and his dog ever discovered, and it was not the mating-time,
when quail are questing widely. By a process of elimination, therefore,
one reaches the conclusion that the male bird was, in all probability,
the father of the flock over which the captive presided; that he had
helped to raise the young birds, as quail commonly do; that he had
stood by his family all summer in loyal bob-white fashion, and that he
went out to seek his vanished mate when she failed to answer his
calling.
All that seems clear enough, and in perfect accord with quail habits;
but when you ask, “How did he find her?” there is no answer except the
meaningless word “chance” or a frank admission of our original premise:
that wild birds and beasts all exercise a measure of that mysterious
telepathic power which reappears now and then in some sensitive man or
woman. It may be for the wood folk that “There is no speech nor
language: their voice is not heard,” as the Psalmist wrote of the
communing day and night; but they certainly communicate in some way,
and the longer one studies them the more does it appear that part of
their “talk” is of a finer character than that which our ears can hear.
HOW TO KNOW THE WOOD FOLK
VII
ON GETTING ACQUAINTED
To know birds and beasts may be a greater or a lesser triumph than to
know ornithology or zoölogy. That is a question of taste or
temperament, the only certainty being that the two classes of subjects
are altogether different. The latter deals with external matters, with
form, classification, generalities. Its materials are books, specimens,
museums, one as dead or desiccate as another; and because it is limited
and exact, you can memorize its outlines in a few days, or become in a
few years an authority in the science.
The former subject, of birds and beasts, deals with an endless and
fascinating mystery. Its materials are living and joyous individuals,
among whom are no classes or species, concerning whom there can be no
“authority”; and when, after a lifetime of study, you have made a small
beginning of knowledge, you find that, like All Gaul of misty memory,
it may be divided into three parts.
One part is observation, which is a simple matter of the eye. Another
is sympathy, which belongs to the mind or heart. In dealing with wild
creatures, as with civilized folk, one learns to appreciate De
Quincey’s rule of criticism, “Not to sympathize is not to understand.”
A third part, more rare and variable, may come from that penetrating
but indescribable quality which we call a gift. A few men have it; the
animals instinctively trust them, and they understand animals without
knowing how they understand. The rest, lacking it, must struggle
against a handicap to learn, substituting the slow wisdom of experience
for the quick insight of the gift. It is for the latter chiefly that I
write these wood notes.
One word more by way of preface, to express the conviction that you can
learn nothing worth knowing about birds or beasts so long as you seek
them with a gun in your hand. On that road you shall find only common
dust, and at the end of it a valley of dry bones. Whether you carry the
gun frankly for sport, or delude yourself with the notion that you can
add to natural history by collecting more skins or skulls, you have
unconsciously placed destruction above fulfilment, stark death above
the beautiful mystery of life. So must you estrange both the animal and
yourself, making it impossible for you to meet on any common ground of
understanding. And now for our lessons:
If I were to formulate rules for a subject which can never be learned
by the book, I might say that there are three things you should know,
and another you must do, if you expect to gain any intimate knowledge
of the wood folk, or even to approach them near enough for fair and
leisurely observation.
The first thing to know is that natural creatures, though instinctively
shy or timid, are not wildly governed by fears and terrors, as we have
been misinformed from our youth up. The “reign of terror” is another of
those pet scientific delusions, like the “struggle for existence,” for
which there is no basis in nature. Fear in any true sense of the word
is an exclusively human possession, or affliction; it is a physical and
moral poison, as artificial as sin, which the animal escapes by virtue
of being natural. It is doubtful, indeed, whether anything remotely
resembling our fear, a state of mind arising from a highly developed
imagination which enables us to picture events before they happen, is
ever born into a hairy skin or hatched out of an egg. The natural
timidity of all wild creatures is a protective and wholesome instinct,
radically different from the fear which makes cowards of men who have
learned to trace causes and to anticipate consequences.