Now I am conscious that all my life I have seen men who owned
shot-guns and setter-dogs, and that these persons were wont at
intervals to disappear from their usual haunts with this
paraphernalia. Without thinking, I felt that they went to slay little
birds, and for them I entertained a good-natured contempt. It came
about in this wise that I acquired familiarity with “mark,” and
“hie-on,” and “No. 6 vis No. 4’s”: by telegram I was invited to make
one of a party in Chicago, bound West on a hunting expedition. It
being one of my periods of unrest, I promptly packed up my Winchester,
boots, saddle, and blankets, wired “All right--next train,” and
crawled into the “Limited” at Forty-second Street.
“West” is to me a generic term for that country in the United States
which lies beyond the high plains, and this will account for my
surprise when I walked into the private car at the St. Paul depot in
Chicago and met my friends contesting the rights of occupancy with
numerous setter-dogs, while all about were shot-gun cases and boxes
labelled “Ammunition.” After greetings I stepped to the station
platform and mingled with the crowd--disgusted, and disposed to
desert.
A genial young soldier who appreciated the curves in my character
followed me out, and explained, in the full flush of his joyous
anticipation, that we were going to North Dakota to shoot ducks and
prairie chicken, and that it would be the jolliest sort of a time;
besides, it was a party of good friends. I hesitated, yielded, and
enlisted for the enterprise. Feeling now that I was this far it would
be good to go on and learn what there was in the form of sport which
charmed so many men whose taste I respected in other matters, and once
embarked I summoned my enthusiasm, and tried to “step high, wide, and
handsome,” as the horsemen say.
[Illustration: A DAKOTA CHICKEN-WAGON]
The happiness of a hunting-party is like that of a wedding, so
important is it that true love shall rule. The _pièce de résistance_
of our car was two old generals, who called each other by an
abbreviation of their first names, and interrupted conversations by
recalling to each other’s memory where some acres of men were slain.
“A little more of the roast beef, please--yes, that was where I was
shot in this side;” and at night, when quiet reigned and we sought
sleep, there would be a waving of the curtains, and a voice, “Oh, say,
Blank, do you remember that time my horse was hit with the
twelve-pounder?” and it banished dreams. There was a phlebotomist from
Pittsburg who had shot all over the earth. He was a thorough
sportsman, with a code of rules as complicated as the common-law, and
he “made up tough” in his canvas shooting-clothes. There was a young
and distinguished officer of the regular army who had hunted men,
which excused him in the paltry undertaking before him; and, finally,
three young men who were adding the accumulated knowledge of Harvard
to their natural endowments. For myself, I did not see how jack-boots,
spurs, and a Winchester would lend themselves to the stubble and
slough of Dakota, but a collection was taken, and by the time we
arrived in Valley City, Dakota, I was armed, if not accoutred, in the
style affected by double-barrel men. All I now needed was an
education, and between the Doctor, who explained, expostulated, and
swore, and a great many “clean misses,” I wore on to the high-school
stage. Like the obliging person who was asked if he played on the
violin, I said to myself, “I don’t know, but I’ll try.”
[Illustration: ON THE EDGE OF A SLOUGH]
In the early morning three teams drove up where our car was
side-tracked, and we embarked in them. The shot-gun man affects
buck-colored canvas clothes, with many pockets, and carries his
cartridges in his shirt fronts, like a Circassian Cossack. He also
takes the shells out of his gun before he climbs into a wagon, or he
immediately becomes an object of derision and dread, or, what’s worse,
suddenly friendless and alone. He also refrains from pointing his gun
at any fellow-sportsman, and if he inadvertently does it, he receives
a fusillade such as an Irish drill-sergeant throws into a recruit when
he does amiss. This day was cool and with a wind blowing, and the poor
dogs leaped in delirious joy when let out from their boxes, in which
they had travelled all the way from Chicago. After running the wire
edge off their nerves they were gotten to range inside a township
site, and we jogged along. The first thing which interested me was to
hear the Doctor indicate to the driver that he did not care to
participate in the driver’s knowledge of hunting, and that in order to
save mental wear he only had to drive the team, and stand fast when we
got out, in order that from the one motionless spot on the prairie sea
we could “mark down” the birds.
The immensity of the wheat-fields in Dakota is astonishing to a
stranger. They begin on the edge of town, and we drive all day and are
never out of them, and on either side they stretch away as far as
one’s eye can travel. The wheat had been cut and “shocked,” which left
a stubble some eight inches high. The farm-houses are far apart, and,
indeed, not often in sight, but as the threshing was in progress, we
saw many groups of men and horses, and the great steam-threshers
blowing clouds of black smoke, and the flying straw as it was belched
from the bowels of the monsters.
[Illustration: A CONFERENCE IN THE MUD]
During the heat of the day the chickens lie in the cover of the grass
at the sides of the fields, or in the rank growth of some slough-hole,
but at early morning and evening they feed in the wheat stubble. As we
ride along, the dogs range out in front, now leaping gracefully along,
now stopping and carrying their noses in the air to detect some scent,
and finally--“There’s a point! Stop, driver!” and we pile out,
breaking our guns and shoving in the cartridges.
“No hurry--no hurry,” says the Doctor; “the dog will stay there a
month.” But, fired with the anticipations, we move briskly up. “You
take the right and I’ll take the left. Don’t fire over the dog,” adds
the portly sportsman, with an admonishing frown. We go more slowly,
and suddenly, with a “whir,” up get two chickens and go sailing off.
Bang! bang! The Doctor bags his and I miss mine. We load and advance,
when up comes the remainder of the covey, and the bewildering plenty
of the flying objects rattles me. The Doctor shoots well, and indeed
prairie-chickens are not difficult, but I am discouraged. As the great
sportsman Mr. Soapy Sponge used to say, “I’m a good shooter, but a bad
hitter.” It was in this distressful time that I remembered the words
of the old hunter who had charge of my early education in .45
calibres, which ran, “Take yer time, sonny, and always see your hind
sight,” and by dint of doing this I soon improved to a satisfactory
extent. The walking over the stubble is good exercise, and it becomes
fascinating to watch the well-trained Llewellyn setters “make game,”
or stand pointing with their tails wagging violently in the nervous
thrill of their excitement, then the shooting, and the marking down of
the birds who escape the fire, that we may go to them for another
“flush.” With care and patience one can bag at last the whole covey.
At noon we met the other wagons in a green swale, and had lunch, and,
seated in a row under the shadow side of a straw stack, we plucked
chickens, while the phlebotomist did the necessary surgery to prepare
them for the cook. At three o’clock the soldier, a couple of
residents, and myself started together for the evening shooting. We
banged away at a thousand-yards range at some teal on a big marsh, but
later gave it up, and confined ourselves to chicken. In the midst of a
covey and a lot of banging I heard the Captain uttering distressful
cries. His gun was leaning on a wheat “shock,” and he was clawing
himself wildly. “Come, help me--I am being eaten alive.” Sure enough
he was, for in Dakota there is a little insect which is like a winged
ant, and they go in swarms, and their bite is sharp and painful. I
attempted his rescue, and was attacked in turn, so that we ended by a
precipitous retreat, leaving the covey of chickens and their
protectors, the ants, on the field.
[Illustration: “DON’T SHOOT!”]
We next pushed a covey of grouse into some standing oats, and were
tempted to go in a short way, but some farmers who were threshing on
the neighboring hill blew the engine whistle and made a “sortie,”
whereat we bolted. At a slough which we were tramping through to kick
up some birds “marked down,” one suddenly got up under our feet and
flew directly over the Captain, who yelled “Don’t shoot!” as he
dropped to the ground. It was a well--considered thing to do, since a
flying bird looks bigger than a man to an excited and enthusiastic
sportsman. We walked along through the stubble until the red sunset no
longer gave sufficient light, and then got into our wagon to do the
fourteen miles to our car and supper. Late at night we reached our
car, and from it could hear “the sound of revelry.” The cook did big
Chicago beefsteaks by the half-dozen, for an all day’s tramp is a
sauce which tells.
After some days at this place we were hauled up to Devil’s Lake, on
the Great Northern road, which locality is without doubt the best for
duck-shooting in Dakota. We were driven some sixteen miles to a spur
of the lake, where we found a settler. There were hundreds of teal in
the water back of his cabin, and as we took position well up the wind
and fired, they got up in clouds, and we had five minutes of shooting
which was gluttony. We gave the “bag” to the old settler, and the
Doctor admonished him to “fry them,” which I have no doubt he did.
It was six miles to a pond said to be the best evening shooting about
there, and we drove over. There we met our other two teams and another
party of sportsmen. The shallow water was long and deeply fringed with
rank marsh grass. Having no wading-boots can make no difference to a
sportsman whose soul is great, so I floundered in and got comfortably
wet. After shooting two or three mud-hens, under the impression that
they were ducks, the Doctor came along, and with a pained expression
he carefully explained what became of people who did not know a teal
from a mud-hen, and said further that he would let it pass this time.
As the sun sank, the flight of ducks began, and from the far corners
of the marsh I saw puffs of smoke and heard the dull slump of a
report.
“Mark--left,” came a voice from where the young Harvard man with the
peach complexion and the cream hair had ensconced himself in the
grass, and, sure enough, a flight was coming towards my lair. I waited
until it was nearly over, when I rose up and missed two fine shots,
while the Harvard man scored. The birds fell well out in the pond, and
he waded out to retrieve them.
As I stood there the soft ooze of the marsh gradually swallowed me,
and when in answer to the warning “mark” of my fellows I squatted down
in the black water to my middle, and only held my gun and cartridges
up, I began to realize that when a teal-duck is coming down wind you
have got to aim somewhere into the space ahead of it, hoping to make a
connection between your load of shot and the bird. This I did, and
after a time got my first birds. The air was now full of flying
birds--mallards, spoon-bills, pintails, red-heads, butter-balls,
gadwalls, widgeon, and canvas-backs--and the shooting was fast and
furious. It was a perfect revelry of slaughter. “Mark--mark.”
Bang--bang. “What’s the matter of that shot?” The sun has set, and no
longer bathes the landscape in its golden light, and yet I sit in the
water and mud and indulge this pleasurable taste for gore, wondering
why it is so ecstatic, or if my companions will not give over shooting
presently. There is little probability of that, however. Only darkness
can end the miseries of the poor little teal coming home to their
marsh, and yet with all my sentimental emotions of sympathy I deplore
a miss. If slough-shooting has a drawback, it is its lack of
action--it is a calm, deliberate shedding of blood, and a wounding of
many birds, who die in the marshes, or become easy prey for the hawks,
and it’s as cold-blooded as sitting in water can make it.
[Illustration: “MARK--LEFT”]
[Illustration: “MARK!”]
We give over at last, and the fortunates change their wet clothes,
while those who have no change sit on the seat knee-deep in dead birds
and shiver while we rattle homeward. Our driver gets himself lost, and
we bring up against a wire fence. Very late at night we struck the
railroad, and counted telegraph poles and travelled east until the
lights of the town twinkled through the gloom. Once in the car, we
find the creature comfort which reconciles one to life, and we vote
the day a red-letter one. The goose-shooting came later than our
visit, but the people tell marvellous tales of their numbers. They
employ special guns in their pursuit, which are No. 4 gauge,
single-barrelled, and very long. They throw buckshot point-blank two
hundred yards, and are, indeed, curious-looking arms. The
chicken-shooting is not laborious, since one rides in a wagon, and a
one-lunged, wooden-legged man is as good as a four-mile athlete at it.
He must know setter-dogs, who are nearly as complicated as women in
their temper and ways; he must have a nose for cover, and he can be
taught to shoot; he can keep statistics if he desires, but his first
few experiences behind the dogs will not tempt him to do that unless
his modesty is highly developed. If he become a shot-gun enthusiast he
will discover a most surprising number of fellows--doctors, lawyers,
butchers, farmers, and Indians not taxed--all willing to go with him
or to be interested in his tales.
[Illustration: TROOPING HOMEWARD IN THE AFTER-GLOW]
The car was to be attached to an express train bound west that night,
to my intense satisfaction, and I crawled into the upper berth to
dream of bad-lands elk, soldiers, cowboys, and only in the haze of
fleeting consciousness could I distinguish a voice--
“Remington, I hope you are not going to fall out of that upper berth
again to-night.”