"The kangaroo ran very fast,
I ran faster.
The kangaroo was very fat,
I ate him.
Kangaroo! Kangaroo!"
This, the hunting-song of the Australian Bushman, is the best one I
know. Without disguise or adornment, it embodies the primitive hunting
instinct that is in every one of us, whether we hunt people or animals
or things or ideas.
Jonathan and I do not habitually hunt kangaroos, and our hunting, or at
any rate my share in it, is not as uniformly successful as the Bushman's
seems to have been. For our own uses we should have to amend the song
something as follows:--
"The partridge-bird flew very fast,
I missed him.
The partridge-bird was very fat,
I ate--chicken.
Partridge-bird! Partridge-bird!"
But we do not measure the success of our hunting by the size of our
bag. The chase, the day out of doors, two or three birds at the most out
of the dozen we flush, this is all that we ask. But then, we have a
chicken-yard to fall back upon, which the Bushman had not.
We sit before a blazing open fire, eating a hunter's breakfast--which
means, nearly everything in the pantry. Coffee and toast are all very
well for ordinary purposes, but they are poor things to carry you
through a day's hunting, especially our kind of hunting. For a day's
hunt with us is not an elaborate and well-planned affair. It does not
mean a pre-arranged course over "preserved" territory, with a rendezvous
at noon where the luncheon wagon comes, bringing out vast quantities of
food, and taking home the morning's bag of game. It means a day's hunt
that follows whither the birds lead, in a section of New England that is
considered "hunted out," over ground sometimes familiar, sometimes
wholly new, with no luncheon but a few crackers or a sandwich that has
been stowed away in one of Jonathan's game pockets all the morning, and
perhaps an apple or two, picked up in passing, from some old orchard
now submerged in the woods--a hunt ending only when it is too dark to
shoot, with perhaps a long tramp home again after that. No, coffee and
toast would never do!
As we turn out of the sheltered barnyard through the bars and up the
farm lane, the keen wind flings at us, and our numb fingers recoil from
the metal of our guns and take a careful grip on the wood. At once we
fall to discussing the vital question-- Where will the birds be to-day?
For the partridges, as the New Englander calls our ruffed grouse, are
very fastidious about where they spend their days. Sometimes they are
all in the swamps, sometimes they are among the white birches of the
hillsides, sometimes in the big woods, sometimes on the half-wooded rock
ledges, sometimes among the scrub growth of lately cut timberland, and
sometimes, in very cold weather, on the dry knolls where the cedars
huddle--the warm little brooding cedars that give the birds shelter as a
hen does her chicks.
When I first began to hunt with Jonathan, he knew so much more than I in
these matters that I always accepted his judgment. If he said, "To-day
they will be in the swamps," I responded, "To the swamps let us go." But
after a time I came to have opinions of my own, and then the era of
discussion set in.
"To-day," begins Jonathan judicially, "the wind is north, and the birds
will be on the south slopes close to the swamp bottoms to keep warm."
"Now, Jonathan, you know I don't a bit believe in going by the wind. The
partridges don't mind wind, their feathers shed it. What they care about
is the sun, and to-day the sun is hot,--at least," with a shiver, "it
would be if we had feathers on instead of canvas. _I_ believe we shall
find them in the big woods."