Читать книгу Jack Miner and the Birds, and Some Things I Know about Nature онлайн

16 страница из 53

Well do I remember shooting my first deer, and how I burglarized the top shelf of the pantry to get one of my mother’s old pewter spoons. This spoon had a great handle to its history, being handed down from somewhere this side of Noah. I pounded it, to remove the ancient look, melted it and ran seven small bullets, while my unsuspicious mother looked on at the operation of melting and moulding. By daylight the snow had ceased falling, and I put the seven balls in the “thumb-hand” barrel of the old shotgun and started on my first deer hunt. By noon I was back with a fine deer, and if I had had a melted spoon in the other barrel I surely would have killed two.

ssss1

As quail and grouse were so very plentiful and good warm clothes were scarce, the second fall we were here my brother and I started to hunt for the market. This caused us to study the nature of game. I soon found myself practising the call of Bob White. I would call early in the morning, when the country was silent, and listen to the echo come back from the woods, until I could call Bob right up to me from as far as he could hear the faintest sound of my imitative note. Yes, many a time during the nesting season have I called five or six male birds up near where I was sitting, then see them have a scrap. I tell you they are gamey little fellows. And what fun it was to be back in the field, hid in a bunch of goldenrod, with my old slouch hat tucked in my pants pocket, allowing my long hair and freckles to blend with the surroundings, and watch these plump little beauties come together in battle, sometimes striking each other so hard they would go fully six feet in the air and come down facing each other. I have had them so close I could almost feel the breath of their wings; and possibly three or four rods away was another one, picking the earth sidewise, apparently challenging the fourth who was sitting on a stump as if he were refereeing.