By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 6, 1945.
“Ah, that looks better,” approved Jimmie Frise.
“Do they still fit?” I inquired, looking down at my hunting togs. “It’s two years since I had them on.”
“They fit you a lot better than battle dress,” assured Jim. “Even as a war correspondent battle dress never really became you. It made you look dumpy. I mean, dumpier.”
“I nearly wore my battle dress today, Jim,” I informed him. “It would make an ideal hunting outfit.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Jimmie. “Just to try it out.”
“Well, while the boys are still wearing theirs at war,” I submitted, “I thought it just little unbecoming of me to wear mine out rabbit shooting. But by next fall, when the hunting season comes round again, I bet there will be tens of thousands of battle dress being worn in the bush in Canada.”
“Not deer hunting,” warned Jim. “A dangerous color to wear deer hunting.”
“Yes. But duck shooting,” I said, “and partridge and pheasant and rabbit shooting. And fishing in the cooler months.”
“I suppose thousands of boys,” mused Jimmie, as he drew his shotgun from its case, “all over Holland and Italy are dreaming of doing what we are doing this minute. Going hunting.”
“Tens of thousands,” I corrected. “On the other hand, maybe tens of thousands of them will never want to see a gun again as long as they live.”
“H’m,” said Jim. “I never thought of that.”
“Tens of thousands of soldiers overseas,” I pointed out, “were men who had never spent a day or a night in the open in their lives, and never wanted to. For one soldier who is an outdoors man, who really gets a kick out of tenting and camping and roughing it, there are perhaps 10 soldiers who never experienced any discomfort before they enlisted. I don’t mean well-to-do men, but just ordinary guys from city, town and village who spent as much of their lives in comfortable houses, comfortable offices, shops and work benches, comfortable motor cars or street cars, as they could possibly secure. They owned raincoats and winter coats, rubbers or goloshes, umbrellas, gloves, mitts and scarves. When it rained or was stormy, they stayed indoors. They hated mud, slush, and wet.”
“That’s the average man, all right,” admitted Jim.
The Army Way
“For five, four, three years now,” I went on, “tens and hundreds of thousands of Canadian men have been living all their lives, their days, hours, minutes, in discomfort, exposure, damp and cold. For the rest of their lives they are going to demand comfort.”
“The wives and sweethearts ought to get wise,” agreed Jimmie, “and start studying cook books and household hints.”
“I have heard soldiers in Italy and Normandy,” I submitted, “that if their wives ever invited them on a picnic again, for the rest of their lives, they’d sock them.”
“Maybe that’s just the reaction to the conditions they are living under now,” said Jim. “After all, once a man has learned to be fairly comfortable in the out-of-doors it’s a freedom he never forgets. The natural man is a lover of the outdoors.”
“If he were,” I retorted, “why has mankind been struggling so long and desperately to get indoors, to build cities, to improve in every tiny detail the comfort and ease of indoor life? I think the only reason some men pretend to love the outdoors, fishing, hunting, and so forth, is just to enjoy, in contrast, all the more the pleasures of indoors.”
“It’s too cold to stand here philosophizing,” stamped Jimmie, who had his pump-gun together and had shoved three shells into the magazine. Then he noisily yanked the fore-end of the gun and pumped the first shell into the chamber.
“Hey,” I said sharply, “is your safety on?”
“Of course it is,” said Jim indignantly. But on glancing down, he saw that the small red button by the trigger guard was showing. The gun was ready to fire.
“Jim,” I lectured, “there is one thing that I have learned from being a war correspondent with the army. And that is, care of arms and safety.”
“Heck,” said Jim. “I’d have noticed it in a minute.”
“Maybe one minute too late,” I counselled. “You might have tossed that gun across your elbow, a fold of canvas from your coat might have caught the trigger and, blooie, I would have been blown in two.”
“Well, for Pete’s sake,” snorted Jim, “I would have thought you would have been less of a squawker after being at the front, instead of worse. You come home from months of war and buzz bombs and all sorts of hazards. And how you start yelling about one measly old shotgun.”
“Another thing, Jim, just before we start,” I asserted. “One of the great things we have learned from this war is field craft and commando training. The secret of good hunting, whether it is men or rabbits you are after, is secrecy, silence and cunning. The way you worked that pump action and clattered the first shell into your gun was enough to scare all the rabbits in this township.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” cried Jim, starting off.
I followed him.
“There is nothing,” I stated, “like a good old-fashioned double-barrelled shotgun. From the point of view of safety and of noise….”
“Ah,” smiled Jimmie, slowing down and turning very friendly. “I forgot. You are still jealous of my pump gun. The last time we were out shooting together, two years back, you were talking exactly the same way. I should remember all your funny little ways….”
“I’m not jealous of any old gas pipe,” I retorted. “I was just pointing out that from the safety point of view a double-barrelled gun has all the merit. Every time you cock it, the safety goes on automatically. It is never ready to shoot, and never a danger to anybody, until you push the safety catch forward with your thumb, at the moment of firing.”
“What’s the difference?” demanded Jim, as we walked over the snowy hill. “My safety catch is a bright red button staring me in the face.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It is away down out of sight under the trigger guard. But in the second place. How about racket? I can load and unload my gun in perfect silence. Every time you load yours, it sounds like a freight elevator door slamming. It scares and warns all the game for half a mile. Especially on a clear crisp day like this.”
“Maybe you’d rather hunt by yourself,” suggested Jim. “Maybe if I go north up this fence and you go south and along the edge of that woodlot…?”
“Now, now, Jimmie,” I protested. “Our first hunt together. And you talk like that!”
“Well, if I can’t do anything right…,” muttered Jim.
A Matter of Safety
“I would think,” I submitted, “that seeing I am fresh home from overseas, you would be interested in some of the things I’ve learned, that’s all.”
“Okay,” agreed Jim. “I see your point. You lead. I’ll follow.”
“No, no, I don’t mean that,” I expostulated.
“You show me,” urged Jim. “You demonstrate safety and care of arms. And also field craft and commando tactics in hunting rabbits.”
“Aw, now, you don’t need to be sarcastic,” I pleaded.
“I’m not,” cried Jim. “I’m quite serious. I should have thought of it at first. Let’s see what new tricks you have learned from the army. I really mean it.”
“Well, the first thing,” I said, a little flattered, “is certainly field craft. Usually, we plow ahead, blundering this way and that across the fields. We cover a lot of ground. But we don’t see many rabbits. Field craft, such as the army teaches, is first to study the ground. We should take our time, examine the lay of the land ahead, figure where the rabbit would most likely be. And then, instead of charging full steam at that spot, we should sneak up on it as quietly as possible, as slowly as need be. Fifty per cent of all rabbits we ever see are already galloping away out of range because they heard or saw us approaching.”
“Granted,” said Jim.
“Safety,” I went further, “is an essential part of that same field craft. If we spend the time and patience in getting close to our quarry, there is no need to carry our guns loaded and ready to fire at an instant’s notice. In England, the true sportsman always breaks his gun, opens it at the breech and carries it so, with the breech open, so that there is not the slightest possibility of it going off.”,
“Hah,” interrupted Jim. “I see your scheme. You are going to suggest now that I don’t carry a shell in the chamber of my pump. You are going to say that if we get close enough to the rabbit, I have plenty of time to pump a shell in.”
“Precisely,” I said.
“And the clatter of me pumping a shell in,” cried Jim, “would scare the rabbit so bad he would put a spurt on so that I never could hit him.”
Jimmy and I were hunting the so-called “jack rabbit” of Ontario, which is nothing more or less than the European or English hare which has been introduced into Ontario and is spreading far and wide. A big, bold, brown hare that averages eight pounds and often goes to 15. And it can travel.
“Don’t let us waste time arguing,” I declared. “Let me demonstrate.”
So I walked in the lead, Jim following. We crossed a couple of barren snowy fields, towards where the tops of brush and small trees indicated a frozen creek bed or at least a gully. In such places the big jacks prefer to crouch in their “forms” in the snow, snug little cavities hollowed out just the size of the tenant, leaving his ears and eyes out to detect the approach of enemies.
As we came to each fence, I paused and opened the breech of my shotgun. This entails pushing over, with the right thumb, the small lever on the top of the breech, which lets the barrels open. You have to be smart, and hold the palm of one hand cupped over the opening barrels, or the ejector will pop the shells out and shoot them several feet away into the snow.
Jim watched this procedure with ill-concealed amusement. But too many men have been injured, often fatally, in the business of climbing a fence with a loaded gun. To show Jim the superiority of a double gun over a pump gun, I was able to climb the fence, holding my opened gun in one hand, and ready on the instant to snap the gun shut and fire, should any game appear.
After climbing the fence I turned and watched Jim.
“Put your gun through first,” I warned.
Jimmie slid his gun carefully through the fence and rested it against the fence post on my side. Then he climbed over.
“Ah,” I said. “You see? Your gun was out of reach for all of 10 seconds. Commando tactics would not agree with that.”
“I’ve got a shell in the chamber, and the safety’s on,” asserted Jim. “I don’t see why I can’t climb a fence with the gun in my hands.”
Very cautiously we approached the gully ahead. As we drew near enough to see the far bank of the gully, I paused and signalled Jim to pause, too. Stepping as carefully as possible so as not to make any sound in the snow, I crept ahead, slowly bringing more and more of the gully into view. I scanned it keenly. It was just an ordinary empty snow gully. There were no rabbits in it.
“Come on,” pleaded Jim. “Let’s get travelling. There are just so many jack rabbits in this township. And if we don’t kick one out pretty soon, it will be getting dark. I believe in covering ground.”
“Let’s Try It My Way”
“Let’s try it my way for once,” I said, with dignity.
“Mmmffff,” muttered Jim.
Assuming the lead again, I proceeded down the gully, crossing several fences. At each fence, I stopped, shoved the lever over, broke the gun at the breech, cupped the shells from being ejected, climbed the fence with open gun in hand, carefully scanned the country from the fence top, then on the far side quietly and carefully closed the breech of the gun.
Then I would turn and watch Jim slide his pump gun through the fence and rest it on the far side while he climbed over.
This became routine. We crossed 10 fields and 11 fences. At each fence, we went through the routine of safety. The farther we went, the slower and more cautiously we moved.
“Let’s get going,” muttered Jim.
“The farther we travel,” I whispered, “the better the law of averages is on our side. We’ll jump a jack any minute now.”
Ahead, the tops of brush and scrub trees indicated another sheltered gully. I signalled Jim to super caution. Stepping slowly and quietly, we drew across the snowy stubble to the depression.
A fence skirted its edge. After a long and commando-like survey, I moved down and crossed the fence. As usual, I broke the gun breech open and threw my leg over. Jim shoved his gun through and started to climb over. As I shut the breech, the little snick it gave was the final urge to a good fat jack who was snuggled in the snow not 30 feet from where I stood.
Up leaped the jack, his long ears laid back, and away he hared.
“Git him,” bellowed Jimmie on the fence.
I threw the gun to my shoulder. But force of habit, force of training, is too much for any man. On throwing the gun to my shoulder, instead of pushing the safety catch forward, I did what I had been doing over and over for the past hour or more.
I shoved the lever of the breech over with my thumb.
The gun fell open. The two shells popped loudly out past my nose and ear and fell in the snow some feet behind me.
By the time Jim had scrambled down off the fence and grabbed his pump gun, the jack was long out of sight up the shaggy gully.
So we stood there, while Jim laughed and leaned against the fence and while I pawed in the snow for my two shells. Shells are rationed.
“It goes to show,” sighed Jimmie, after he had got through his hysterics. “It goes to show that training is great stuff. But not if you are trained in the wrong thing to do.”
“Wait till the boys get home from overseas,” I muttered.
So we walked abreast for the rest of the short afternoon, each of us climbing fences the way we liked, and covering a lot of ground now that dusk was falling. But we saw no more jack rabbits. And at Jim’s suggestion, we stopped in at a farm house to see if the farmer, by any chance, was going anywhere in his car or a sleigh. If so, he could give us a lift down the road to our car, which was a good three miles back. And a cold night falling.
The farmer, as a matter of fact, was in for the night. But when I happened to notice on the wall of the kitchen a sort of plaque with the red patch of the First Division, the purple patch of the Fifth Division and the white and gold shield of the Eighth Army all prettily framed on the plaque, and asked the farmer if he had boys in Italy, and when he found out I was a war correspondent who had probably seen his boys in the Hasty Pees and in the Perth Regiment, why, we had to stay to supper.
And we had roast spareribs, beautifully done, and white turnips, the small sweet ones, smothered with fresh pepper, boiled potatoes and spareribs gravy, apple pie and mild Canadian cheese.
And about 10 p.m. the farmer drove us down to where our car was parked on the sideroad.
All of which goes to show you the kind of things you are likely to meet up with when the war is over and the boys come home.
Editor’s Notes: Battle dress was the standard field uniform of the Canadian army in World War 2.
Greg has a double-barreled gun, while Jim has a pump action gun.
British Commandos were newly created in World War 2 in 1942, and the word became popularized.
Jackrabbits in Ontario are actually introduced European hares.
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