There are some laws of nature every hunter should know, Like what causes explosions, for instance
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 24, 1942.
“Well, how about lunch?” called Jimmie Frise from the far side of fence.
“Okay, let’s follow around this swamp to the road and out to the car,” I agreed. “There isn’t a rabbit in the township.”
“I think it’s the dogs,” said Jim, climbing the fence to join me. “I honestly don’t think those hounds would know a rabbit if they saw one.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t,” I retorted, “but perhaps you don’t know a hound lives by scent alone, not by sight. It is the scent of a rabbit these hounds know. That is their rich inheritance. That is the core and essence of their being. Scent.”
“Maybe they don’t even know what a rabbit smells like,” suggested Jimmie.
“Those hounds,” I stated a little warmly, “come of the finest blood lines in the beagle world. I’ve got some of the greatest hunting strains known to sportsmen in these hounds of mine.”
“Well, I’ve seen a lot of rabbit tracks this morning,” declared Jim, “and I haven’t heard so much as a yip out of the dogs.”
“Cold scent,” I explained. “Only a low-bred hound would run a track by sight. You can buy any number of second-rate hounds that will run a cold track and follow a rabbit from the day before yesterday until yesterday noon before darkness falls and you have to go into a swamp and pick him up. But these little hounds of mine won’t touch anything but a hot scent. They know what sport is. It’s bred right in them.”
“Well, I like to shoot my gun off once in a while,” sighed Jimmie, hefting his old pump-gun to his other arm.
“It’s the sound of the hounds I go for,” I countered. “The shooting is of so little importance that if it weren’t necessary occasionally to knock a rabbit over ahead of the hounds to keep them interested. I wouldn’t even bother to carry a gun.”
“I’ve heard that line before,” scoffed Jimmie. “The music of the hounds. The great outdoors. The smell of pine. Well, for me, I like to see a rabbit going ahead of the hounds, and I like to smack it down.”
“A poor, defenceless little rabbit,” I cried.
“And what’s more,” said Jim, “I like to eat rabbit. I think there is nothing better than a rabbit pie, unless it is jugged hare.”
“It’s a by-product of the sport,” I cut in. as we went over the fence and got on to the road. “The main part of the sport of hunting is the escape from dull, workaday life into the open air with good fellowship and hearty companions.”
Just a Fluke Shot
“Some of the best sport I’ve ever had,” countered Jim, “has been when I was all alone, on days so miserable, either from cold or wet, that it was sheer agony to stay out. Yet on those days, I have shot as high as six rabbits and a fox besides.”
“You had fox pie, I presume?” I presumed.
“No, but I had the grandest shooting,” related Jim, radiantly. “Hard shots. Fast shots. Tricky shots. I remember I got one swamp hare crossing a road at all of 60 yards. I was standing on a road, like this, with swamp on either side. I heard the hounds. coming. So I stood facing straight into the bush…”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupted. “So you killed a white rabbit.”
“Wait a minute,” demanded Jim. “You’ve got to hear this. I listen to all your hunting stories, about the music of the hounds, and the smell of pine. Now you listen: I was standing like this, facing into the swamp, when, out the corner of my eye, I saw something move, away off to my right. Just a tiny flick of movement. That rabbit cleared the road in two bounds. But in that split fraction of a second, I had my gun up and fired. And I got him. Sixty yards. I paced it.”
“Just a fluke shot,” I informed him. “Normally, you would have missed it.”
“A fluke!” protested Jim. “I tell you I…”
“Now, just a minute,” I interrupted. “You say you were not facing the right direction. You admit your eye caught a faint movement out of the corner. The rabbit leaped the road in two jumps. You swung up and fired, almost without aim. You could not have had time to aim. Therefore, it was a fluke.”
“It was no fluke,” said Jim hotly. “It…”
“Jim,” I stated, “the reason you remember that shot out of all the shots you have fired is that it was so unusual. You like to think it was an expert shot. If it were an expert shot, why don’t you do it oftener? No, sir; it was most unusual. Therefore …”
“Awwww,” said Jim, kicking the snow, “all right. The music of the hounds. The smell of the cedar. The great outdoors…”
And we walked a little stiffly along the narrow road between two cedar swamps, with the hounds running anxiously ahead of us, sniffing along the edges of the swamp. still eager to get the whiff of a cottontail or swamp hare.
“Well, sir,” I said, to break the silence, “we’ve got a good lunch ahead of us. I think eating in the open is one of the major features of a day’s hunting.”
“I admit I’m hungry,” said Jim relenting.
“My wife,” I announced, “cooked up a pot of nice beef stew with carrots and potatoes and celery All we’ve got to do is heat it on the fire.”
“And I brought a can of beans,” said Jim. “I insist on beans. No day in the open is right without a feed of beans.”
“Then there is coffee or tea,” I inquired.
“Coffee,” chose Jimmie. “I don’t drink it in town. But I love the appetizing odor of it in the open. And I’ve got some cold fried bacon, with green onions, radishes, pickles and olives on the side. That cold bacon goes swell between bread.”
“I guess we’ll do all right,” I submitted.
For a Happy Nation
So we got back to the car and we proceeded to get the fire going and the boxes of grub laid forth. Jim has a great idea for starting a fire in the open. He tears newspapers into half sheet sizes, rolls them up into tiny, tight rolls about the size of a walnut, ties them with thread and then soaks them in melted paraffin and lets them dry. He carries few of these in his hunting coat pocket at all times. You lay a couple of these under a few sticks and you’ve got a fire in no time.
In no time, we were relaxed beside a fine leaping fire and on it we set the pot with the cold beef stew to warm, and the coffee pot.
“I’ll warm the beans later,” said Jim, “when the coffee boils.”
“Could anything,” I said, stretching out my legs from the running board of the car, “be more reviving than this, Jim? Even if there is a war, even if we are all supposed to bend every mind and sinew on the war effort, do you see anything wrong with a day like this in the open, only a few miles from home?”
“I suppose there are some who will condemn us,” said Jimmie. “They would prefer that we sit and mope around the house.”
“Getting flabby and morbid-minded,” I added, “fit meat for pessimism and melancholy and disease.”
“I think part of the war effort,” said Jim, “is to keep the whole nation healthy, happy and in high spirits, on the least possible outlay. With the least waste of money, time or material, everybody should be obliged to play a little, for fear of the disheartening effect of plain hard labor.”
“In the army,” I advised, “there is a special department known as the auxiliary services, the duty of which is to entertain and amuse and keep the troops happy. Now that we are all into the war up to our necks, there ought to be some sort of public suggestion about keeping the civilians in good spirits, ready for their work. Not burdened and dispirited by it.”
“Let everybody go rabbit-hunting,” suggested Jim.
“Only a few people care for hunting, Jim,” I reminded him.
“Okay,” said Jim. “What is this rabbit hunting but fancy way of going for a walk in the country? What have we done today, for instance, but walk? Let everybody go for a walk in the country, once a week. There is nothing more invigorating. Nothing more rebuilding. You get the purest air, the finest exercise, and you see simple, homely, refreshing sights. Why not have the government do a broadcast, telling people how to amuse and relax themselves in war-time. And walking in the country should be number one?”
The Hunter’s Luncheon
“For town and village people,” I said, “that’s all right. But how about city people?”
“There are railways and buses running all over,” stated Jim. “There are people who are going to drive their cars anyway, even if it is only aimlessly going some place in the city. Take a train or a bus or your car fifteen miles out, and then get out and walk. Walk for three hours, slowly and happily, up hill, down dale, over back country roads.”
“I’m afraid,” I calculated, “that most city people would be bored stiff by such a suggestion. They are too much fastened by habit. They are like squirrels born in captivity, who never knew anything else but running madly in a revolving cage. If you set them free, they are lost. They start running madly round and round a tree, instead of climbing it.”
“And how the radio has got us hog tied!” added Jim. “They would hate to go for a walk in the country for fear they would miss a news broadcast.”
“I guess we hunters are fortunate,” I said. “Put the beans on, Jim. The coffee is nearly on the boil and the stew’s steaming.”
Jim dropped the can of beans into the middle of the fire.
“Is that the way you heat beans?” I inquired, delighted.
“Leave ’em,” said Jim, “just a minute. They heat in a jiffy.”
“Yes, sirree,” I sighed, leaning back with the steam of the stew and the coffee swirling my way on the crisp winter air. “We hunters are fortunate. The great outdoors. The company of good friends. The companionship of happy, clever little hounds like these. The…”
“The music of hounds,” cut in Jim dreamily. “The smell of cedar and pine and spruce-“
“Well, that’s part of it, Jim,” I insisted. “You can make fun of it if you like. But hunting is very deeply grained into us humans. Only a few thousand years back, and we lived by hunting, and hunting only. If you could not hunt, you did not survive. Therefore, we are the descendants of hunters. All of us. And around that ancient art of hunting, which was our only way of life, we erected a sort of ritual. Merely to get meat was not enough. What distinguishes man from all other animals is that he wants more than meat. He yearns to dignify himself and the meat both. So that is why we should not scoff at the ceremonial and sentimental side of hunting. The music of hounds, scent of pine and spruce and cedar, the so-called rules of sportsmanship – these are the things men, across the ages, have found in addition to meat.”
“I like to hear a gun bang once in a while,” declared Jim stubbornly.
“Aw, the poor little rabbit,” I pleaded. “Think of the life a rabbit leads. In peril always. By night, he must watch for the great silent owl and for the hunting weasel. By day, he must hop timidly about, seeking twigs to eat, and all the while cocking his long ears for the sound of hounds or the whisper of a fox’s feet in the snow. And then, to cap all his terrors, the bang of a gun.”
The Glow Slightly Dimmed
“The first thing you know,” accused Jim, “you’re going to talk yourself out of rabbit hunting.”
“Picture the poor little rabbit,” I continued, leaning back before the lovely wood fire and the simmering stew and the bubbling coffee, “innocently and secretly hopping about in the deep swamp, chewing at willow twigs, and suddenly hearing, back a few yards on his track, the terrible bay of the hound.”
“I thought it was music,” interposed Jim, taking a stick and preparing to hook the bean can out of the fire.
“To us it is music,” I said, “but to the rabbit, it is the voice of doom. Instantly, he leaps and starts to run. He has no other salvation. Away frantically he runs, leaving his warm tracks in the snow. Behind him he hears the terrible yammer and yell of the hounds, now in a pack and running like devils.”
“And then?” said Jim, handing me the can opener.
“And then,” I cried…
And the can of beans, lying in the middle of the red embers, suddenly seemed to leap in the air and explode with a nasty soft bung.
It wasn’t a bang, exactly. It was more of a bung.
And it burst like a shrapnel shell, flinging hot beans in all directions, but especially all over Jimmie and me and the hounds that had been sitting expectantly around the fire with us.
After we had wiped off the beans and sauce and small elements of pork, I got my breath and said to Jimmie:
“Is that the way you heat beans?”
“It’s the way I’ve always heated them in the past,” said Jim, still a little shaken. “They never did that before.”
“Canned goods,” I informed him, “should be heated by setting the can in hot water. You simply cooked that can until it was filled with steam and it naturally burst.”
“If you hadn’t been so long-winded,” retorted Jimmie, “I’d have had the can off the fire long ago.”
“That’s right, blame me;” I said. “Blame me, blame my dogs, blame everything.”
The stew had been slightly upset in the explosion, but most of it was intact. The coffee had not quite half spilled. The fire had been rather scattered about.
We sat down and had a good meal in the wintry setting, none the less.
But the peculiar glow that usually accompanies a hunter’s luncheon was slightly dimmed by the presence of beans stuck on the car doors and fenders, and bean juice marring our hunting coats and a general air of things being scattered about.
And the little hounds would not come closer than about 15 feet and sat out there, shivering, and whining.
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