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PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

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PLANTATION GAME
TRAILS

BY
ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGE

Author of “ Old Plantation Days,”’
“Tom and I,” “‘ Under the Pines,” ete.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

i y 0G: ie .

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Che Kiiverside Press Cambridge
1921

COPYRIGHT, I921, BY ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGE

ALL RIGHTS: RESERVED

3S O

FeB i9 192}

AM ALENRADA

TO MY THREE SONS
TRUE SPORTSMEN OF THE COMING GENERATION
THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED

PREFACE

To have been able, during a matter of nearly
thirty years, to follow the game trails of the great
plantation region of the delta of the Santee—
this has been my privilege. I have seen my
homeland undergo great transformations during
those years: the plantations have for the most
part become waste tracts; many of the old fam-
ilies have died out; Nature has recaptured in her
inimitable way what had been, for a few years,
wrested from her. The game has held its own
on these desolate plantations; and that is saying
much in the modern day.

In these chapters I have tried to give a faithful
account of the observations I have made as a
hunter and as a lover of Nature. I have tried to
present the wildwoods of the South as I have
known them since boyhood. And I have at-
tempted to preserve the memory of certain char-
acters which have appeared to me worthy of a
place in the picturesque gallery of American
woodsmen.

viii PREFACE

For the dual attitude of hunter and naturalist
I offer no apology — save to confess that as the
_ years advance the latter is acquiring a whole-
some ascendancy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For courteous permission to reprint certain
chapters of this book, the author makes grateful
acknowledgment to the editors of Country Life,
Field and Stream, and Forest and Stream.

CONTENTS

. My FRIEnpD THE DEER

. HUNTING IN A FRESHET

. STALKING WILD TuRKEYS

. THe Grim RaIpers oF THE DELTA
. THe Ways or THE Woop Duck

. Witp Lire 1n A Forest Fire

. CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW

. My HuntermMan

. Our GoBBLER

. THe DEER AND THE HounpD

. A Unique Quart Hunt

. Witp Fow. or THe DELTA

. My Winter Woops

. ALLIGATORS AGAIN

. THat Curistmas Buck

. THE SouUTHERN Fox SQUIRREL

. Toe Orter: PLayspoy or NATURE
. Witp Ducks Anp Ricr-FreLps

. Tae Gray Stac oF BowMan’s Bank
. Necro WoopsMEN I HAVE KNOWN
. A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS

165
178
194
216
232
238
250
264
Q75
290

mi 4 AL!
ive Dh
‘i ae

j

(tho
are

vy

pay

LEN By ri
7 tie Ae

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE PLANTATION HovusE

A Fuasu-Licut SHot
Photograph by George Shiras, 3d.

Tue FRESHET IN THE DELTA

Tuer SHORELINE WITH THE FRESHET RISING
In THE CAROLINA TURKEY Woops

A Woop Duck Haunt

A DouBLe SHoT on SpiKE-Horn Bucks

A GRoUP PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASH-LIGHT
Photograph by George Shiras, 3d.

YELLOW PINE ForEST NEAR HAMPTON
In My WintER Woops
ALLIGATOR COUNTRY

LAGOON NEAR THE HovusE

Frontispiece

8

,

PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

CHAPTER I
MY FRIEND THE DEER

It was the middle of May in the woods of South
Carolina, and the time of day was noon. I was
riding along leisurely, trying to drink in a por-
tion of the marvelous beauty of the scene which
stretched away from me on all sides; a scene in
which bright birds flashed, wild flowers gleamed
and glowed, and great trees seemed to shiver and
expand in the ecstasy of their springtime joy.
Suddenly my attention was arrested by a strange
and beautiful sight. Far through a forest vista
a doe came bounding along gracefully. She
showed neither the speed nor the tense, wild
energy of a deer in flight; therefore, I judged
that she was not being followed. And as it is
very unusual to see a deer traveling about at
midday, there must be, I reasoned, some unusual
cause for the doe’s movements. Slipping from
my horse I watched her approach. She was
bearing to my left; and while still a hundred

Q PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

yards away she turned abruptly to the right,
leaped, with a great show of her snowy tail, a
hedgelike growth of gallberries, and then came
to a stop in a stretch of breast-high broom-grass.
As her running had not been that of a fugitive,
so her pause was not that of a listener and a
watcher. Instead of standing with head high and
ears forward the doe bent her beautiful head,
and from the slight movements of her arched neck
I knew that she was nuzzling and licking some-
thing that could be nothing but a fawn. I tied
my horse and quietly drew near, but, alas, gen-
erations of hunting have made deer incapable of
distinguishing between a friend and an enemy.
To a mature wild deer the scent of a man is the
most dreadful of all warnings that death is near.

As I came up the doe winded me, tossed up
her beautiful head, leaped over the high grass,
paused to look back, then bounded off again. If
there is such a thing as reluctant speed that doe
showed it. She went and went fast, but clearly
she didn’t want to go. Indeed, when three
hundred yards off she came to a stop, and after
that she did ‘not increase the distance between
us. As I approached the fawn the little creature
stood up, swayed on its delicate legs, and took

MY FRIEND THE DEER 3

one or two uncertain steps away from me. But
though startled, it was not frightened. It let me
come up to it, stroke it, and prove my friendli-
ness. Indeed, after I had turned away from it
the delicate woodland sprite bleated faintly and
followed me for a step or two. Far behind, among
the glimmering aisles between the pines, the doe
began to approach her baby as I receded from it.
When I had mounted my horse and ridden some
distance away, I caught a glimpse of the mother
and baby together again.

This scene of the woodland illustrates a typical
incident in what I shall call the “inside life” of
our Virginia deer. American hunters are quite
familiar with these beautiful creatures, as ob-
jects of sport; but few indeed, even of those
who know the deer well in a general sense, have
an understanding of the real nature and every-
day habits of these most interesting creatures.
Whatever I know of deer has been gained from
many years of experience in the woods; and per-
haps a statement of this experience will be of
interest to those who care for details of an in-
timate nature of the lives of the woodland wilder-
nesses. |

The little scene described shows us much about

4 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

the deer. After the birth of the fawn the mother
will leave it in a sheltered, sunny spot and will
go away to feed. This is a daily habit. Some-
times the doe will go several miles, and will re-
turn twice or three times a day to nurse her fawn,
the frequency of her return depending on the age
of the fawn. When a fawn has thus been placed
by its mother it will not leave the spot. I once
knew this habit to be pathetically illustrated.
A negro worker in the great turpentine woods had
brought me a fawn, and I was raising it on a
bottle. It slept in the house at night; but early
in the morning it would go in its wary, delicate
fashion to a patch of oats near the house and lie
down. There I always found it for its midday
bottle; and there it would remain until I brought
it in at dusk. Except when disturbed — by
hunters, dogs, or swarms of flies — in all regions
where deer are hunted they very seldom move
about in the daylight; but a nursing doe’s mother
instinct overcomes her timidity, and she travels
from place to place for her food. When the fawn
is very young she never leaves it at night. This
mother-and-child relationship lasts until the
fawn is at least six months old. I have seen a
fawn — possibly a “late” one — following its

MY FRIEND THE DEER 5

mother in December. The doe was started first;
she ran off a short distance and waited for the
fawn to overtake her, when both of them bounded
off.

As deer secrete themselves by day it will be
interesting to follow them into some of these se-
cluded sanctuaries in order to discover what kind
of cover they like best, and what precautions
they use to secure themselves from danger. Deer
retire to their fastnesses in the early morning; a
man never sees a deer in ideal surroundings unless
he sees it coming forth to feed at twilight, or re-
turning in the misty dusk of morning. Always an
unsubstantial creature the deer is peculiarly so
when seen in shadowy forests. In approaching
the place where he is going to lie down for the
day a deer — especially a wise old stag — will
try to cross, and even to follow, water. This al-
ways is an effective barrier to trackers. I was
once walking in a swamp, following a trailing
hound, when ahead of me I detected a slight
movement. Against the gnarled roots of a tree
standing in shallow water a deer was lying,
literally curled up. It did not leave its refuge
until I was almost on it.

Favorite bedding-places for deer are hum-

6 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

mocks or tiny islands in sluggish water-courses.
Often, too, where the growth is dense on the
edges of woodland pools, a deer will walk across
the water and lie down on the other side. Then
he will need to be alert for danger from one side
only; and that the side which his tracks have not
traversed. In sections where there are growths
of laurel, tamarack, scrub cedars, and other
evergreens, these dense coverts will be haunts
of deer. Much, however, depends on the season
of the year and on the state of the weather. In
the winter, on clear days, deer seek for southern
exposures, sunny and wind-sheltered. I once
started a drove of seven deer lying in a tiny am-
phitheater made by fallen logs. The dense top of
a fallen tree is a favorite place with deer.

In violent storms, by night or day, deer will
speedily make for open stretches of woods, where
they will not be in danger of falling limbs and
trees.. After such a tornado it is no uncommon
thing to find many cattle killed; but Ihave known
of but one deer to be killed in this way. If the
weather is rainy deer will move about in the day
in search of shelter. An old hunter told me that
if a snowstorm sets in during the day, he always
looks for deer under the densest hemlock trees on

MY FRIEND THE DEER 7

the mountain. One day I was going home through
a heavy rain, when I was astonished to see a
great buck cross the road ahead of me and go
into a very heavy myrtle copse beside the road.
Being unpursued and showing no signs of fear
he was evidently merely getting in out of the wet.
There was something positively bored about his
expression; it resembled that of a chicken, which,
being caught in a far corner of the yard in a
shower, runs disgustedly for shelter.

During those periods in summer when gauze-
winged flies are a torment, deer resort to the
densest thickets, and at such times they do little
lying down. I remember coming, on an August
day, upon three deer — they were a family —
on the edge of a heavy copse. Being unobserved
and unsuspected, I saw the creatures behave in
what must have been a most natural manner.
There was continuous petulant stamping, much
flicking up and down of the ends of tails — pre-
cisely after the manner of goats — and an im-
patient tossing up and down of graceful heads.
The buck, which carried fine antlers, once lowered
his stately head and made a sudden tumultuous
rush through the dense bushes. Probably he did
this to clear himself from the flies and in order to

8 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

ease the itching which was making his velvety
horns tingle. As soon as I showed myself two tall
white tails and one tail-let rocked off in stand-
ard fashion into the thicket. 2

As deer are seldom seen by day except when
they are disturbed, the time to observe them is
at night; but, naturally, they are even less fre-
quently seen then. In regions where deer are
plentiful their shadowy forms are seen crossing
old roads or clearings at dawn and at dusk. No
one can have an accurate idea of the true life of
the wild deer who has not observed the creature
browsing by moonlight. Now that most of the
animal enemies of deer have been practically
exterminated in the white-tail’s habitat — such
enemies as wolves and catamounts — deer fear
the dark less than the light. Their movements are
bolder and freer; by daylight a deer is seldom
aught but a skulker, a fugitive. In the Southern
pine-woods I have watched deer at night, and
they seemed to me stranger, wilder, more dream-
like creatures than any I had observed by day-
light.

Near our plantation house there was the ruin
of an old negro church. This stood in a cir-
cular clearing of about an acre in extent, sur-

A Flash-Light
Shot

MY FRIEND THE DEER 9

rounded on three sides by scrub pines, and on the
fourth by low myrtle and gallberry bushes. For
some reason the clearing had remained inviolate
of growths of any kind. In the center was the
ruined church, which was ringed by an arena of
pure white sand. I discovered that deer loved to
come to this place at night, partly because it lay
between their daytime haunts and their favorite
night feeding-grounds, and partly because deer
seem to love open sandy places — “‘yards”’
they are sometimes called. I buried some rock
salt in the sand by the old church, knowing that
the deer would find it and come to it regularly.
Then in the forks of a pine I built a suitable plat-
form, about sixteen feet up. I should have hidden
among the timbers of the old church but for the
fact that a deer “travels by his nose.’”’ Both by
day and by night a deer’s eyesight is compara-
tively poor; it is not to be compared to the clair-
voyant seeing power of a wild turkey. But a
deer can generally wind and locate a man, if he
is not well off the ground. During the still nights
of good moonlight in November and December
I spent many a solitary hour on this platform,
waiting and watching for deer, and being richly
rewarded.

10 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

In order that some time might elapse between
my coming on the ground and the arrival of the
deer, I always ascended the platform at sunset.
I shall try to describe exactly what I saw and
heard from this platform on a typical night.

Though near a plantation road it was at least
three miles from any habitation. There were
therefore absent many of those sights and
sounds which characterize the Southern planta-
‘ tion twilight. Sometimes I could hear the melo-
dious whooping of a negro, but usually the only
sounds were from the wild denizens of the woods.
In the dim distance an owl would hoot; perhaps
a fox would bark; and once I heard the cry of
a wildcat, utterly savage. Then the risen moon
would begin to steep the woods in light, and with
the coming of the moonlight there seemed to be a
cessation of the wild cries; there was movement
in the forest, the mysterious movement of wild
life that hunts by night or is hunted. Long be-
fore I could see anything, I could hear furtive
steps, glimpse a swaying bush, and hear twigs

crack. Animals of many kinds were prowling; the.

half-wild hogs and cattle that infest:the Southern
pine woods; the crafty raccoons, pacing along
well-worn paths; the silent foxes, the very spirit

MY FRIEND THE DEER 11

of craftiness; the hushed-winged birds that love
darkness better than light. Last, after I had been
on the platform nearly three hours, came the
deer.

No other creature of the forest seems more a
shape of the moonlight than does the deer. It is
apparently possible for the largest buck to move
through the dense bushes and over beds of dry
twigs with no perceptible sound. A movement
rather than a sound off to my left had attracted
my attention; another glance showed me the
glint of horns. A full-grown stag was in the act
of jumping a pile of fallen logs. He literally
floated over the obstruction, ghostlike, uncanny.
I noticed that he jumped with his tail down — a
thing he would not do if he were startled. Be-
hind him were two does. They negotiated the
barrier still more lithely than the buck had done.
Even in the deceptive moonlight and at the dis-
tance they were away from me — fifty yards —
I could easily discern a difference in the aspect
distinguishing the buck from the does; the stag
was bold, proud, impatiently alert; the hinds
were hardly less alert, but were meek followers
of their master. All three of them were feeding;
but at no one time did all of them have their

12 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

heads down at the same moment. One always
seemed to be on watch, and this one was usually
the buck. For a few seconds at a time his proud
head would be bowed among the bushes; then it
would be lifted with a jerk, and for minutes he
would stand champing restlessly his mouthful of
leaves, grass, and tender twigs. Often he would
hold his head at peculiar angles — oftenest
thrust forward — as if drinking in all the scents
of the dewy night woods. After a while, moving
in silence and in concert, the shadowy creatures
came up on the space of white sand which
stretched away in front of me. Now they
paused, spectral in the moonlight, now moved
about with indescribably lithe grace, never losing,
even amid the “secure delight” of such a time
and place, their air of superb readiness, of elfin
caution, suppressed but instantly available. The
steps they took seemed to me extraordinarily
long; and it was difficult to keep one of the crea-
tures in sight all the while. They would appear
and reappear; and their color and the distinctness
of their outlines depended on the angle at which
they were seen. Broadside, they looked almost
black; head-on, they were hardly visible. At no
time could I distinguish their legs. When they

MY FRIEND THE DEER | 13

moved off into the pine thicket, whither I knew
they had gone to eat mushrooms, they vanished
without sound, apparently without exerted mo-
tion, and I was left alone in the moonlight.

In addition to his fondness for mushrooms the
deer is also a great devourer of hazelnuts, chest-
nuts, acorns of many kinds, — especially those
of the white oak and of the live-oak — beechnuts,
pine mast, and the like. Occasionally he will eat
apples; and I have known peach-trees to be
wholly stripped of their half-ripe fruit by deer.
Of domestic crops the deer will eat anything
green and succulent; he delights in wheat, rye,
buckwheat, oats, alfalfa, rice, sweet potato vines,
young corn, timothy, turnips, beans, and peanut-
vines. Deer have been known to pull up peanut-
vines in order to get at the nuts, which they
greedily relish.

In order to obtain these green crops of the
field and garden deer resort to some very crafty
devices. A great hunting club in the South had
planted several acres of peas to attract quail; the
deer found the peas in the early summer, and
every night a herd of six or seven jumped the six-
foot fence. The fence was raised to eight feet,
and this height the marauders did not negotiate.

14. PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

But possibly it was because they did not have
to. Whenever I think of the jumping power of
deer I am reminded of a shrewd remark once
made to me by an old woodsman: “A deer can
jump as far or as high as he has to.” In this case
the deer, to enter the field, got down in an old
ditch, crawled under the wire fence, and found
themselves in clover. And so baffling was the
manner of the deer’s entrance that the manager
of the preserve could not account for it until he
had sat up in an oak on a moonlight night and
had seen the affair come off.

This striking instance of crafty intelligence
may well serve to introduce the question of the
deer’s mental capacity. At the outset it can as-
suredly be said that the deer is so intelligent
that it is impossible to classify his probable ac-
tions. As animals increase in intelligence the
chances of their behaving in a regular, unvarying
manner are decidedly decreased. It therefore be-
comes impossible for us to say that a deer will do
this or will not do that under certain circum-

stances, for he has both a certain sense of judg- —

ment and at least a rudimentary power of deci-
sion. This intelligence is best illustrated by exam-
ples of the deer’s cleverness.

MY FRIEND THE DEER 15

A buck in cover, if he hears what he takes to
be danger approaching, will carefully weigh his
chances; though it is his instinct to run up the
wind, he will dash down it if in such a course
appears to be his way to safety. If from afar he
hears the noise and decides that it means danger,
he will probably slip craftily out; if the danger
is near before he is aware of its approach, he may
steal out silently, he may bound out with as-
tonishing vigor and speed, or he may lie where he
is, even though the peril be upon him.

After it has passed it is like him to leap up and
sail off down the back track of his enemy. It all
depends on what seems to him the wisest thing to
do under the particular circumstances. A buck
will send does or a young buck out of a thicket
ahead of him or he may take the lead himself.

One day in the woods I walked within twenty
paces of a buck which was lying down on the
sand under some leafless scrub oaks. I probably
should never have seen him but for the fact that,
as he moved his head craftily, I saw the rock-
ing antlers. He had his lower jaw flat on the
ground, much like a crouching rabbit. He was
planning to have me pass him by, but I disap-
pointed him. Almost the instant that he dis-

16 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

cerned that I had seen him he bounded up and
was gone. A friend of mine had a somewhat
similar experience with a buck; only the buck
did not wake up until my friend seized him by the
horn, when there was a regular tableau. Whether
this buck was deaf, I do not know; but the man-
ner of his flight betrayed not the slightest im-
pairment of any of his other physical powers.

When deer are hunted on sea islands, where
their range is naturally limited, they will fre-
quently leave their wooded haunts and take to
the surf. J have seen a buck go two hundred
yards out in shoal water and stand there for
hours, with little more than his back and his
antlered head showing above the water. Fre-
quently, from a refuge of this kind, a deer will
not come ashore until after nightfall. On reach-
ing the beach after such an experience a deer is
always plainly exhausted.

From these examples it is easy to infer the de-
gree of a deer’s intelligence — the brain power of
this mischievous, playful, timid, curious, trucu-
lent creature.

I say he is truculent; and on occasions he un-

doubtedly is. A doe is never dangerous; but a
buck in the mating season is a treacherous ani-

ss tee ~ Sige e™ tet ft a ae

MY FRIEND THE DEER 17

mal. It is his nature at such a time to attack. It
is the time of love, of rivalry, and of combat;
and a buck, with his clean, sharp antlers, his
new dun coat, is a creature of ugly and uncertain
temper. Keepers of preserves are frequently at-
tacked; but I doubt if a buck in a wild state
would ever attack a man unless cornered or
wounded. If the records of men being injured by
wounded deer be examined, it will be found that
in the majority of cases the victims have been in-
jured by the wild struggles of the deer rather than
by any direct attack of the creature.

At closé quarters the sharp hoofs of a deer’s
front feet are more to be feared than the antlers.

But while bucks very seldom bring man to an
encounter, they are forever fighting their fellows,
at least until some sort of caste system of supe-
riority is established. In the course of these com-
bats many fatalities occur, the most gruesome of
which are the cases of the locked antlers. The
fighting of deer is playing with fire.

Often two bucks, in a spirit of frolic or of in-
dolent urgings of strength, will put their heads
together just to feel the tingle that must come
when hard horn raps against hard horn. They
may break off the bout in a friendly spirit, or,

18 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

stirred by a painful wrench of the neck or a jab
from an antler point, they may enter a battle
which gradually increases in fury. This fierce-
ness of the fray may continue even after the
battle is ended; for sometimes the victorious stag
will mutilate the body of his fallen rival. This he
can do by retreating, turning, bounding back and
jumping on his fallen adversary. Carcasses of
such bucks have been found which have literally
been cut to pieces. Wherever two bucks have
been fighting, there will be an arena worn al-
most bare of verdure by their trampling hoofs.
Occasionally on the scene of the encounter a
broken part of an antler will be found. Few are q
the mature bucks that do not show evidences of
their having been in battle.

His antlers are, of course, the pride and the
glory of the buck. I read recently, in a book of
natural history that has had a wide circulation,
the following statement: “The older and larger
the buck, the finer the crown of antlers he wears.”
This is not entirely wrong, but it is quite mis-
leading. Deer antlers are directly related in —
growth to the reproductive processes; anda buck ~
will wear his most massive crown when his physi- —
cal powers are at their zenith. This usually comes, —

MY FRIEND THE DEER 19

with the white-tail deer, between the fifth and
the twelfth years. The size of the buck does not
determine the size of his antlers, though the rug-
gedness of the life he leads may determine to
some degree the architecture of his horns. Thus,
the wilder the surroundings, the heavier and the
more craggy are the antlers. Naturally, this is
because in savage environment the deer has
great need for his horns as defensive weapons.

In the old days deer had many enemies; and
even now in the wilder portions of their habitat
some of these enemies are present. Man is the
chief; after him are cougars, wolves, wildcats —
which kill fawns — and possibly the more sav-
age of the bears, though the smaller bears and
deer are known to live amicably in the same
woods.

But take it all in all, deer probably have fewer
natural foes to contend with than almost any
other of the wild creatures. Their closed season
is long and is pretty general throughout the sec- °
tions where the white-tail is found.

Occasionally a deer will be killed by a rattle-
snake, but far more frequently will the rattler
be killed. In sections where alligators infest la-

goons, streams, and wood ponds, many deer are

20 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

taken by these grim saurians. The fawns some-
times suffer from the raids of eagles, particularly
golden eagles.

The only disease which makes any consid-
erable inroad into the ranks of the white-tail is
black tongue, or hoof-and-mouth disease — an-
thrax. This is a highly contagious disease, and it
is singularly fatal to deer. In riding the woods
where such a plague is abroad I have counted as
many as eleven deer in various stages of the
malady. Such deer act very strangely. Some
attempt to run, but fall over. Some lie quite still.
Others stand, shaking and shivering as with the
ague. The superb normal health of a deer,
which enables it almost incredibly to recover

from terrible wounds, seems unable to combat —

this fell disease. Wherever it appears in deer
forests its effects are disastrous.

Unless attacked by black tongue, or unless
meeting an untimely fate, deer may live for
thirty years; Millais, the British authority, says
that deer live as long as horses. But the deer’s
existence is precarious, and few ever attain an

age exceeding fifteen years. I have seen several —
ancient bucks taken, and they gave clear evi- ~
dences of age: their hoofs were broad, stubby, and ~

MY FRIEND THE DEER 21

cracked; their muzzles were grizzled; their horns
were small and scraggly; and even their motions
in the woods were as near being decrepit as I sup-
pose the motions of so alert and graceful a crea-
ture can ever become.

Such are some of the facts concerning the
secret life of the white-tail deer. It is an animal
vividly interesting; shy and crafty, swift and
elusive, gentle and beautiful. There is no creature
which seems more adequately to express the
spirit of the lonely wood, the solitary lake, the
silent mountain, the gloomy swamp.

He who sees a deer in its native surroundings
sees all that is wildest in the wilderness, all that
is most haunting in deep sanctuaries, all that is
most delicately alluring in remote woodlands, in
wild valleys, and on far mountains.

CHAPTER II
HUNTING IN A FRESHET

A SHARP, incisive tack in the seat of his chair, or
his wife’s entering the room, or the sudden mem-
ory of a friendly black bottle standing lonesome
and neglected in the sideboard —any one of
these things may make a man spring up ani-
matedly. But, although I sprang all right, none
of the aforementioned causes supplied the impe-
tus. Rather was it because, in drearily reading
the newspaper while the leaden winter rain
poured outside, I had come across, under the
“Stages of Water Report,” the magic, the glad-
some words, “‘ Eighteen feet at Rimini.”

These were, I say, magic words. The reason
for their being of that exciting nature was simple.
For the better part of a week I had been shut in
the plantation house, with hardly one respectable
chance to get into the woods after deer and tur-
keys. My brief vacation visit was drawing to a
close, and the sport which so far had come my way
had in no wise been memorable. But eighteen
feet of water at Rimini, a small town some miles

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 23

above us on the Santee River, meant a freshet
with us — and a good one, too. A freshet in the
country of the great delta of the Santee means
the inundating of all the impenetrable swamps
adjacent to the river and the flooding of thousands
_ of acres of delta lands. It means the coming to
the plantation mainland of all the deer and tur-
keys and other game that have been safely har-
boring in the gross jungles of the river-bottoms.
It means the bringing to light of all the splendid
king rails and jaunty soras, whose gleesome
cackling, while the waters are low and they are
inaccessible, is harsh to a helpless hunter. It
means the treeing of raccoons, opossums, and
wildeats. In short, a freshet in the Santee in-
sures days of great sport.

Our plantation is psychologically situated on
the river for hunting in a freshet. To be plain,
it is in the right place. Above us, the water, as
yet unaffected by the influence of the sea tides,
does not back up high. Below us, the delta
widens so spaciously that those generously vast
areas take care of the accumulated waters. But
with us all the low-lying country is flooded to a
depth of from eight to twelve feet. The water
usually rises for three days, remains stationary

24 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

for the same period, and then falls for several
days. Such a time as this is not a time for a
game-hog to be at large; but a decent hunter can
have all the shooting he wants, and at the same
time he can honestly feel that he has taken un-
fair advantage of nothing.

I believe that Prince, my negro guide and com-
panion on innumerable hunting-trips, must have
jumped up before I did; for while I was standing
with my back to the fire, my head and heart
filled with the imagined doings of the morrow, I
heard the back door click and a soft step shuffled
up the hallway. Automatically I went to the
sideboard, so that my dusky hunter, who had,
I knew, come a mile through the pouring rain,
would not take cold. In a few moments I was
back in my chair, and Prince was being warmed
and dried by a friendly fire and a cheerful tumbler.

“Well, Prince, what of it?’’ I asked.

“Breaking off rain, sah,” he answered. “I
done see a clean streak in the sundown. The
freshet,’ he added, “he done come much
higher.”

“It’s in the paper,” I said, confirming him:
“Eighteen feet at Rimini.’ That means high
doings for us here, Prince.”’

wm

Freshet 2
the Delta

The

Al

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 25

The good negro grinned. His smile was one
that presaged rare sport. I had come to under-
stand well its meaning through nearly thirty years
of hunting with this black woodsman.

‘Somethin’ ’s obleeged to die to-morrow,” he
said. And it was with that conviction that, with
expectations which ran high, we laid our plans
for the campaign of the following day.
| When we met next morning at the river-land-
_ ing the sun was rising in a clear sky, and was
lighting up the wide expanses of the lonely delta
country. The long rain was over at last, and we
had promise of a fair, still day. Before we took
our places in the boat we looked far over the
waste and solitary island region, now deeply
flooded by the hurrying yellow freshet tide. The
cypresses, gums, and tupelos that love wet lands
now stood up strangely out of the water. The
canebrakes were now mere waving, whispering
tufts of rustling green. Here and there in the
old fields and along the river a high spear of
marsh turned and trembled in the swift tide; but
all the marshes proper were submerged. Lodged
against trees, and against such clumps of alders
and other bushes as had not been covered, were

rafts of sedge, old logs, and piles of brush — the

26 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

refuse of the river swamps. Now and then a
stick of good round timber, broken loose from
some mooring or floated from some landing far
up the river, would go sailing down the tawny
current.

As we got into the dugout cypress canoe I
thought it well to take careful note of my equip-
ment, for we were off on a long trip, and at such
a time it does not pay to forget anything. I had
Prince to paddle: that was a satisfaction of the
solidest kind; for not only is he a skillful boat-
man, but he has eyes before which it is useless
for the craftiest wild creature to attempt to
hide. Then, I had my thirty-inch, twelve-gauge
Parker gun — just the gun for such work as we
had in prospect, for there was nothing that we
were likely to see that it would not handily bring
to bag. I had some rawhide strings in my pocket,
for which unexpected and exciting use was
shortly to be found. Finally I had a lot of shells
of all sizes of shot. Perhaps in these days I had
better not say whether we considered the friendly
black bottle indispensable upon such a trip. We
seemed to be ready for a day of sport; and in
quiet confidence we paddled across the brimming
river. The sun was now well up, and its genial

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 27

rays stole comfortingly through my hunting-
coat. Can there be, in a Better Land, a happier
feeling than to have the rising winter sun warm-
ing one as he is setting forth, care-free, for the
sport of an adventurous day?

On reaching the farther side of the Santee we
hove to against a waving canebrake. The minute
our course changed, from the green tufts there
rose in ragged flight three king rails. Two were
bagged, and the third was marked down a hun-
dred yards away. We started in pursuit, our
course taking us through a little patch of island
woods, where the trunks of trees stood close to-
gether above the whispering waters. As it was
difficult to get the canoe through a place of this
kind by the mere use of the paddle, I laid my gun
down flat in the boat — to lean it against the bow
might mean to have it caught by a vine and
pulled overboard — and, catching hold of the
trees, helped to pull the boat along through the
tightest places. It was while standing in this
awkward position — a very awkward one from
which to maneuver a shot — that my attention
was attracted to some animal swimming in the
water. At first glance I took it for a rabbit, for
though we had been out only a few minutes we

28 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

had seen at least a dozen of these “swampies”’
huddled on trash-piles or swimming in the water.
But a second look at the creature now before me
made me quickly change my mind as to its iden-
tity. I reached for my gun and tried to get it to my
shoulder, but the big brown shape was too quick
for me. He humped himself suddenly into a verti-
cal position and dived, his long and characteristic
tail making me positive of his nature. There was
no need for me to ask Prince whether or not he
had seen our vanished quarry; therefore I merely
motioned for him to drive the canoe forward.
When we reached the spot where the diver
had gone down we stayed the boat among the
tree-trunks; and although we remained quiet for
some time, searching the waters for a rise, the
wary old otter never reappeared. And a prime
otter-hide was then bringing, even from fur-
dealers, about twenty dollars! Yet I comforted
myself with the saying of an old friend of mine who
has long been a trapper: “A full-grown otter is
the wariest of all wild creatures. Itis only by mis-
take or accident that a man ever even sees an ot-
ter.” But if seeing one is an accident, I fear that
failing to secure him must be put down honestly
asacalamity. During all my years of ranging the |

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 29

delta of the Santee, this is one of the few chances
that I ever had to shoot an otter; and whether
this chance really amounted to anything, the
reader may judge. I have seen other otters that
have been trapped or shot, but I have encoun-
tered only a few in a wild state. Two of these,
evidently mates, were swimming across a wide
creek. The waters were sunset-brightened, and
the creatures were clearly seen; but they were far
ahead of my boat.

Although king rails appeared tame in compari-
son with what had just escaped us, we went on
after the bird that we had marked down. But
before we reached the place where we had seen
him awkwardly alight —for he seemed incon-
tinently to drop into a dense patch of swamp
briars — I heard behind me a soft exclamation
from Prince —a chortle of infectious delight.
When I turned to look at him he was gazing up
into the gnarled limbs of an ancient moss-draped
cypress. His happy smile could mean but one
thing: he had spotted araccoon. Then the dusky,
keen-eyed hunter began a crooning series .of
remarks to the sly fur-bearer. I should call this
monologue, “‘Prince’s address to a treed rac-
coon.” It ran somewhat like this:

30 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

“Sleep on and take your rest! But you don’t

know that dis is the judgment day, and that
ring-tail of yours will soon catch fire. You climb
high, and you sleep tight; but you is gwine to fall
far and wake mighty sudden. You done make
your last track; you done open your last oyster.
When your tail catch fire, you can snort your
snort, but you can’t blow out that flame. Why
did n’t you read your book better, which would
tell you to go down deep in a hollow? How come
it that you can lie out on that limb, so bold and
public and common? Is you done say your
prayers? If you want to run, let me hold your
hat. But I done catch a lot of your family, so
you will find company where you are comin’!
Good-night, old foxy-face ring-tail!”’

I let Prince enjoy his nonsense. Then I
asked:

**Shall we take him along with us?”

The negro nodded his head very decidedly.

“Bad luck, Cap’n,” he said, “to pass up a
raccoon.”

He might have added that such would be a
heart-breaking mistake; for it surely would have
been so to Prince.

A carefully placed load of 4’s brought the

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 31

*coon down for the count. When we pulled him
into the boat we found him to bean old male, with
handsome thick fur. But he was a cripple: he had
but three feet — marvelously like the tiny hands
of a little black human baby! — the stump of
the fourth showing a fresh wound. Prince then
told me that raccoons appeared to be getting
worse and worse in the matter of gnawing off
their legs caught in traps. He said that of ten
traps he had set along the river-marshes one
night, seven had contained next morning the
feet of raccoons! It is not unnatural that the
wilder animals should thus free themselves, es-
pecially if, like the raccoon, they possess unusual
intelligence. But I have known even so timid
and simple a creature as a cotton-tail rabbit to
resort to this desperate course to freedom. How-
ever, the only rabbits that I ever knew to do this
were wily old males.

A few minutes after we had pulled the big
raccoon aboard we secured our third king rail.
Then, spying two coots doubled on some sedge,
packed against the sunny side of some half-
drowned bush-tops, I let drive with my open
barrel charged with 8’s. When we had paddled
to the place we found that we had bagged, with

82 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

the one shot, not only the two coots, but a little
black rail and a rabbit besides.

A word should really here be said concerning
the rabbits that come to light in a freshet. On
this little trip above the inundated lowlands I
found rabbits to be positively abundant. Al-
most every raft of sedge or convenient log or
stump would hold one or more of them. Some-
times apparently a whole family could be seen
huddling forlornly together. Sometimes one
would creep up into a bush or among tangles of
vines, three feet or more above the water. On one
distorted tree, whose malformations afforded un-
usual harborage, I counted five. During a certain
period of the day I essayed to count all that we
saw; but after a careful tally of sixty-seven had
been made, I stopped. Of course I did not mo-
lest these bunnies. Every now and then Prince
would negligently swing his paddle across one’s
neck and would drag him into the boat. But
he was laying in a month’s supply of meat; for
having skinned and cleaned these rabbits, he
would hang them in his cabin chimney at home
to smoke and cure. Thus treated, rabbit meat is
good for several weeks. Some hunters kill boat-
loads of rabbits in such a freshet as the one I am

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 33

describing; but I never could see wherein lay the
sport. Most wild creatures have something of a
chance at such a time, but a rabbit is so surely
handicapped as to appear positively appealing.
These rabbits that get caught by rising waters
are swamp rabbits. Than the sprightly cotton-
tail they are somewhat smaller, their fur is
browner and softer, and their tails are not pro-
nouncedly white. Being valiant swimmers, many
of them reach the mainland in a time of flood.
Their behavior on high ground and in the pres-
ence of man ever reminds me of Alexander
Selkirk’s impression of the wild creatures on his
desert island; that is, “‘their tameness is shock-
ing to me.” They can be caught with little dif-
ficulty, and the negroes who roam the freshet
edges seldom need more than a stout hickory
stick to bring to bag as many of these bunnies
as they want. Swamp rabbits, probably because
their race has not been systematically hunted,
appear to lack nearly all those qualities of alert-
ness, intelligence, and crafty resourcefulness
that all real game should have. :
Leaving the lines of canebrakes bordering the
river, Prince and I pushed our canoe across a
wide expanse of delta country, approaching a

384 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

high ridge on which darkly towered a group of
solitary short-leaf pines. While we were as yet
two hundred yards away, a great bird suddenly
launched himself in splendid flight from one of
the giant trees. It is not often that even one who
is no stranger to wild country is privileged to see
a big wild gobbler fly for a mile above the water.
This turkey in his swift and powerful flight kept
himself about seventy feet above the freshet
tide. The course he kept was direct, and his
trajectory was remarkable. From the direction
he had taken we could surmise with some hope of
accuracy about where he would alight on the
mainland of the plantation. If all went well we
should not fail to visit him.

On coming to the ridge, which was islanded
but not submerged, we found it occupied by a
dozen half-wild hogs that, by the somewhat
dubious law of the delta, belonged to any one
who should find them thus marooned. But, al-
though Prince’s glances in their direction were
somewhat languishing, we did not molest them.
As the flood was almost at its height, and as they
had a good deal of dry gound over which to root
and roam, they would likely be safe until the
freshet had subsided. Such hogs, though not

pp ect ee Cee

the Freshet Rising

ql
rf

ri * 4
ea
) See
he ee

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 35

travelers in the upper social circles of their race,
have their merits. For one thing, they seldom
are drowned, unless by mischance in their swim-
ming they get tangled in strong grass, caught
by vines, or become wedged between trees and
drifted logs. They are, indeed, splendid and
tireless swimmers. Repeatedly have I seen
these long-snouted, lean-flanked creatures cour-
ageously buck and stem the worst sweep of tide
that the Santee in spate could offer. In their
build they are so uniformly lanky that they
never in swimming run the risk of cutting their
throats; this sometimes does happen with hogs
that are fat and awkward.

Leaving the pine ridge we skirted a long, dense
canebrake; and here within a distance of less
than a mile we flushed and secured fourteen
king rails and eight soras. The larger of these
birds has my high admiration. They are gamy;
they are large and plump; their plumage is quite
handsome; and a good bag of them is as pretty as
any quarry of which I know.

Beyond the canebrake was a long expanse of
comparatively open water; for there was nothing
standing above it but the sere heads of dead
duck-oats. Far on the other side of the patches

36 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS '

of duck-oats was a miniature swamp of little
cypresses whose tops were about three feet
above the tide. It had been some minutes since
I had fired my gun, and the cypresses were to
windward of us; therefore I was hardly surprised
when, being halfway across the field, we heard
wild ducks in the filmy, scant shelter ahead. They
were in the water among the drowned young
trees; and from the language that they spoke
I took them to be mallards. I turned my head
to caution Prince; but from the telltale grin he
wore I knew that he had the ducks’ street address.
More than that, he knew exactly what to do —
through following my directions, which were given
with mere motions of the hand. To my thinking,
the pleasure of hunting is vitally enhanced if
the hunting comrade be a genuine woodsman —
whether a chum or a guide or both — and with
such a companion the chances are all in favor of
good shooting. Frequently it has been my lot to
hunt with the other sort of men — the men who
bring to the great and exacting craft of hunting
no particle of what assuredly is the one absolute
essential — a game sense. But my paddler had
this; wherefore our stalk of the mallards was dis-
creet.

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 37

Because Prince can drive a canoe forward si-
lently, the careless talking of the ducks continued
until we were fairly among them; until, indeed, I
caught sight of three, within thirty yards, swim-
ming sedately and with much complacency on the
quiet water in the warm sunshine. These mal-
lards quickly released their mainsprings, clear- .
ing on the initial jump the tops of the young
cypresses. Two of them responded to my first
salute. The third was not fired upon, as, with
a roar of wings and many loud exclamations, a
flock of about eighty arose within easy range.
The left barrel jarred out four from the company.
Quickly reloading, we got a chance at a straggler
who rose late and chose the wrong direction for an
escape. We had seven down; and of these we
found six, which augmented our bag and gave it
variety.

‘ Beyond the cypresses was a real swamp, where
massive trees, heavily draped in gray Spanish
moss, presented a forbidding appearance. Strange,
weird, and lonely, it mouldered in mysterious si-
lence. Along the darksome edges of this wood we
paddled for a considerable distance, both of us
keenly alert to discover another raccoon. Finally
I heard Prince give a little exclamation.

g8 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

“*Coon?” I asked, turning to him.

But his face, although pleased, was far too
serious for a mere coon. His expression hinted of
rarer game.

“Better ’n that, Cap’n,” he said slowly, as if
momently confirming his words, while his keen
eyes searched a huge old tupelo, dim with shroud-
ings of moss. “I done see a wildcat, sah.”

This kind of business called for turkey-shot.
Good high-base shells could do the thing — shells
carrying a heavy load of chilled 4’s. But it pays
to play very safe with a cat. Some maneuvering
had to. be done to enable me to get sight of the
crafty creature. He, of course, unlike the lazily
sleeping raccoon, was shrewdly aware of our
coming, and he did what he could to render him-
self inconspicuous. But, surely directed by
Prince’s pointing, I finally made out the burly,
crouched body, sixty feet up in the massive tree.
There were the sharply pointed ears, the soft,
thick brown fur, and the absence of anything that
might be called a brush. There, too, was that in-
describable feline fierceness and cunning which
seems to set the whole race of cats against man.
The hunter who terminates the cruel career of
one of these maurauders justly feels that he

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 39

ought, for that reason, to be forgiven many sins.
Leveling my gun for the creature’s head, I fired.
Convulsively the powerful brute shot upward
and outward for a considerable distance, his
face snarling, his four stout legs wide, and in-
tense with muscular fury. But at the peak of
his jump he collapsed, falling twenty feet from
us, quite dead.

Upon examination he proved to be a very fine
type of the Southern bay-lynx or wildcat. I have
sometimes read articles which disparaged the size
of Eastern and Southern wildcats in comparison
with those of the Far West. I wish the writers
could have seen this old brigand of the river
swamps. Even in death, and with his fine pelt
soaked, he was a savage-looking creature, and his
weighty and powerful build was impressive to me.
When we reached home, we weighed him; and
on truthful scales he was forty-one pounds. His
hide was prime, the fur on it being thick and soft
and in that glossy state which is a certain indica-
tion of perfect physical vigor.

After our wildcat experience Prince and I were
expecting other strange forms of wild life, but
we were hardly prepared to see, swimming in a
rather dazed fashion through the cold water, a

40 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

seven-foot alligator! A shell loaded with a few
buckshot brought him to, and we hauled him into
the boat. Though he weighted us down consid-
erably, I wanted him; for he was something of
a curiosity. His long winter’s sleep had been
rudely interrupted by the flood, and he had been
routed from his obscure hibernation quarters.
Although I have spent the better part of a life-
time in alligator country, this was the first one
that I ever saw abroad in mid-winter.

The freshet, penetrating the most remote
recesses of the lowlands, had awakened other
sleepers, and these were not pleasant to en-
counter: I mean the water-moccasins. We
counted them by the score. For the most part
they were rusty and hoary old devils, with huge
bodies, and wide, malicious heads in which dully
glared satanic eyes. They were thoroughly cap-
able of striking; and their first movement when
they discerned our approach was to turn threat-
eningly in our direction. I made several large
ones strike at the paddle. Three things impressed
me about this performance: one was the incredi-
ble swiftness with which the snake would deliver
its stroke. The actual drive of the head was not
visible save as a blur. A second impression was

HUNTING IN A FRESHET Al

the vivid whiteness of the interior of the snake’s
mouth; this peculiar coloring is, of course, what
accounts for the serpent’s name, “‘cotton-mouth.”
Finally I was greatly interested in the angle at
which a moccasin sets its jaws to strike. They
are almost vertical; and if the fangs themselves
were not curved slightly downward, they would
be practically at right angles to the open jaw.
We had ample and safe opportunity to study
these formidable snakes; but our close acquain-
tance with them failed to attract us in any meas-
ure. Indeed, Prince dispatched a score with his
| dexterous wielding of his efficient paddle. To
Prince the cotton-mouth is a social outcast.
Twice while working in rice-fields he has been
struck; and once his wound came very nearly
proving fatal.

We had now come almost to the end of the
swamp-edge which we had been following. Sud-
denly I saw, about a hundred yards away, what
appeared to be a pair of deer-horns hanging in a
bush. But a moment later I saw more than mere
antlers. There, almost as big as life, was a fine
buck, stranded by the freshet against this ob-
stacle. What struck me as most curious was the
fact that he seemed so high up in the bush. Al-

42 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

most as soon as we had clearly made him out, he
plunged off, heading straight for the far-away
mainland. He was probably a swamp deer that
had already made a long swim toward the dry
land, and had merely stopped where we first
saw him to rest. He had a fine rack of horns
that looked very odd moving above the yellow
water.

Naturally my first impulse was to shoot him.
But some instinct withheld my trigger-finger.
I turned to my faithful paddler, whose face was
now one wide smile that looked like a generous
slice of watermelon.

*“Let’s catch him!” I said. “I have a rawhide
string to slip around his horns. Perhaps we can
get him home alive.”

Although the buck swam swiftly and with good
judgment, we were not long in overtaking him.
Within two hundred yards of the brush that he
had left the canoe was alongside him, and the
rawhide thong had been slipped about the bases
of his antlers. He made much less objection than
we had anticipated; but undoubtedly, from long
exposure, hunger, and extraordinary exertion, he
was weak and dispirited. We got along fairly
well with the big deer swimming beside the boat;

HUNTING IN A FRESHET 43

the chief reason for our avoidance of trouble was
Prince’s ‘masterful handling of the canoe.

This new turn in our luck made me abandon
ideas of further shooting in the freshet water. I
told Prince to head for home. We were then
more than a mile from shore, but this distance we
soon covered. The buck occasionally did some
convulsive struggling and pulling; but by good
fortune we managed the thing.

Our course would bring us to the plantation
mainland, a half mile above the house. Prince’s
idea in thus coming to land was plain to me:
he still had in mind that old gobbler that had
flown out of the tall pine. As we neared the shore,
I said:

“What are we going to do with him, Prince?”

A full-grown wild buck on one’s hands is really
a kind of an albino elephant, especially if one
feels that to make venison of him would not do at
all. To my query Prince had no answer. He is
quite elementarily human in his feeling on such
matters, and he could have but one thought con-
cerning the deer. But I could not bring myself to
kill the defenseless old stag. During our trip he
and I had hit up a sort of liking for each other.
Therefore when thirty yards from land I mo-

44 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

tioned to Prince to slow the boat. The noose was
quietly slipped from the buck’s tall antlers. I
gave him a slap on his big haunches.

“Go to it,” were my parting words; “‘ but see
that we never meet on dry ground, old fellow.”

Within a few minutes the noble animal had
gained the shore, whence he slipped quietly out
of sight in a friendly thicket of young pines. As
he disappeared, Prince reprimanded me gently by
saying:

*““Cap’n, you don’t get your hand every day on
a buck like that.”

I answered him by saying that I would take up
the Laurel-Tree Stand, a good mile off in the
woods, and that he would walk out the interven-
ing thickets. The old gobbler was on my mind;
but although I really thought that there was
small chance of my seeing the same turkey again
that day, he was not the only big bird on that
mainland shore.

Leaving the canoe tied up against the river-
edge we “‘surrounded”’ the thicket as we had
planned. I was on a good stand for both deer
and turkeys. No sooner had I settled myself
there than I heard Prince’s far-off driving begin.
It seemed to me that he had hardly made one

HUNTING IN A FRESHET A5

whistle and one short whoop when into my sight,
seventy yards away, among some very baffling
huckleberry-bushes, there stepped a lordly ‘gob-
bler. Before my gun could be laid true on him,
he had made me out, and with all the swift craft-
iness of which a wild turkey is capable, he be-
gan dodging off at an angle. As he effectively
screened himself by the bushes and by the tan-
gles of jasmine-vines, it was impossible for me
certainly to get my sight on him. I therefore
chose an opening in the shrubbery, laying my
gun to that. When he darkened it he was in
high gear; but the 4’s went home. So it was that
when Prince came up there was a nineteen-
pound gobbler hanging against a pine sapling.

“A great day’s sport,” I said; “and now for
home.”

On the way down the river in the canoe we
secured other king rails; and quite close to the
house a second raccoon was invited into the
boat. When we reached the landing, we had a
varied and interesting lot of game —all of
which, except the ’coons and the wildcat, had
been given a sporting chance. But, then, wild-
cats and raccoons are not really game. They are
full-blooded “varmints.”’

46 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Not the least pleasure at the close of a good
day’s hunt is to learn, from a reliable source, of
the promise of further sport. Such was my for-
tune; for at the house there awaited my coming
a negro whose lips, in speaking of game, speak no
guile. He was there to report that a great flight
of woodcock had settled in the shrubberies on
the western edge of the plantation, and that the
margins of the rice-field and the boggy rows in the
cotton-field were “ done take up”’ by Wilson snipe.

“Cap’n,” he added, “you done lef’ all the best
shootin’ on the highland.”

This was, indeed, cheering news; and inas-
much as we had come home rather earlier than
we had anticipated, late that afternoon I visited
the myrtle and sparkleberry thickets, and also
the cotton-field. The negro who piloted me
there had told me a true thing; for in the hour
before sundown as much fast shooting was af-
forded me as it is fair for one man to have.

This last adventure ended my day of hunting
in a freshet —a day of varied and interesting
sport. Though the attending circumstances
were somewhat unusual, the day was rather rep-
resentative of the quality of plantation hunting
in the Santee country.

CHAPTER III
STALKING WILD TURKEYS

Ir one hunter tells another in cold blood that
he has succeeded in stalking a wild turkey, the
latter surely has the right to ask the imaginer
of such doings just where he buys the stuff
that brings on so prodigious a dream. Indeed,
one such story would supply sufficient evidence
against a man to warrant a revenue officer’s
searching his premises for a private still. A wild
turkey can be called up (if he be in a receptive
and sociable mood), can be roosted, can be taken
from a blind, can be run out to a stander at a
deer-crossing, can sometimes be persuaded to
keep on coming when a shrewd hunter has lo-
cated the bird and has concealed himself along
the path of the approaching game. A wild turkey
can even be caught in the right kind of a trap.
But where is the man who can walk up to or
crawl up to a wild turkey? Doubtless the thing
has been done; but whenever it has come off
I venture to say that the attending circumstances
were so novel as to merit recording. Here I shall

48 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

briefly set down the four instances in which it has
been my fortune to stalk a wild turkey; and it
will be easy for a reader to acquit me of any
charge of feeling chesty over the matter, for, as
you will see, small credit attaches to my share of
the performance.

One bright day in mid-winter I was walking
down a broad road in the pine-lands which led
into a deserted plantation. My setter was rang-
ing in the near-by brush for quail and woodcock.
Suddenly into my vision stepped one of those
sights which is dear to the heart of every woods-
man. It was nothing less than a huge bronzed
gobbler — stately, superb, his neck and broad
back glinting in the sun. As I was in full sight,
and as the bird’s nature was known to me I took
it for granted that my initial sight of him would
be my last. Instead, on reaching the middle of
the road the gobbler paused to take in the scen-
ery. To my amazement he did not make me out.
Six feet two of me were coming down on him
apace — yet he stood there calmly, as if he were
a surveyor estimating levels and such-like, or an
artist trying to select a view for a landscape
painting. The only shot I had was 73 chilled;
and, although my gun had long barrels, I did not

STALKING WILD TURKEYS 49

dare to turn loose short of seventy yards. This
vital distance was crudely negotiated by my
simply keeping brazenly ahead. Then, aiming
deliberately, I let drive. The fine old fellow was
considerably disheveled, but he rose on powerful
wings. My second barrel did not bring him down.
Meanwhile, however, my dog had come out into
the road. He was just in time to see the great
bird take wing. Being intelligent and swift, he
gave hot chase. The old gobbler never rose
higher than thirty feet, and his flight was com-
paratively slow. The woods being open and
level, the setter kept up fairly well with the crip-
pled fugitive. After a struggle extending over
three hundred yards the noble bird came to earth;
and the dog saw to it that he stayed down until
my arrival.

Upon examining him I found him to be stone-
blind in one eye! I felt as if some kind of an
apology ought to be made to some one for shoot-
ing a blind turkey; but I surely had not been
aware of the old bird’s handicap. Besides, if the
wary rascal had only turned his good eye to me,
he would not have hesitated to give me the slip.

A few miles below the plantation, on an aban-
doned place known as “Peachtree,” a negro had

50 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

been working an old field that overlooked, from
a low sandy bluff, the wide waters of the Santee.
He had planted peanuts in the field, and at one
end of it some corn and peas. On one side
stretched away the lonely river; on the other
three sides lay swamp and dense shrubberies, out
of which rose majestic live-oaks. The field in
question was a most solitary place; for the cabin of
the negro who tilled it lay a mile off in the pine-
lands. It was a great place for wild turkeys; for
there was tempting food there, and sunny dust-
ing-places against the old fence, and that remote
security that the wildest and craftiest of Ameri-
can game birds loves.

One day while coming up the river in a canoe,
returning from a duck-hunt far down in the
delta, my paddler and I, talking away carelessly,
approached this lonely field. We were close to
the shore; and as the field was long and narrow,
extending itself along the river, anything in it
could be brought within range from the boat.
But we were not on the alert. Suddenly, how-
ever, an object caught my eye. It was one of the
very largest wild gobblers that has ever come
within my sight. He had been dusting himself in
the warm sand, and as he stood up to shake him-

In the Carolina
Turkey Woods

STALKING WILD TURKEYS 51

self, he looked, with all his feathers hanging
loose, prodigiously big. When first made out he
was about eighty yards away — too long a shot
to expect any certain results. Tensely I motioned
for my paddler to hurry. But the great bird was
too quick for us. Whether it was our suddenly
falling silent or the movement of my urgent
gesture, he took a quick little run and then rose
on powerful wings. He was so very fine as he
beat his way off among the solitary live-oaks that
the impression he left upon me was not so much
that I had been defeated as it was that I had
been privileged and honored.

A wild turkey had been coming with rare con-
sistency into one of our bare cornfields in the late
winter. Many times did I try to get it, but it was
too smart for me. Finally one morning I went
out before daybreak, intending to wait on the
edge of the woods out of which the wary bird
would come. After two hours of watching I left
my stand and ranged the woods for a time. On
returning I saw my turkey standing out in the
bare cornfield, two hundred yards from the
woods. He did not see me. But how was a shot
to be had at him? Beyond the cornfield was the
plantation house; to right and left were open

52 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

fields. Only on the side on which I stood was
there woodland. It occurred to me, if I should
walk out boldly into the field, with incredible
effrontery for a stalker, that the turkey would
almost surely fly back for the woods, and not
toward the house or across the wide open field.
In a sense this game was anything but stalking;
but it worked. I deliberately stepped out of the
woods. The startled turkey squatted, then darted
to the right, then to the left. Suddenly he took
wing, heading for his deep woodland haunts.
His flight brought him within forty yards of me,
and on my left. That happened on a Friday —
and we had wild turkey for dinner on Sunday.
There remains one tale to be told. One of my
small boys (aged seven) and I were walking down
an old wooded bank that connected our planta-
tion to the one immediately north of us. The
bank was so straight and the trees made so per-
fect an arch over it that we could see, as if down
a clear tunnel, for two hundred yards. Suddenly,
near the far end of the bank and upon it three
graceful shapes appeared. By their trim alertness
and their high-held heads I knew that they had
already made me out. Controlling a brainstorm,
I squatted down and pulled my boy close to me.

STALKING WILD TURKEYS 53

**Son,”’ I whispered, pointing down the bank,
“those are wild turkeys yonder. You stand right
here until you hear me shoot. Don’t move.”

With that I edged over the side of the bank,
and then began the crawl of my life. Fortu-
nately, for the first hundred yards there was
a screen of bushes. Then came briar-patches.
Farther on were young tupelos covered with
smilax. During the stalk I did not again attempt
to look at the turkeys. I knew at what place on
the bank they were, and I trusted blindly to luck
and to my boy. When it seemed that I ought to
be within eighty yards, I got ready to shoot.
Pulling myself gingerly up to the edge of the
bank I espied the three turkeys, within gunshot,
and standing almost as they had stood when first
seen. At this moment, however, one began to
move toward another. Both heads were held
high. When the shapely necks crossed, I let
drive; and the drive went over the top.

A great time my little sportsman and I had
gathering in those two big wild turkeys and bear-
ing them homeward. And when I told him that
he, by distracting the turkeys’ attention from my
approach, had made the thing possible, I told the
truth for once, anyway.

CHAPTER IV
THE GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA

My brother Tom, who is as incurable a lover of
the wilds as I am, had written to me many months
beforehand to arrange to meet him on the plan-
tation toward the end of August. We were to
put in most of our time hunting alligators on the
lower reaches of the Santee. I say “hunt” rather
than ‘“‘fish for’ because a good rifle is a very
necessary part of the equipment used in this
exciting sport. Of course I had written my
brother to count on me.

There was one feature about this trip that
added peculiarly to the pleasure of it: we were
to go out in the same spirit with which ranch-
ers hunt timber wolves or cowboys follow cata-
mounts. We were acting in self-defense. Our
plantation has, as a considerable part of it, a
large wild island lying between Warsaw Creek
and the Santee. On this island hogs are raised.
Of these, alligators always take a heavy toll.
My brother had already that year made way
with several of the big solitary bull ’gators; but

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 55

he had not had time to hunt these monsters in a
systematic way. He therefore decided to wait for
my coming, and timed my visit so that it would
fall during the period of slack work on the place.

Journeying homeward, from Charleston I
drove forty-two miles through the coastal pine-
lands — woods full of deer, turkeys, and quail;
but as the time was late August, my thoughts
were of other kinds of game. I passed in this
long and lonely drive several large ponds or
lakes in the woods; strange and melancholy
bodies of water, surrounded and sentineled by
moss-draped cypresses, dotted with great lily-
pads, spectral and silent and placid. I knew
these places to be full of large-mouth bass, perch,
mormouth, and even alligators; but I passed
them without regret, for I knew that the sport on
the plantation would surpass anything that the
wayside might afford. I saw much game along
this summer road: fox squirrels, black and gray,
coveys of quail about half grown, and once a
flock of young wild turkeys; there were wood
ducks, too, young but full grown, and in con-
siderable flocks. At last, just before sundown,
I reached the plantation gateway. Beyond, the
old home welcomed me; and soon I saw my

56 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

brother standing expectantly on the big front
porch, looking for me. It is a good thing for
brothers, after long separation and after the
years have begun to tell their inevitable story, to
meet again as boys, and to think and feel and act
as they did twenty years before.

We sat down to a plantation dinner; and lest
its nature remain indefinite, I shall be obliged
to make the reader envious. Remember, it was
midsummer, and the day had been a hot one.
But the evening was coming, and the great plan-
tation house was shadowy and cool. Martha,
_ the ancient negro cook, brought in a snowy dish
of steaming rice, and soon she supplemented this
by the chicken that, in honor of my coming, she
had donated to the feast. The first sweet pota-
toes of the season were on the table, with sugar
oozing from their delicately browned skins. We
had a huge pitcher of fresh milk — for thirst.
There were juleps also for good cheer. Finally I
heard Martha puffing down the hall, and in she
came with the most formidable watermelon that
I have ever seen. It had been cooling for twelve
hours in a barrel of rainwater.

“T saved this one for you,” said Tom as he
sank a long knife into the melon, which, appar-

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 57

ently at the touch of the blade, cracked and
broke open, disclosing a matchless ruby heart,
frosted with cold. After that there were scupper-
nong grapes; muscadines, too, that some of the
negroes had brought in. Then we had cigars on
the porch in the twilight, and perhaps other
juleps, though on that point I am somewhat
hazy.

The morning found us ready for our hunt. My
brother had seen to it that everything should be
ready. We had a long rowboat, “big enough to
carry three men and one bull alligator,” Tom
said. We had a .30-30 Winchester. Lying in
the boat were a dozen significant-looking lines.
These consisted of lengths of stout small rope,
like a clothes-line, about fifty feet long. To each
was attached an alligator hook. My brother
picked up one of these and said to me:

“Do you remember how we used to try to
catch ’gators with shark hooks? Well, you will
also remember that we had mighty little luck
with that big tackle. I have tried this scheme,
and it works to perfection. All I do is to take
these two sea-bass hooks and lay them back to
back. Then this heavy fishing-cord is run
through the eyes, allowing a loop by which the

58 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

heavier line is attached. A ’gator, especially a
wise old bull, will taste a large hook, and will
spit out the bait, hook and all. But he will
swallow this kind of a hook, because he never
knows that it’s in the bait until he has swallowed
ie

The last item of our equipment was Prince.
He is a negro of about my age. My brother and I
had been brought up on the plantation; and he
had always been with us in all our adventures
and escapades. Now, though a man, he was as
much a boy as either of us when it came to hunt-
ing or fishing. And let me say that when a
Southern negro is a woodsman, he is a good one.
Prince had always been to us an invaluable man
on any kind of a sporting expedition; and not
the least reason for our wanting to have him along
was on account of his prodigious smiling quali-
ties. That smile of his can accommodate a
whole slice from a twenty-pound watermelon.
Hunt with a man who smiles, I say; and though
you may lose your game, you will keep your
religion.

With a preliminary grin, presaging a day of
old-time sport, Prince settled down to the oars,
turned the boat’s bow upstream, and began to

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 59

croon an old negro melody, timing himself to the
beat of the oars. My brother had put me in the
bow with the rifle; he kept the stern.

“We want some ’gator bait, first,” he had
said; “but don’t pass up a chance shot at a good
*gator.”

As we moved along the shrouded shores of the
Santee, I was alert for anything that might suffice
for bait for the lines. That country is fecund
with life of all kinds, and we had not gone half a
mile before I had gathered in several swamp
rabbits, some squirrels, five big owls, and a water
turkey. Any one of these makes excellent ’gator
bait.

At this time we began to put out the lines. A
man must know how to set a ’gator line. An
amateur would have no more success than would
a tyro setting a trap for a gray wolf. First, a
*“crawl’’ must be located; that is, a place where,
as tracks, mashed marsh, and other forms of
evidence plainly show, the alligator has been ac-
customed to come out to sun himself on the river-
bank. To a tree or to a stake driven into the
mud near this the end of the line is attached.
Then, having carefully concealed the hook in
the bait, this is hung up above the water — us-

60 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

ually about a foot. This is done by sticking in
the mud on the water’s edge a dead forked stick
that will collapse as soon as the line is pulled.
The ’gator prefers to take his food in that way.
Besides, if it were left in the water, it would soon
be devoured by the big bullheads and the vora-
cious garfish with which this typical Southern
river abounds. Some hunters claim that the alli-
gator prefers his meat tainted, but there is little
to support this. True, he will ravenously take
carrion, yet there is nothing to show that he has a
predilection for it. Since most of his diet con-
sists of fish, he must eat that fresh; and in hun-
dreds of instances I have known an alligator to
take, eat, and apparently relish meat that was
so fresh as to be hardly cold. As this account will
show, all the bait that we used was fresh. I have,
however, known of bait being taken after having
remained on the line in the sun for several days.
The fact is, the alligator is such an utter brute
that delicacy in any manner, least of all in eating,
is foreign to his nature.

One by one we set the lines in the manner in-
dicated. Three times I shot at swimming ’gators,
but the target was too difficult. The ’gator
would show nothing more than his nose and his

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 61

eye, and as both he and I were moving, it was no
easy matter to place a bullet in the little home-
place, right behind that bulging eye. However,
my fourth chance gave me a score. I heard the
bullet strike the hard place covering the alliga-
tor’s brain. The creature’s tail was for a mo-
ment high in the air; then he did a nose-dive.
Finally he rolled over, his paws projecting from
the crimsoned water. They looked gruesomely
like hands. Prince meanwhile had rowed for-
ward with all his might. Just as the alligator was
sinking I caught him by his foreleg. The three of
us drew him slowly into the boat. Though dead,
there were convulsive muscular movements, es-
pecially of the tail; and these Prince eyed with
rueful apprehension.

“He don’t die,” the negro kept saying, “till
sundown.”

It was a pretty specimen we had secured. It
measured nine feet. Its color on the back and
sides were the jettiest black, though, of course,
stained with river mud. On the underside the
color was creamy white. He would weigh about
two hundred and fifty pounds. From the size of
his teeth and the powerful development of his
jaws we judged him to be an old ’gator — a bull

62 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

in the prime of his life — but he was not the
monster that we were shortly to see.

We had set the last line and were planning to
go ashore for a little lunch. Our plan was to set
the lines, to prowl about on the mainland pine
ridges for a while, to rest there and have lunch;
then to drift downstream in the afternoon, re-
visiting the lines that we had set in the morning.
But our little plan, and our thoughts yearning
julepward, were to be upset. We were moving
along quietly, a marshy bank almost overhang-
ing the boat. The tide was rather low, and the
waters in receding had left this mud-and-reed
bank apparently suspended. Suddenly, without
warning, while Prince was crooning one of his
mournfully sweet ditties, and while both Tom
and I were rather drowsy from our setting the
many lines in the sun blazing on the river, like
some gigantic black torpedo driven from the
battleship wall of the bank a huge bull alligator
launched himself. He had been sleeping on that
high muddy ledge where the tide had left him,
and we had approached to within a few yards of
him. His spring was the oddest and yet the most
awe-inspiring spectacle that I have ever seen in
wild life. His vast proportions, his dragon-like

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 63

scales, the grim ferocity of the tightly set jaws,
and the formidable strength behind that launched
spring had a paralyzing effect upon me. I heard
my brother exclaim, I heard Prince behind me
cry, “O God! de grandpa!”’ I threw up the rifle
and fired hastily while the tremendous reptile
was actually in flight. When he crashed into the
water his impact jetted water all over us, while
wild waves rocked the boat. Beneath the surface
he vanished.

“Missed him,” I said. “The blamed thing
scared me.”

“No, Cap’n,” said Prince, “‘you did n’t miss
him. I done see how he land on his side. If he
ain’t dead, he will hab belly-ache all summer.”

In confirmation of Prince’s opinion, out of the
apparently non-committal waters of the river
there rose, steadily but driftingly, the blood of the
*gator. As the bubbling-up of oil indicates the
death-wound. to a submarine, so this blood indi-
cated that the big bull had been reached by the
.30-30. Yet whether the wound had been vital we
could not say. Moreover, as the riverat that place
was about fifty feet deep, there was small chance
for investigating. We wished to inquire after this
submerged dragon’s health, but it was impossible.

64 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

“He will rise,” Prince assured us, “when his
gall done bust.”

“And when will that be?” I asked.

“By day — clean day after to-morrow,” the
negro answered.

And I was not unwilling to listen; for these
negro sayings often have in them an element of
truth. And, as matters turned out, we were to
hear more of this same grandpa.

Prince pulled us ashore to a little landing that
formerly had been used by a lumber company.
Here in the delicious shade that near a river
always seems fragrant, on a pile of old cypress
logs, we ate our lunch. My brother had filled
the thermos bottle with julep, which, with the
springs of tender mint in it, made a man forget all
troubles of this world and the next. We smoked
and talked and watched the river, on whose
yellow surface we could nearly always see the
black head of an alligator. At one time from this
single point we counted eight alligators. But we
did not shoot at them. To miss them was to waste
ammunition; and to kill them was merely to lose
them in those deep waters.

After our siesta on the logs we wandered back
for a distance through the pines. We saw one

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 65

buck, still in the velvet, but let him alone. There
were plenty of fresh turkey tracks in stretches of
damp sand; but the birds were not seen. When
Prince, who was walking out a thicket of bays
for us, thinking to start the turkeys so that
we might at least have a look at them, began to
shout that he had made the acquaintance of a
rattlesnake, we decided that it was time to re-
- turn to the boat. But first we killed the snake —
a diamond-black, with fourteen rattles. He had
just shed his skin, and was of a most beauti-
ful black-and-gold shade. He seemed unusually
irritated, and I have no doubt but that his new
skin was tender and that his nerves were thereby
kept on edge.

When we reached the boat my attention was
attracted to a very strange object floating down
the river. It was perhaps the oddest sight that
ever came into my vision. Some carcass was
evidently floating down. On it were standing
three turkey vultures taking their obscene re-
past. Yet every other minute they would rise
awkwardly in the air, while the floating body
would be drawn under by some invisible power.
We started in the boat to see what might be
adrift, and as we neared the buzzards reluctantly

66 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

left it. Itwasalarge hog. Following it were several
gators which had evidently been disputing with
the carrion birds the possession of the carcass.

A little way down the river we noticed a vast
concourse of thesesame birds. They were gathered
at a certain place along the shore. The cypress-
trees there were literally mourning with them.
We decided to investigate. We were still on my
brother’s property, this being the far northern
end of the plantation, and we thought that some
of his stock might have come to distress. When
we reached the place the buzzards scattered in
their heavy, disgruntled fashion. I was put
ashore to discover what the birds were after.
As the ground was clear of underbrush it was no
difficult task to look the place over, but there
was nothing in sight. I circled for some time, but
without finding any dead thing. Finally, on re-
turning to the boat my eye fell on something
bright that projected from a little pile of sedgy
trash. I picked it up. It was an old can of sar-
dines that some high tide had drifted and lodged
there. Carelessly I threw it into the boat. Tom
and Prince eyed it.

“Fish,” said Prince; “‘and dat’s what dem
buzzards been after.”

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 67

It was as he had said. Hereafter, if any one
should question me concerning the scenting
power of a turkey vulture, I believe that this ex-
ample of the bird’s wonderful power in that re-
spect will be convincing proof.

As we drifted down the river we could not but
be impressed with the abundance of wild life
everywhere apparent. There was never a mo-
ment when at least one ’gator was not in sight.
Sailing with the characteristic splendor of his
flight we saw a male bald eagle crossing the delta.
From quiet estuaries that made in from the
river we flushed small flocks of wood ducks. Ina
corner of a cypress swamp that we passed there
were hundreds of snowy egrets. They had nested
there, my brother told me, and he had kept the
plume-hunters away. Far up in the distant
summer sky we saw a great flock of wood ibises
— great, stately birds as large as great blue
herons, with striking white-and-black plumage.
In the thickety banks along the river there
were birds innumerable — chiefly these were
red-wings, cardinals, brown thrashers, and soras.
But what made wild life seem most abundant
was the positively amazing number of water-
moccasins. And these were the genuine things —

68 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

cotton-mouths with a vengeance. We saw them
swimming, on the muddy shores, coiled in the
marsh, and lying on bushes that overhung the
water. Ugly brutes they were, with bodies about
as shapely as the club-horn of a buck. Their
temper is exceedingly irritable; their manner is
truculent; their bite is deadly: at least their
venom is highly virulent. But our boatman,
Prince, had twice been struck, and he recovered.
One snake that struck him was quite small, but it
struck him in the fleshy part of the leg. This bite
gave him more trouble than the other, which had
been dealt by a monster, which had, however,
delivered the blow on the shin, where there is
small circulation. This shows that snake bite de-
pends for its seriousness chiefly on the part of the
body against which the blow is launched. The
neck is probably the most vital. The point under
the thigh where the great femoral artery nears
the surface is likewise vital. I once knew a hunter
to be struck there by a rattlesnake as he was sit-
ting down on a log to have lunch. The venom
was delivered so directly into the blood that the
victim died within twelve minutes. On the other
hand, I once had a negro woman run to me
screaming from her work in a rice-field. Lashed.

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 69

behind her, with his fangs fast in the callous pad
of her heel, was a cotton-mouth. The snake
was killed and the woman suffered from nervous
shock only, for none of the venom reached the
blood.

A half-mile downstream we came to the first
line, which was as we had left it. Below, how-
ever, where the second was, we saw a white ob-
ject, and the water was being kicked up by some-
thing. We thought at first that the object was a
dead egret, but this proved a mistake. Oddly
enough, it would appear on the surface and then
reappear. Not until we were fairly upon it did we
discover that it was a small ’gator, about five feet
long, fast to the hook. But it was not alive. It
had been killed by a monster ’gator, which had
actually been playing cannibal as we came up.
I did not see this second alligator, but the dead
one showed the unmistakable marks of huge,
blunt teeth, and the tanned skin, now in my
possession, shows the odd holes. We hauled
the ’gator aboard and continued on our course.

As we were pulling away from shore there
came to our ears one of those sounds which is rare
in nature —and awe-inspiring. The lion can
thrill with his roaring; the timber wolf can with

70 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

his howl. I have heard a wild bull on a lonely

sea island make a fearsome noise. The bull alli-
gator can sing such a song; and it was such a solo
that we heard. It is not often that a man is
privileged to hear that sound in the wilds. It
bears small resemblance to the commotion that
*gators in a reptile house sometimes set up. It is
long-drawn, deep, melodious in a fearsome way.
It seems to be the challenging call of a mature
bull; but it may serve as a love note as well. Itis
seldom heard save in the early spring and at
night. It therefore surprised me much to hear it
late in the summer, on a bright afternoon. As we
passed down the river the note became more for-
midable. It had in it an indefinable grimness. We
wondered if we were to see the great creature, and
if so, would it be possible to get a shot at him?

.As we neared one of the lines we saw a black
form lying high on the surface of the water, in a
position most unusual for a ’gator, which is used
to slinking along the surface. I had my rifle up for
a shot when Tom said, “‘He’s hooked. Don’t
shoot yet.” |

*Dat’s de same halligator what’s doin’ the
singin’, Prince said. |

Both he and Tom were right. The bull was on

ee Se ree. ae eK, ee Se oe i ae

ee nee ee

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 71

the line; and his roaring had been due to pain, or
else to a melancholy view of the situation in which
he found himself. As far as my experience ex-
tends, this was the first instance of an alligator

giving vent to any sound when hooked. There
was something terrible and impressive about
this huge saurian’s complaint. But he was not too
sorry for himself not to show fight. He plunged
beneath the surface as we neared him. I had to
get out and take hold of the line. We had a sharp
tussle for five minutes, but I could n’t bring him
from the bottom. My feet sank into the mud,
and the rope seemed to sink into my hands.
Finally Prince came to my rescue. Prince’s feet,
through a lifetime of going barefoot, supported
him on soft mud as snowshoes would on snow.
He brought the great bull to the surface, and the
rifle finished him. Tom said he was especially glad
to get this old bull, for from the island near where
we had caught him a dozen or more half-grown
Tamworths had disappeared; and no doubt this
*gator had accounted for them. He was large
enough to bear the blame for almost any kind
of a raid. His length was thirteen feet, and his
weight was well over four hundred pounds.

We could not take this monster into the boat,

72 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

so we towed him down to a landing, where we
left all three alligators. Prince disappeared for a
moment, and on returning he was followed by
several negroes of that part of the plantation. All
of them were busily sharpening knives, smiling,
and looking with satisfaction at our kill lying
onthe shore. We have a regular agreement on the
plantation that the negroes can have all the
gator meat if they will deliver to us the hides,
well skinned, and the teeth. Alligator steak, es-
pecially that cut from the slablike tail, is said to
be excellent. I have not sampled any as yet, for
it is reptile flesh, but the negroes declare that it
makes a man happy and courageous.

Between that landing and the house we caught
four other ’gators on the set lines. Judging from
the bait that was taken, squirrel was the favorite,
with barred owl a close second. None of these al-
ligators was more than eight feet in length. But
seven in a short day was going pretty strong; then
there was the leviathan which had jumped off
the shelving bank. As I said, we were to hear
from him.

It was the next afternoon that a dusky hunter
came to the house to report that the “grandpa
of all de ’gators” had gone ashore on the far

GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 73

southward point of the island. When questioned
as to the creature’s wounds, he said, “‘One ball,
sah, done darken he eye.”

Tom and I visited the place a day later. There
on a marshy shore lay the vast reptile. On ac-
count of his condition we could not save the hide;
but we measured him as he lay — fifteen feet,
nine inches! My chance shot had gone home; and
the tide and the creature’s convulsions had
brought it down the river. It had risen as Prince
had predicted it would, and then had drifted
ashore. We got the teeth from that bull. They
look like young elephant tusks.

I have described one day’s alligator-hunting.
There were others to follow; and ere the weeks
came to an end Tom and I were to have twenty-
nine hides drying, preparatory to being tanned.
We had not killed off all the ’gators by any
means, for there were still many in the river, but
we had accounted for some of the worst of the
old rascals. Even Prince, who is phlegmatic by
nature, was impressed by the extent of our sport.

“God A’mighty,” he said (meaning no irrev-
erence), “but we done make a war on dem halli-
gator. Cap’n,” he added to my brother, “dem
hog can root in peace now.”

CHAPTER V
THE WAYS OF THE WOOD DUCK

It was a day late in May, and the place was a
cypress-grown pond in the pinewoods of South
Carolina. Fishing for large-mouth bass with a
fly had lured me to such a place at such a time.
The long, quiet pond was mirror-like in its still-
ness, reflecting sky, motionless white clouds, and
the nearer objects of the scene, the moss-draped
cypresses, the lustrous sweet-gum trees, and the
tall, wild, white lilies that leaned over the edges
of the water.

Suddenly, from behind a clump of green marsh,
a series of ripples began to cross the channel in
front of my canoe. I knew that it must be
one of three things: an alligator swimming on
the surface, an aquatic bird, or else some fish
breaking water. I hoped it was a big bass rising
for a May-fly. But before I made a cast one
of the rare and exquisite sights in nature was
afforded.

Rounding the marsh a mother wood duck
came swimming with her brood. In the un-—

A Wood Duck Haunt |

THE WAYS OF THE WOOD DUCK 75

conscious moment before she saw me, I saw the
whole family mirrored in the black water. The
young were tiny babies, not more than three days
old. In color they were as jetty as ink. The
mother, seeing an enemy near, flapped pitifully
away over the water. The brood, fourteen in:
number, were equally aware of their danger.
What they did was comical in the extreme.
Every little black, roly-poly, fuzzy body tried to
dive; but each was so fluffy and light that it
could merely tip up. Sometimes for an instant
one baby would be on his back under water,
with his little feet kicking above the surface.
Sometimes one would keep rolling over and over
in the water. After a few minutes of this strenu-
ous exercise they were plainly tired. They then
began to swim into the marsh and the lily-pads.
I pushed the canoe forward, and soon I was glad
to see that the distressed mother had the whole
brood gathered safely to her again.

In that same pond I found, a few days later,
the nest of another duck. It was in a depression
between the limbs of the cypress, some fifteen
feet above the water. As the place was near
home, I decided to watch the nest closely in
order to discover how the mother would get her

"6 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

babies into the water, and how soon the plunge
would be taken. For three days after the eggs
hatched I watched, for hours at a time, the feed-
ing of the brood. This food consisted of tiny
fish, mussels, and small water-creatures of vari-
ous sorts. In the work of gathering this food the
male duck assisted; though up to this time he had
not been near the nest. Finally one afternoon,
with a good many strange noises, insistent, queru-
lous, explanatory, and with a good deal of fuss-
ing, the old mother duck pushed and persuaded
one of the brood to come to the edge of the shal-
low nest. Quickly she shoved the tiny black ball
from the limb, at the same time peering down
anxiously to see the result of the fall. The male
duck, I saw, was in the water below; and he took
care of the elfin swimmer, who, no whit dis-
turbed by his entrance into this new element,
began to paddle about, eyeing his father and his
new surroundings with the appraising eye of a
diminutive and very smart infant. The other
tiny ducks now began to roll out of the nest at a
great rate. The mother, as if satisfied that the
experiment was working well, ceased her nerv-
ous noises. In this brood there were only nine
young; and soon the whole flock, joined by the

THE WAYS OF THE WOOD DUCK 77

proud mother, was floating placidly on the pond’s
dark waters.

One other wood-duck nest that I knew of sur-
prised me greatly. It was made in the sleeping-
hole of a black pileated woodpecker, in a living
sweet-gum tree, forty feet above the ground, and
more than a mile from the nearest water! Un-
fortunately I was not able to observe this nest
closely; but it has always been interesting to
imagine how the mother took care of her brood.
No doubt she kept them in the nest until they
were able to fly; though if she did, she surely had
a full house before the young were old enough to
take wing. As the tree stood in a low place it
occurred to me that the duck might have se-
lected the site after a heavy rain, when a tem-
porary pond of water might have been formed
under the tree.

Most gentle, most beautiful, most lovable of
all our wild fowl is this wonderful duck; and if
those who hunt it for sport could have a few
appealing experiences of the sort related with
the family life of this lovely and harmless child
of nature, they who went out to kill would re-
main to admire and to love.

CHAPTER VI
WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE

To observe wild life is always interesting; and
this interest is increased when wild animals and
birds, by being placed in extraordinary situa-
tions, are obliged to exert their intelligence and
their resourcefulness to the utmost. An unusual
opportunity to observe wild life under most
unusual circumstances was lately afforded me;
and I shall here attempt to record the behavior
of the birds and animals during those portentous
days when the great forest fires of December,
1919, swept almost the entire coastal belt of the
Carolinas, leaving havoc and ashen desolation
in their wake.

During two weeks of the period mentioned
I was staying on our plantation near the mouth
of the Santee River; and as that region suffered
particularly from the fires, and as I spent all my
days and some of my nights in the pinelands, the
bay thickets, and the swamps, I was in a for-
tunate position to observe closely the very curi-
ous and interesting manner in which many wild

WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 79

creatures behaved in the presence of this lawless
and most destructive power.

Especially was I eager to note the behavior of
the game birds and animals, for the senses of
these have been sharpened by centuries of hunt-
ing, and their methods of escaping danger of all
kinds are both numerous and clever; and through
patience and good luck some exceptional chances
carefully to watch game were afforded me.

These wide-sweeping fires of which I write
were of no ordinary nature. Their far-reaching
extent was one marked feature. Then, perhaps,
never in the history of that part of the country,
had fires so favorable an opportunity to spread
rapidly and to burn fiercely. For nearly five
months no appreciable rain had fallen; the cus-
tomary drought of the summer had extended it-
self strangely far into the winter. Ponds which
ordinarily at that season were brimming, were
dry. Practically all the bay-branches were not |
only dry, but were sere and crackling. I was able
to walk a whole day through water-courses and
swampy lands without once dampening my feet.
Hunters of the pine-lands carried water in bottles
to give to their thirsty hounds. And of course the
_ broom-grass, the bark of pines, the withering

80 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

green of the water-courses, invited a fire to feed
savagely upon them.

And in due time the fire came. Some men suc-
ceeded, by back-firing, in cutting it off from their
places. But in most instances all attempts to
turn it or to check it were vain. It would roar
like thunder through a bay thicket, the solid
flames leaping thirty feet high. It would leap
roads. It devastated rail fences. And every-
where one heard the heavy falling of turpentine
trees that had been burned through at the bottom.
For nearly forty miles in front of us the fire ex-
tended, and I know not how much farther; but
we succeeded in stopping it on a wide road in
front of our house. Between that road and the
river there remained unburned a stretch of wild-
wood a mile in width and some four or five miles
long. Into this, as I was soon to discover, much
of the fleeing wild life came for refuge.

One afternoon, just about sundown, while I
was in a section of pine-lands that had not been
burnt, but which was surrounded on all sides by
the approaching fire, I was attracted to a dense
thicket of bays, only ten square yards or so in
area, that occupied the center of the unburned
tract. The fire, burning somewhat slowly and

WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 81

softly on account of the chill of the falling night,
with its attendant rise of dew, was about a hun-
dred yards away in each direction. It appeared
to me a place where wild life might be taking
temporary but insecure refuge; therefore I ap-
proached it cautiously, from the leeward side.

No sooner had I come alongside than I heard,
among the dry ferns and the dead leaves that
covered the sphagnum moss of the place, a
stealthy step. I say “stealthy’’; and that kind of
footfall made me know that it was no half-wild
hog’s that I heard, though many a one had been
seen running along, squealing disconsolately in a
minor key over the general state of affairs. But
this step was either that of a deer or turkey.
Dropping to one knee, I listened intently for
some further sound from the creature or for some
sight of it. For at least a minute it was still;
and that is a long time when one is tensely listen-
ing. Then came another footfall, but attended
this time by the crackling of the small dead
branches of the bays that hung above the ground.
This told me that the creature must be a deer.
A wild turkey may make much noise coming
through dead leaves, but seldom indeed does he
crack a bush, on which he does not step.

82 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

These dead branches were being forced out of
the way by a deer that, having lain in the thicket
all day long, was now coming out into the twi-
light of the pine-lands, to browse and to roam.
But he was about to emerge into a very different
world from the one which at daybreak he had left.
I wanted to see what he would think of it all, and
how he would act. The stealthy steps continued,
but with many a crafty pause between them. At
last, out of the head of the little pond, and not
more than twenty yards from me, there appeared
the graceful and sensitive head of a spike-buck.
His ears were set forward, and for a moment he
looked at the fire as it gleamed and crackled in
the broom-grass. He was the picture of alert in-
telligence. Suddenly he decided on his course.
Lowering his head, he stole forth noiselessly out
of the thicket. To the west of us was the wide
tract through which the fire had already passed;
yet it was toward this that the buck unhesitatingly
headed. He appeared not the least disconcerted
by the ring of fire surrounding him, but moved
steadily forward in that eerie, effacing way pecul-
iar to a deer. He reached the fire, and with one
great bound and a sudden show of his regimental

flag, he crossed the menacing circle, and was lost

Se eee ee

1 —

a ee. ee SO

WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 83

to sight in the smoky woodland. That deer was
not two years old; and I doubt if he had ever
seen fire before. But he handled himself in its
presence as if it was nothing unusual for him to
be caught by a ring of flames.

I saw that buck no more; but two days later,
a few miles to the southward of that place I
walked up an old, old stag that was serenely ly-
ing in his bed in some small bay-bushes, while
not a hundred yards to the left of him a fire
roared terribly, and while all the woods were
filled with acrid and blinding smoke. I believe
that, when lying close to the ground, deer do not
get the full effects of the smoke from a forest
fire. Judging from this second buck a deer takes
small account of a fire until it has literally run
him out of his covert; and, judging from the first
one, he is then as likely as not to jump coolly over
the danger. And if anything is true of a white-
tail, it is that he can jump as high and as far as
the occasion demands. The old stag which I
bounced up so suddenly made off in long, grace-
ful leaps, his course taking him parallel to the
high sheets of flame. His lithe rocking away be-
trayed not the least dismay or doubt.

Yet these devastating fires did cause the deer

84 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

much uneasiness, and set them to roaming”
freely. One morning, after a night of showers, on
a stretch of sandy road that was not more than
a mile in length, I counted the fresh tracks of
eleven deer that had crossed from the burnt areas
to the unburned sanctuary between the road
and the river. The sight of these tracks gratified
me because of the assurance that they gave that
all the game is not yet gone. Indeed, it appears
to me that wherever protective laws are duly
enforced, white-tail deer increase in the most
satisfactory manner; and it will probably be the
last of our big game animals which will be threat-
ened by extinction.

In the swampy and pine-barren country of
which I write there are quail in abundance; the
coveys do not often number more than a dozen
birds, but coveys are plentiful. When the fire
swept their damp coverts and their sunny feed-
ing-grounds of broom-sedge and gallberry, these
birds were in sore straights; the more so, per-
haps, because they are in the habit of frequenting
one especial locality. If undisturbed, and if the
nature of the landscape does not change, a bevy
of these fine birds will remain year after yearona _
remarkably limited range. But when the fire de- _

WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 85

stroyed all their feed and all their cover, they were
in a pathetic plight.

As I walked through the burnt country, every
few hundred yards I would hear the calling of
quail; and it was different from ordinary calling.
The whole covey, strung out in line, with all the
birds in plain view of one another, would set up
the far-penetrating, sweet calling typical of the
old mother. Many times I watched a covey thus
running on the burnt ground, and thus calling
in appealing distraction. It was like a lament, as
well it might be. I found these birds exceedingly
wild and well able to take care of themselves.
They would flush a hundred yards off, for my ap-
proach through the burnt and crackling bushes
was both noisy and obvious; and their flight
sometimes carried them clear out of vision. Two
or three days after the fire had passed, all these
birds had moved into the narrow strip of country
that had been saved from the flames. I doubt if
any of them actually perished by the fire; or if
their number will be lessened by their having to
leave their old haunts temporarily.

The game having the best chance to take care
of itself would naturally be the wild turkeys. In
December most of these are in the river swamps,

s6 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

where an abundance of choice food awaits them,
and into whose fastnesses few hunters ever pen-
etrate. Those which the fire found in the pine-
lands moved with their customary secret alacrity
toward the river. I did not actually see wild
turkeys fleeing the fire; but more than once I
came upon fresh tracks which showed that their
makers were heading riverward. Turkeys hate
noise; and they are among the first kinds of game
to leave burning woods — less perhaps because
of the fire than because of the tumult of it, and
the crashing of the tall pines.

While the smoke rolled skyward, a portentous
spectacle, it nevertheless acted as an attracting
force to many marauders. A forest fire draws all
the hawks of the neighborhood: and it is indeed
a strange sight to see them sailing through the
dense canopies of smoke, sometimes poising
above the leaping flames, and always hovering
near the hottest fire. They are seekers after
vermin which, fleeing for life, is necessarily ex-
posed. There is something weird in this sort of
hunting — and some reason, too, for admiring
these birds of prey which can keep their poise
and skill and their certain design while the world
seemed in chaos.

WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 87

After such a fire of mid-winter the Southern
woods will lie blackened for a month. Then
rains will come, taking the ashes into the soil,
washing off the bushes, and bringing freshness
to all things. Then soon, very soon, grass will
spring; then young bushes and ferns of magical
size and beauty. The woods will be green and
shimmering again. All the game will return.
The bucks with velveted antlers will delight in
the tender bay-bushes in which they can hide,
but which will not be harsh to their sensitive
horns. The turkeys will wander warily back.
The quail will troop once more into their old
haunts; and though for many years certain
signs of the fire will remain, in a single season
the woods will again be a fit habitation for
wild life.

CHAPTER VII
CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW

‘Tr them there ole bucks don’t run to the regular
stands, why don’t you go a-jumpin’ of ’°em? But
you must catch ’em on the dew.”’

“All right, Ned,” I answered, “but you'll
have to give me a word of direction about this
kind of deer-hunting.”

‘“Walk or ride,”’ said Ned, in his slow fashion,
always speaking gravely and deliberately when
discussing a sportsman’s question. And [I lis-
tened with all my listeners, for Ned Fort has
killed upward of seven hundred and fifty deer, and
he has taken all of them fairly. “If you ride,” he
continued, “you ought to have a horse that
won't pitch you if you shoot. I favors walkin’, for
then I has just one critter to steady — and that’s
myself. Even the gentlest horse is a-goin’ to fid-
get if a buck rips under its nose. Lordy!” he
ejaculated softly, his eyes lighting with reminis-
cent pleasure, “‘but I have burnt ’em a-jumpin’!
But don’t ride a mule,” he cautioned emphati-
cally; “‘not unless you want the seat of your
pants slammed up to where you wears your hat.”

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 89

That was the end of our conversation, yet
those few words from one of the famous deer-
hunters of the Southern pine-lands led me to take
up a new kind of deer-hunting that has afforded
me days of the most thrilling sport imaginable.
To give an idea of the nature of this sport, I can
best do so by telling just how I went about it and
by recording the results of my experiments.

I had long hunted deer on and near my old
plantation home on the coast of South Carolina.
The country is comparatively level, and for the
most part it is a piney-wood wilderness. Along
the rivers are gross swamps of big timber, while
the pine-land reaches are broken by innumerable
bays and the like. These are like little green
water-courses in winter woods. Of course, in this
kind of a forest much greenery prevails, even in
mid-winter, and the broom-grass, while yellowed,
is still standing straight, in contrast to what hap-
pens to similar growths in the North.

Formerly I had hunted deer according to the
usual custom in the South. Several of us would
take stands at the heads of bays, then the driver
would put the dogs in the foot of the thicket. I
had, in other years, killed many in that way, but
for some reason the sport had fallen off. Conse-

90 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

quently, when Ned Fort, the greatest deer-slayer
of my acquaintance, advised me to “jump them
on the dew” I was receptive to his plan.

I happened to be the only hunter on the plan-
tation that December; therefore what was to be
done had to be done single-handed. Of course, I
had hounds, but for this particular work I de-
cided to use one only, and that the slowest dog
in the pack. But Blue, though slow, was pos-
sessed of a notably cold nose. To summarize my
hunting equipment it consisted of the following:
One hunter, one hound, one twelve-gauge Parker
shotgun, with thirty-inch barrels that know how
to reach them at eighty yards, and a sufficient
number of buckshot and turkey-shot shells. I
usually hunt in a tan-colored sweater, carrying
my buckshot in my right-hand pocket and my
turkey-shot in the left. In a small pocket high
up I carry two shells from which all the shot
charge except two buckshot has been drawn.
These are for instant use in an emergency; to
finish a buck cleanly that does not need a whole
load, but which does need something more than a
careless approach with a hunting-knife. I have
long since learned not to monkey with a wounded

buck.

hn PRESS Ratt = See

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 91

Having gathered this equipment I left the
plantation house at six-thirty of a winter’s morn-
ing. I was walking. The hound, Blue, I led with
a rawhide strap. There had been a rain the after-
noon before; consequently I knew that all the
tracks I should see crossing the sandy pine-land
roads would be fresh. The morning was clear and
cool. There was hardly a breeze stirring. The
woods were as fragrant as Northern forests are in
October. The conditions were ideal for me to
jump them on the dew.

A half-mile from the plantation gate, while
still in the main road, I came upon the track of
a fine buck. It was so fresh that it looked
warm. It smelled warm, too, according to Blue’s
opinion. He almost broke away from me. I
pulled him back, tried to smother his long-drawn
yowl, and considered the situation. The buck
had not been gone more than an hour. He was
heading through the open pine-woods for a pond
known as Fawn Pond, which, being surrounded
by a dense growth of bays, was a favorite place
for deer to lie in the daytime. It looked like my
chance to sample Ned Fort’s brand of deer-hunt-
ing. I therefore decided to loose Blue and to
follow him closely. That he would jump the

92. PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

buck was a foregone conclusion. The question
was, would I be close enough for a shot? “Close
enough”? with a shotgun means any distance up
to eighty yards. I have killed a deer at one
hundred and eight measured yards, but that was
pure chance. “After forty yards uncertainty
begins,” is a tried maxim. With all conditions
right I should put the limit of uncertainty at
fifty. A man can sometimes kill cleanly at eighty
yards, but between fifty and eighty the chances
are against his doing so.

As soon as I loosed Blue he did a characteristic
thing: he smelled at the tracks voraciously, his
tail waving exultantly. Then he turned com-
pletely around with a waltz motion, sat down on
his haunches, threw his head up, and gave vent
to'a marvelous note. It sounded as if yards and
yards of canvas were being musically torn. As
the negroes in that part of the country would
say, Blue’s feelings were “‘sweeted.’”’ The buck’s
scent thrilled him so that he had to express his
emotions with some degree of ceremony. Hav-
ing thus relieved himself of some of his keenest
feeling, he began to follow the track, slowly and
certainly, giving at irregular intervals his glo-
rious music. Nearly every time he would turn —

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 93

around, and he continued his sitting down until
by mischance in his fervor he sat on a sharp
pine-knot. But he made up that lapse in cere-
mony by holding his tail higher.

As we advanced through the woods and as
the trail became hotter, Blue’s bark became
shorter, and he no longer turned around. I
did n’t have to tramp his heels either; the best I
could do was to keep up with him. By his change
of tone and by his increasing speed I knew that
we were drawing in very close. As the morning
was warm and still the buck might be lying down
in the broom-grass in the open woods. But as
the day promised to be a bright one I thought it
likelier that the crafty creature had hidden him-
self in the dense sweet bays and gallberries
which surrounded Fawn Pond. But wherever he
was I was ready for a sight of him.

Unless a deer happens to be standing, the easi-
est shot at him is afforded if he is going straight-
away. That, at least, has been my experience.
The broadsides and the quartering shots (es-
pecially those on the right) are difficult. And
what is true in this respect of the shotgun is like-
wise true of the rifle. I do not use a rifle in this
hunting, but my brother does, and he tells me

94 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

that his hardest shot is a right-hand quartering.
A head-on shot is n’t easy either; one thing that
makes it hard probably being the inevitable
excitement that a hunter feels if a buck turns
and comes straight for him at close quarters. I
find that the peculiar rocking motion of a deer’s
gait is liable to confuse the aim. To offset this
I never “follow”? a running deer with my gun
trying to get the bead on him. To shoot at a deer
in this way usually results in the deer’s having
a tickled tail or possibly a punctured paunch.
The gun must be thrown in ahead of the deer.
Then, when he jumps into the vision, nail him.
There is a knack in it, and hunters following these
directions might miss. As a man said indignantly
to me one day: “I did just what you told me. I
let him come into the sights, but he just jumped
over the shot.’ I heard an old deer-hunter de-
scribe one of his best long shots in this way: “‘He
_eame riding the briars. As he darkened I kindled,
and as I kindled he courtesied.”’

But to return to this other lordly creature I
was after and which I was expecting to jump any
minute. On coming within gunshot of Fawn
Pond I left Blue to work out his end of the busi-

ness while I tiptoed over to the windward side of |

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 95

the pond. My eyes were not taken off the place.
I went on the windward side because I knew the
buck would jump into the wind, even if he did
get a scent of me. There before me lay the round
green bay, the whole thing not a half-acre in ex-
tent. Was anybody at home? The green bay-
leaves shimmered in the light of the rising sun.
A pair of towhees rustled in the edges of the
thicket. On the limb of a big cypress that grew
in the pond I saw a black fox squirrel crouched
craftily. I wondered what else besides a man
and a hound he might be seeing. Perhaps he saw
a beam of fresh sunlight penetrating the bays
and myrtles and gleaming on polished antlers.

By this time Blue had entered the edge of the
pond. There for a moment he was silent — evi-
dently baffled. Then there came a great outcry
from him, and forthwith out bounded a beautiful
buck. He had jumped straight into the wind, his
course bringing him within forty yards of me. I
shot him dead.

“Well, Blue,’ I said to the eager hound as I
hung the buck on a cypress by the pond, “we
surely caught that fellow on the dew. How about
another one?”

Blue was game, so on we headed through the

96 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

piney-wood wilderness. It happened to be the
end of a very long dry season. In other deer
woods such a circumstance would have rendered
still-hunting conditions impossible, making any-
thing like a stealthy approach out of the ques-
tion. But in those Southern woods much of the
ground over which I traveled is normally under
water. Now, however, the water had disappeared,
leaving a springy footing of damp sphagnum
moss. I believe there is no footing in the world
that can be as absolutely soundless as this. Such
moss appears to absorb sound as it does water.
Some of my success undoubtedly was due to the
stealth of my approach. Indeed, what happened
next never could have occurred under normal
conditions.

Neglecting to follow Blue on a little side trail
that I believed amounted to nothing, he jumped
a deer out of gunshot from me and took it fly-
ing away through the woods. I decided to bide
my time in the neighborhood, knowing well that
both deer and dog would soon come back. My
experience has been that when a deer is started,
especially by one slow dog, it will play in front of
its pursuer, dodging, mazing the trail and dou-

bling, frequently returning to the place whence

ee

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 97

it was jumped. While waiting I “cruised” about
craftily, examining signs. Where I was the deer-
paths were as numerous and as well defined
as sheep-paths in a pasture or hog-paths in a
“crawl.”

My immediate environment consisted of a wide
amphitheater, level, grown with gallberry and
huckleberry bushes, and surrounded by swampy
thickets grown to heavy timber. I was then only
about four miles from the plantation house, yet
it was a region so primeval that, as far as traces
of his visits or occupancy were concerned, man
might never have seen the place. There is a vast
difference in appearance and in spirit between
natural wildness and the desolate wildness that
sometimes marks the track of man. This region
where I now found myself was wild, romantic,
lonely, beautiful, and full of a brooding quiet
and mystery. As I walked on over beds of gay-
colored moss I wondered how long it had been
since a human being had hunted there. I stooped
to pick up a huge stag’s antler, bleached by sun
and rain. Suddenly, not six feet from where I
stood a doe bounded up. She made a couple of
regular jumps and then a super-bound. My gun
was on her, but I hada heart. She stopped broad-

98 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

side at fifty yards, her beautiful face full of
puzzled wonder as she gazed back at me curiously.
As I stood motionless I think she had a hard time
making me out. In any event, she watched me
for a full minute before she took some stealthy
little rabbit-jumps into a thicket. I doubt if she
really recognized me. Just as she was disap-
pearing a second doe threw herself out of her bed
and rocked off lithely. I had it on her, too, but
even though it is legal to do so, killing a doe never
gives me any sport.

The beds that the two deer had just left were
examined. Evidently to a deer a bed is what a
“squat” is to a rabbit. A buck prefers to lie
down where his antlers have some play, but a
doe delights to creep into bed, selecting the coz-
iest places. One of these beds was in a natural
hollow on damp, bare ground, the little nook
being overhung with gallberry bushes. The other
was in a clump of thick bushes against the base of
a great pine. It was evident to me, from the
deep foot-tracks in the beds themselves, that
these deer had bounded from where they lay. I
had always been of the opinion that deer could
do that, but its truth had never before been so
clearly demonstrated.

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 99

Farther on a second antler was found, this one
being from another buck. On the sandy ridge
spanning the huckleberry savannah there were
deer signs innumerable. Turkeys had been there,
too. It was the kind of place to make a sports-
man happy.

Presently the voice of Blue, which had passed
far out of my hearing, was heard returning.
Knowing that the deer would be far ahead of
him (not in actual distance, but in time, since
the dog would have to unravel the dodging trail),
I sat down on a pine-log. Inside of five minutes
here came the deer — hopping along, then walk-
ing with head down, skulking it through, for all
the world like a rabbit. He was only forty yards
away and he did not see me. But from all the
signs that were thereabout I felt sure that there
must be something for me of a more respectable
size. That spike buck will never know how close
a call he had. When Blue, toiling on the mazy
track, came up, I put the strap on him, led him
away from the trail, and persuaded him to lie
down for a while.

By the time we recommenced our hunt it was
well on toward ten o’clock. Most of the winter
morning’s dew was gone. But having denied

100 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

myself three pot-hunter, pot-shot chances, it
seemed not unreasonable to hope that the gods
of sport would let the bearer of a brush-heap come
my way. I communicated my thoughts to Blue,
and he agreed that more sport was ahead for
us. |

Following the sandy ridge for half a mile,
making sure that Blue would not run foul of the
many fresh doe tracks that had been made in my
presence, we turned into a thicket of pines that
were permanently dwarfed. They were not over
five feet high, and the group of them covered
several acres. I knew this to be good buck ground,
for a buck loves a place from which he can clear
himself (antlers included) with no loss of time.
As we were following one of the paths, my atten-
tion was attracted by torn places in the thick
sphagnum moss. They were the tracks of a great
buck and they looked fresh. As soon as the hound
got to them, he said that they were. I knew, of
course, that in a place so remote and secret, deer
would walk later in the morning than they would
if they were close to civilization. This meant that
my buck might be standing in the young pines or
might be lying down near me serenely chewing
his cud.

A Double Shot on {| ' :
Spike-Horn Bucks

CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 101

“Find him, Blue,” I whispered, slipping the
strap.

As I stood up and as the hound tore off his first
grand-opera note, out from a dense clump of
young pines there flashed a tail that looked to
me as broad as a regimental flag. I fired. Down
he came, and when Blue and I reached him he
was dead. A magnificent creature he was, a
twelve-pointer, with a very unusual spread of
antlers. I looked at my, watch. It was ten-
fifteen.

Blue,” I said, “catching them on the dew is
the thing.”

Hanging up this buck I returned to the plan-
tation, rode back leading a second horse, and so
got the venison safely home.

A few days later, using the same methods, I
shot two more deer, besides passing up four easy
chances. It all led me to the conclusion that this
kind of deer-hunting has less tediousness in it
than any which I have ever enjoyed, and the ex-
citement when it came was about all with which
I could conveniently get away.

CHAPTER VIII
MY HUNTERMAN

As the wheezing river-tug drew away from the
decrepit wharf, my Hunterman, never losing an
opportunity to be near me to the last, was stand-
ing on the end of a cypress-log which jutted
out farther than the wharf into the swirling cur-
rent of the muddy Southern river. My last view
of him, as the straining tug turned from the river
into the tortuous creek whose marsh-grown banks
would shut us from sight, was all my heart de-
sired. There he stood, now a mile behind, strain-
ing his eyes and waving his hand.

““Earth’s single moments are unique,’ wrote
Austin Dobson; and so certainly are earth’s single
characters. That momentary scene of farewell
was unique, vividly so; and unique also is the
picturesque personality of my Hunterman.

Thirty years ago we were boys on a South
Carolina rice plantation; I the son of the owner
of the place, and he the son of the negro man-of-all
work. Until I went away to school we were in-
separable companions. We were partners in all

MY HUNTERMAN 103

kinds of plantation escapades and adventures;
in deer-hunting by day and in ‘coon-hunting by
night, in riding saplings in the great pine forest,
in catching alligators in the rice-field canals, in
trapping birds, in breaking colts, and in doing a
thousand other reckless, delightful things. Then
at last came the separation. Though I was white
and he was black, I was to become bond and he
was to remain free. I went away to school and
thence to college; then an opportunity for work
in the North was offered me. But at Christmas-
time I go back to the old plantation to hunt —
and to be with my Hunterman.

He, during the period when I was being edu-
cated, bought four acres of land adjoining the
plantation “so I can always be near you,” he
said, showed admirable thrift in putting his
sparse earnings into a good house, was hap-
pily married, and became the head of a house-
hold. But, despite certain traits of character
which seem to indicate a domestic nature, he
is, first of all, a Hunterman, and as such he is
unique. |

He inherits his talents for woodcraft from his
grandfather, who, before Emancipation, was the
professional slave “Hunterman’”’ of the planta-

104 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

tion. It is not generally known that certain
slaves were given regular work of this nature —
work for which they were peculiarly adapted, and
to which they brought high powers of skill and
abundant enthusiasm. Each plantation of the
Far South had its “Hunterman” and also its
“Fisherman,” whose duty it was to keep the
commissary of the estate supplied. These dusky
nimrods became experts in their callings, and
both they and their fellows took deep pride in
their achievements. Nor did they lack just
reasons for pride; for to them the wilds of the
forest and the deeps of the rivers yielded rich and
rare spoils. Thus it is related that the only chan-
nel bass ever taken in the Santee River were
caught nearly a century ago by the slave fisher-
man of Hampton Place. Like a true and jealous
sportsman he did not divulge his secret, and it
perished with him. Many stories could be told
of these adventurous characters who, by good
fortune, were permitted to live in America the
type of life most nearly resembling the life which
they would have led in their native land. But I
must return to their descendant, who maintains
with honor the talents which they bequeathed.

My Hunterman has features that are clear and |

MY HUNTERMAN 105

regular. His expression is open and pleasant. I
cannot say that “beauty born of murmuring
sound has passed into his face”’; yet surely there
is visible on his dark, quiet, mobile countenance
a lingering light of airy pine-woods, a sense of
wide spaces and vast river-scenes, a knowledge of
great nature and of greater human life. In height
he is not above the medium. True, his stature
is one which would set all the athletic coaches of
America agog if they could see it; his chest and
arms are leonine, massive. He got those mighty
muscles from sawing down yellow-pine timber,
ten hours a day every day for six years. Yet so
easy are his movements and so loosely do my
coats fit him that one does not guess his strength
until one sees him, while calming a fractious
mule, pick up a two-hundred pound buck and
lay it carefully on the prancing animal’s back.
Once, when he was about to return to the logging
camp, he remarked that he had a little walk
ahead of him that afternoon.

**How far is it?”’ I asked.

“Thirty miles,” he said.

“But you will not get there to-day?”

“Oh, yes, sah; it will not take me over six
hours.”

106 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

And I have good reason to know that it really
did not take him longer.

I suppose that living in a country of “magnifi-
cent distances”” has taught my Hunterman to
disregard them. He thinks nothing of walking
fifteen miles for a bag of tobacco and a pound of
bacon; the length of the journey not seeming out
of proportion to the purpose of it, for he has
never known anything else. To get a pair of wild
ducks he will paddle six miles down the river at
dusk, knowing well that six miles, and night, and
ebb-tide will, after his shooting, lie between him
and home. This physical adaptability to his cir-
cumstances makes it possible for him to ab-
stain, without inconvenience, from regular meals.
When I think my Hunterman is starting for the
woods with me too early to have had breakfast
at home, of course his lack is supplied. But on
one occasion I forgot to ask him. We hunted
hard all day. At nightfall, on our return, he in-
formed me, with high good humor, that he had
had “ no breakfast yet.”

Come with us — with me and my Hunterman
—on one of these hunts. It does not matter about
me; for I do not differ materially from the com-
mon army of sportsmen who autumnly haunt our.

MY HUNTERMAN 107

woods and fields, trying not so much to bag game
as to get back into tune with Nature — big and
sane and wholesome that she is! It does not mat-
ter about me; but you must see my Hunterman
at his best — as deer-driver in vast pine woods.
As we leave the plantation yard, he is mounted
on a little black mule whose perverse nature he
alone comprehends. Once I mounted that crea-
ture; but I was not permitted to be there long
enough to learn aught but that it was no place
for me. To a white man a mule must remain an
eternal mystery. With a whistle and a long,
mellow whoop, which resembles the blowing of
a horn, my Hunterman summons the hounds.
They appear in the order of their eagerness; the
younger ones yelping and frisking, the older ones
reserving their spirits for the ruling passion —
the stern business of the chase itself. From the
luring scent of fox-trails and raccoon-trails he
whistles and cajoles them away: they never mind
my whistle and scorn my cajoling, but his speech
is in their language and its tone they diligently
heed. Leaving the plantation avenue and the
sweet-smelling hedges between the fields, we
literally take to the woods — the vast and lonely
pine-woods, sun-bright and shimmering.

108 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Once in the deer country, we separate, I to take
up a stand at the head of a dense thicket of
myrtles and sweet-bays, and he to drive through
it with the dogs. I wait quietly at the forehead
of the dewy evergreen copse. Soon I hear my
Hunterman coming toward me. He is varying
the camp-meeting tune he is whistling so that it
will urge.the hounds on. Presently I hear a tre-
mendous bound in the bays; then my Hunterman
whoops at the top of his voice, “’Tis the ole
buck! ’T is the ole buck! For God’s sake, don’t
miss him!”

Here comes the buck, bounding grandly, his
great antlers outreaching his stride. Probably
by the kindly intervention of Providence, which
my Hunterman had indirectly invoked, I do
not miss the buck. He is a fine one, with a ruddy
coat and tall chestnut-colored antlers. For me
and my Hunterman the cup of sporting joys
overflows. After a little discussion of how the
whole happy affair transpired, he puts the deer
on the mule and we return home.

The next day I say good-bye to my Hunter-
man — and it must be good-bye for a year. Of
course I write to him and send him things; some
garden seeds, tobacco, and a little money; also all

MY HUNTERMAN 109

the clothes which my children cannot wear with-
out shame to kindergarten, but his can wear not |
without pride in plantation fields.

Another year and we shall be together again!
It is a happy prospect. Our companionship may
be unusual, even unique; but if it is not genuine,
life has failed to teach me the meaning of loving |
comradeship.

CHAPTER IX
OUR GOBBLER

I suppose that there are other things which make
a hunter uneasy, but of one thing I am very sure:
that is, to locate and to begin to stalk a deer or a
turkey, only to find that another hunter is doing
precisely the same thing at the same time. The
feeling I had was worse than uneasy. It is, in
fact, as inaccurate as if a man should say, after
listening to a comrade swearing roundly, “ Bill is
expressing himself uneasily.”

To be frank, I was jealous; and all the more so -
because I knew that Dade Saunders was just as
good a turkey-hunter as I am — and may be a
good deal better. At any rate, both of us got after
the same whopping gobbler. We knew this turkey
and we knew each other; and I am positive that
the wise old bird knew both of us far better than
we knew him.

But we hunters have ways of improving our ac-
quaintance with creatures that are over-wild and
shy. Both Dade and I saw him, I suppose, a
dozen times; and twice Dade shot at him. I had

OUR GOBBLER 111

never fired at him, for I did not want to cripple,
but to kill; and he never came within a hundred
yards of me. Yet I felt that the gobbler ought to
be mine; and for the simple reason that Dade ©
Saunders was a shameless poacher and a hunter- |
out-of-season.

I have in mind the day when I came upon him
in the pine-lands in mid-July, when he had in his
wagon five bucks in the velvet, all killed that
morning. Now, this is n’t a fiction story; this is
fact. And after I have told you of those bucks I
think you'll want me to beat Dade to the great
American bird.

This wild turkey had the oddest range that
you could imagine. You hear of turkeys rang-
ing “original forest,” “timbered wilds,” and the
like. Make up your mind that if wild turkeys
have a chance they are going to come near Civi-
lization. The closer they are to man, the farther
they are away from their other enemies. Near
civilization they at least have (but for the likes
of Dade Saunders) the protection of the law.
But in the wilds what protection do they have
from wildcats, from eagles, from weasels (I am
thinking of young turkeys as well as old), and
from all their other predatory persecutors?

112 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Well, as I say, time and again I have known
wild turkeys to come, and to seem to enjoy com-
ing, close to houses. I have stood on the porch of
my plantation home and have watched a wild
flock feeding under the great live-oaks there. I
have repeatedly flushed wild turkeys in an au-
tumn corn-field. I have shot them in rice-stubble.

Of course they do not come for sentiment.
They are after grain. And if there is any better
wild game than a rice-field wild turkey, stuffed
with peanuts, circled with browned sweet pota-
toes, and fragrant with a rich gravy that plan-
tation cooks know how to make, I’ll follow you
to it.

The gobbler I was after was a haunter of the
edges of civilization. He did n’t seem to like the
wild woods. I think he got hungry there. But
on the margins of fields that had been planted
he could get all he wanted to eat of the things he
most enjoyed. He particularly liked the edges of
cultivated fields that bordered either on the pine-
woods or else on the marshy rice-lands.

One day I spent three hours in the gaunt
chimney of a burned rice-mill, watching this
gobbler feeding on such edges. Although I was
sure that sooner or later he would pass the mouth

OUR GOBBLER 113

of the chimney, giving me a chance for a shot, he
kept just that distance between us that makes a
gun a vain thing in a man’s hands. But though
he did not give me my chance he let me watch
him all I pleased. This I did through certain
dusty crevices between the bricks of the old
chimney.

If I had been taking a post-graduate course in
Caution, this wise old bird would have been my
teacher. Whatever he happened to be doing, his
eyes and his ears were wide with vigilance. I
saw him first standing beside a fallen pine-log on
the brow of a little hill where peanuts had been
planted. I made the shelter of the chimney be-
fore he recognized me. But he must have seen
the move I made.

I have hunted turkeys long enough to be thor-
oughly rid of the idea that a human being can
make a motion that a wild turkey cannot see.
One of my woodsman friends said to me: “ Why,
a gobbler can see anything. He can see a busi-
ness chance that a Jew would miss. He can see
a jaybird turn a somersault on the verge of the
horizon.”’ He was right.

Watching from my cover I saw this gobbler
scratching for peanuts. He was very deliberate

114 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

about this. Often he would draw back one huge
handful (or footful) of viney soil, only to leave it
there while he looked and listened. I have seen
a turkey do the same thing while scratching in
leaves. Now, a buck while feeding will alternately
keep his head up and down; but a turkey gobbler
keeps his down very little. That bright, black eye
of his, set in that sharp, bluish head, is keeping
its vision on every object on the landscape.

My gobbler (I called him mine from the first
time I saw him) found many peanuts, and he
relished them. From that feast he walked over
into a patch of autumn-dried crabgrass. The
long, pendulous heads of this grass, full of seeds,
he stripped skillfully. When satisfied with this
food he dusted himself beside an old stump. It
was interesting to watch this; and while he was
doing it I wondered if it was not my chance to
leave the chimney, make a detour, and come up
behind the stump. But of course, just as I de-
cided to do this, he got up, shook a small cloud of
dust from his feathers, stepped off into the open,
and there began to preen himself.

A short while thereafter he went down to a
marshy edge, there finding a warm, sandy hole
on the sunny side of a briar-patch, where he

OUR GOBBLER 115

continued his dusting and loafing. I believe that
he knew the stump, which shut off his view of
what was behind it, was no place to choose for
a midday rest.

All this time I waited patiently; interested, to
be sure, but I should have been vastly more so if
the lordly old fellow had turned my way. This
I expected him to do when he got tired of loafing.
Instead, he deliberately walked into the tall ranks
of the marsh, which extended riverward for half
a mile. At that maneuver of his I hurried for-
ward, hoping to flush him on the margin; but he
had vanished for that day. But though he had
escaped me the sight of him had made me keen
to follow him even to that last hour when he
should be obliged to accompany me home.

Just as I was turning away from the marsh
I heard a turkey-call from the shelter of a big
live-oak beside the old chimney. My heart told
me that the caller was Dade Saunders and that
he was after my turkey. I walked over to where
he was making his box-call plead musically.
Dade expressed no surprise upon seeing me. We
greeted each other as two hunters who, being not
over-friendly, greet when they find themselves
after the same game.

116 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

“I seen the tracks of his number 9’s,” said
Dade. “I believe he limps in the one foot since
I shot him last Sunday will be a week.”

““He must be a big bird,” was my comment.
“You were lucky to have a shot.”

Dade’s eyes became hungrily bright. The
great gobbler was even then in his mind’s vision.

““He’s the biggest in all this country, and I’m
a-going to get him yet. You jest watch me.”

“T suppose you will, Dade. You are certainly
the best turkey-hunter of these parts.”

My hope was to make him over-confident; and
praise is a fearful corrupter of mankind. It is not
unlikely to make a hunter miss a shot. I remem-
ber a sportsman friend of mine once laughingly
said: “If a man tells me I am a good shot, I will
miss my next chance, as sure as guns; but if he
cusses me and tells me that I am not worth a
darn, then watch me shoot!”’

For the time Dade Saunders and I parted.
I walked off toward the marsh, whistling an old
song. The sound of this tune was to make the
old gobbler put a little more distance between
himself and the poacher. Besides, I could feel
that it was right of me to do this; for while I was
on my own land my visitor was trespassing.

OUR GOBBLER 117

I hung around the marsh-edges and the scrub-
oak thickets for a while; but no gun spoke out.
The silence indicated that the old gobbler’s intel-
ligence plus my whistling game had “foiled the
relentless’? Dade. It was the week later when the
three of us met again.

Not far from the peanut-field there is a planta-
tion corner. Now, most plantation corners are
graveyards; that is, cemeteries of the old days
where negro slaves were buried. Occasionally
now a negro is buried, but through the jungle-
like growths pathways have to be cut to enable
the cortége to enter. Such a place is the wildest
wilderness. Here grow towering pines, mournful
and moss-draped. Here are great hollies, cano-
pied with the running vines of the yellow jas-
mine; here are thickets of myrtle, sweet gum,
young pines, and sparkleberries. If a covey of
quail goes into such a place, you might just as
well whistle off your dog, for both you and he
may get lost in there while trying to find the
birds.

Here, because in such a place they can hide
from the heat and from the gauze-winged flies,
deer love to come in the summer. In the winter
such a place on a plantation is a haunt for wood-

118 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

cock, an excellent range for wild turkeys (since
here great live-oaks shower down their sweet
acorns), and a harbor for foxes and for other
creatures of the general varmint type. Here in
the great pines and oaks turkeys love to roost;
such a place seems solitary, remote, and de-
tached from the life of the world. If the sun
approaches setting, no negro will be found near
a graveyard of this mournful type. It was on the
borders of just such a place that I roosted the
splendid gobbler.

' The sunset of a mid-December day glowed
warmly. I had left the plantation house an hour
before in order to stroll the roads through the
shrubberies of the home tract, counting (as I
always do) the number of deer and turkey tracks
that have recently been made in the soft, damp
sand. Coming at last near the dense corner I sat
with my back against the bole of a monster pine.
Aside from the pleasure of being a hunter there
is a delight in being a mere watcher in the wild-
woods.

About two hundred yards away, on a gentle
rise in the pine-lands, there was a little sunny
hill grown to scrub oaks. Their standing sparsely
enabled me clearly to see what I now beheld.

OUR GOBBLER 119

Into my vision, with the long, level rays of the
sinking sun gleaming softly on the bronze of his
neck and shoulders, the great gobbler stepped with
superb beauty. Though he deigned to scratch
once or twice in the leaves, and peck indiffer-
ently at what he thus uncovered, I well knew
that he was bent on going to roost; for not only

was it nearly his bedtime, but he appeared to be
| examining, with critical appraisal, every tall tree
in his neighborhood.

In my sight he remained ten minutes; then he
stepped into a patch of gallberries. I sat where
I was, in silence and in motionlessness, trying
earnestly to imitate those lying in the ancient
graves behind me. For five minutes the big
bronzed bird of the pine-lands kept me in sus-
pense. Then he suddenly shot his great bulk into
the air, beating his ponderous but graceful way
into the huge pine that seemed to sentry that
whole wild tract of woodland.

Marking with strained eyes every inch of his
flight I saw him when he came to the limb he had
selected. He sailed up to it and alighted with
much scraping of bark with his big and clumsy
shoes. So there, outlined against the warm colors
of that winter sunset sky, was my gobbler. It

120 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

was hard, indeed, to take my sight from him; but
I did so in order to get my bearings in relation to
his position. His flight had brought him some-
what nearer to me than he had been while on the
ground. But he was still far out of gun-range.

To see how I was going to maneuver to ap-
proach him there was no use for me to look into
the graveyard; for therein a man can hardly set
a foot, and certainly in such thickets he cannot
move without rivaling, by the conspicuous noise
he makes, a wild bull of Bashan. Down the dim
pine-land road I therefore glanced. A moving
object along its edge attracted my attention. It
skulked. Like a ghostly thing it seemed to flit
down from pine to pine. But despite my proxim-
ity to a cemetery, I knew that I was looking at
no “hant.” It was Dade Saunders.

He, as well as I, had roosted the old gobbler,
and he was trying to get up to him. Moreover,
he was at least fifty yards closer to him than I
was. Instinct told me to shout to him to get
off my land; but then a better idea came.
Quickly my turkey-call was brought into use.

As was intended, the first note was natural
and good. An old hen-turkey was querulous.
But then there came some heart-stilling squeaks ©

OUR GOBBLER 121

and shrills. In the pine-wood dusk two things
were noticed: Dade’s making a furious gesture
was one; the other was the old gobbler’s launch-
ing himself out from the pine, winging a lordly
way far over the graveyard thicket and the lone
wood beyond. I walked down slowly and peer-
ingly to meet Dade.

“Your call’s broke,”’ he announced.

“What makes you think so?” I asked.

“Sounds awful funny to me,” he said; “more
than likely it might scare a turkey. Seen him
lately?’’ he asked.

“You are better at seeing that old bird than
I am, Dade.”’

Thus I put him off; and shortly thereafter we
parted. He was sure that I had not seen the
gobbler; and that suited me all right.

Then came the day of days. I was up at dawn,
and when certain red lights between the stems
of the pines announced daybreak I was at the far
southern end of the plantation, on a road on
either side of which were good turkey woods.
I just had a notion that my gobbler might be
found here, as he had of late taken to roosting
in a tupelo swamp near the river and adjacent
to these woodlands.

122 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Where some lumbermen had cut away the big
timber, sawing the huge short-leaf pines close to
the ground, I took my stand (or my seat) on one
of these big stumps. Before me was a tangle of
undergrowth; but it was not very thick or high.
It gave me the screen I[ wanted; but if my turkey
came out through it I could see to shoot.

It was just before sunrise that I began to call.
It was a little early in the year (then the end of
February) to lure a solitary gobbler by a call;
but otherwise the chance looked good. And Iam
vain enough to say that my willow box was not
broken that morning. Yet it was not I but two
Cooper’s hawks that got the old wily rascal
excited.

They were circling high and crying shrilly
over a certain stretch of deep woodland; and the
gobbler, undoubtedly irritated by the sounds, or
at least not to be outdone by two mere maraud-
ers on a domain which he felt to be his own,
would gobble fiercely every time one of the hawks
would cry. The hawks had their eyes on a build-
ing site; wherefore their excited maneuvering and
shrilling continued; and as long as they kept up
their screaming so long did the wild gobbler
answer in rivalry or provoked superiority, until |

OUR GOBBLER 123

his wattles must have been fiery red and near to
bursting. 3

I had an idea that the hawks were directing
some of their crying at the turkey, in which case
the performance was a genuine scolding match of
the wilderness. And before it was over several
gray squirrels had added to the already raucous
debate their impatient, coughing barks. This
business lasted nearly an hour, until the sun had
begun to make the thickets “smoke off”’ their
shining burden of morning dew.

I had let up on my calling for a while; but
when the hawks had at last been silenced by dis-
tance, I began once more to plead. Had I had
a gobbler call the now enraged turkey would have
come to me as straight as a surveyor runs a line.
But I did my best with the one I had. I was
answered by one short gobble, then by silence.

I laid down my call on the stump and took up
my gun. It was in such a position that I could
shoot quickly without much further motion. It
is a genuine feat to shoot a turkey on the ground
after he has made you out. I felt that a great
moment was coming.

But you know how hunter’s luck sometimes
turns. Justas I thought it was about time for him

124 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

to be in the pine thicket ahead of me, when, in-
deed, I thought I had heard his heavy but cau-
tious step, from across-the road, where lay the
companion tract of turkey woods to the one I
was in, came a delicately pleading call from a lien-
turkey. The thing was irresistible to the gob-
bler; but I knew it to be Dade Saunders. What
should I do?

At such a time a man has to use all the head
work he has. And in hunting I had long since
learned that that often means not to do a darn
thing but to sit tight. All I did was to put my
gun to my face. If the gobbler was going to
Dade he might pass me. I had started him com-
ing; if Dade kept him going he might run within
hailing distance. Dade was farther back in the
woods than I was. I waited.

No step was heard. No twig was snapped.
But suddenly, fifty yards ahead of me, the great
bird emerged from the thicket of pines. For an
instant the sun gleamed on his royal plumage. My
gun was on him, but the glint of the sun along
the barrel dazzled me. I stayed my finger on the
trigger. At that instant he made me out. What
he did was smart. He made himself so small
that I believed it to be a second turkey. Then

OUR GOBBLER 125

he ran crouching through the vines and huckle-
berry bushes.

Four times I thought I had my gun on him, but
his dodging was that of an expert. He was get-
ting away. Moreover, he was making straight
for Dade. There was a small gap in the bushes
sixty yards from me off to my left. He had not
yet crossed that. I threw my gun in the opening.
In a moment he flashed into it running like a
race-horse. I let him have it. And I saw him go
down.

Five minutes later, when I had hung him on a
scrub oak and was admiring the entire beauty of
him, a knowing, catlike step sounded behind me.

“Well, sir,”’ said Dade, a generous admiration
for the beauty of the great bird overcoming other
less kindly emotions, “‘so you beat me to him.”

There was nothing for me to do but to agree.
I then asked Dade to walk home with me so that
we might weigh him. He carried the scales well
down at the twenty-five-pound mark. An ex- |
traordinary feature of his manly equipment was
the presence of three separate beards, one be-
neath the other, no two connected. And his
spurs were respectable rapiers.

“Dade,” I said, “what am I going to do with

126 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

this gobbler? I am alone here on the planta- |

tion.”

The pine-land poacher did not solve my prob-
lem for me.

“T tell you,” said I, trying to forget the matter
of the five velveted bucks, “some of the boys
from down the river are going to come up on
Sunday to see how he tastes. Will you join us?”’

You know Dade Saunders’s answer; for when a
hunter refuses an invitation to help eat a wild
turkey, he can be sold to a circus.

es ee See

CHAPTER X
THE DEER AND THE HOUND

No plantation really looks natural unless there
are deer-hounds loafing on the premises; and
among the most exciting game trails in Southern
hunting are those found and followed by these
same faithful allies of the sportsman.

A word of explanation, which is, however, dis-
tinctly not one of apology, is perhaps necessary
in writing about the deer and the hound. The
reason is because in many States the use of dogs
in deer-hunting is strictly prohibited by law. I
am sure, however, that such a law is not to be
interpreted as denouncing as barbarous the use
of hounds, but is rather to be considered merely
as a measure for the preservation of game. True,
in the North, the hounding of deer on ice and on
crusted snow is a cruel practice; but the bar-
barity of it is due less to the method pursued than
to the conditions attending such a hunt. I agree
with Dr. William T. Hornaday when he con-
tends that deer-hounds should never be used in
the North; but I always think such prohibition

128 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

is geographically limited. For example, I can be
in full sympathy with Colonel Roosevelt when
he describes how he enjoyed hunting the white-
tail with hounds on the plantations on the Gulf
Coast of Mr. John McIlhenny and Mr. John M.
Parker. But really, if deer were abundant in
their Northern haunts, and if they were hunted
in the forepart of the autumn instead of in the
latter part, there would be little to say against
the use of hounds. At least one great advantage
would be that a seriously wounded deer would
rarely escape. Perhaps an unscrupulous use of
dogs against deer is probably what killed the
sport in the North. We use bird-dogs without
scruple; and the deer-hound has a longer and
nobler lineage, and the traditions concerning his
ancestors’ following of the stag are more romantic
than any blood or any traditions that a bird-dog
can show. It is true that bird-dogs have been
trained to hunt deer. On this matter we have
the word of no less an authority than T. 5. Van
Dyke. I confess that I have had no experience
with bird-dogs that follow, find, and even point
deer, although while hunting quail in the pine-
lands I have seen a bird-dog take notice of a fresh
deer-track, and even run a deer by sight. But.

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 129

with that matchless race of dogs whose business
in life is to trail, jump, and run deer I have had
dealings since boyhood. It is my hope here to
give a careful account of the nature, behavior,
and achievements of these sagacious creatures.

The deer-hound that I know is a lean, hungry,
wavy-tailed, intelligent-eyed master of the chase.
He is always famished. He is always skulking in-
to the house, lying down in those places where he
is most certain to be stepped on, gifted in setting
up mighty howls when he is even slightly hurt,
always capable of slipping a collar or getting
out of a stockade, and withal the craftiest thief
imaginable. Dual is his nature: he is the Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the canine world. At
home he is usually a perfect nuisance, but in the
woods he is superb. The plantation deer-hound
falls far short as a social or decorative feature of
the home; but he is grand in the chase. Although
he is an awful cross to the hunter’s wife, he is
the hunter’s delight. But perhaps, after all, he
learned from human beings to show his worst side
at home.

When I think of deer-hounds wonderful mem-
ories of the old days come to me. I think of the
packs whose wild music made the lonely woods of

130 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Santee resound. I think of certain famous pairs

of dogs: of Check and Mate; of Gambler and

Sportsman; of Drum and Fife; of Lead and Loud.
I see the shimmering sunny thicket of green bays,
the deer’s favorite covert; I hear the slow trail-
ing, which gradually warms as the chances for a
real race develop; I see the high bound of the old
stag as, with a single superb leap, he leaves his
lair. His high bounding takes him clear of the
thicket; he reaches the open pine-lands —a
beautiful creature beginning a great race. His
broad white tail is held stiffly erect; it jerks from
side to side with the muscular movements of his
haunches. His tall, chestnut-colored antlers
outreach his stride. On and on he goes, floating
buoyantly over obstacles, breasting brightly
through patches of yellow broom-sedge, heading
on through reaches of gallberry and huckleberry.
And now the pack clamors out of the thicket and
the wide pine-lands echo that melody that is
sweetest to the woodsman’s ears. Such memories!

But to have good deer-hunting a man should
have trained hounds; and the matter of training
a well-bred hound to the hunt is not difficult.
The gist of the situation may be put in this way:

a young hound is easy to start, but he may be

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THE DEER AND THE HOUND 131

very hard to stop. As far as his trailing and
jumping deer are concerned, a young hound is
considered “made’’ when his first deer is shot
before him; after that, it will not be necessary to
persuade him to hunt. It is a serious piece of
business to miss a deer in front of a dog that is
taking his first lesson; for he is liable to be led to
believe that the sound of the gun is a signal from
the hunter that he must put on more steam and
overhaul the deer in short order. This is bad:
he may keep on the track for hours, and finally
come home, not an ignorant dog exactly, but
what is worse: a falsely educated dog, a dog with
a wrong idea in his head. It is perhaps fair to
consider a deer-hound’s training finished when,
the deer having eluded the standers, the hound
responds to the horn and quickly returns to the
master of the hunt. Some dogs, it is true, will
never learn to do this; but others show great in-
telligence in the matter. I have had hounds that
would pursue deer only five or ten minutes when
they would return on the back-track. Such dogs
are invaluable —this quality of faithful re-
turning being worth more to the hunter than
keenness of nose or fleetness of foot. Other
hounds I have known acquired the habit of cut-

132 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

ting through the woods until they would strike
the trail of the horses that the hunters had rid-
den. This scent they would follow on the for-
ward track until they had rejoined the hunting
party. I once owned a fine hound named Bugle,
whose sole defect as a deer-hunter lay in the fact
that he would quit running as soon as the deer
had escaped the hunters, make in business-like
fashion for the nearest pine-land road, and rapidly
return to the plantation house. Repeatedly have
I had to ride several miles in to the plantation to
recover Bugle; but he was so well worth recover-
ing that I never had the heart to be harsh with
him when, after a hard chase to find him, I dis-
covered him calmly and amiably dozing at home
on the sunny side of the old rice-barn.

In dealing with hounds after deer probably
the most important and difficult matter is to
teach a dog to stop automatically from a wild
and fruitless chase; or if he will not do this by
instinct he must learn to come to call. This is
doubly necessary: first, as has been said, if a dog
gets away after a deer he may run indefinitely,
thus terminating his usefulness for that day;
then a deer in flight from a hound is sure to run
through deer haunts, rousing and scattering the

_ THE DEER AND THE HOUND 133

game there assembled. A dog has frequently
been known thus to spoil a whole day’s sport.
Once I saw a fast, undisciplined hound follow a
lone old buck into a wilderness of deer-drives.
When he returned about an hour later he had a
collection of eleven deer before him; but he had
mislaid the original stag. Deer that are started in
such a crazy, haphazard fashion are liable to run
almost anywhere, and the chances are indeed
slim for the hunter to have a shot.

A hound’s willingness to obey, even in the
pitch of excitement, his master’s injunction —
his consent to forego the wolfish rapture of putting
an old buck at top speed into the big timber — is
Jess, I think, a matter of training than it is of
character and temperament. A hound that has
a very definite savage element in his nature can
hardly be stopped or taught to stop, whereas a
gentler dog will take easily to the necessary re-
strictions. In this matter a male dog is generally
much harder to manage than a female, and a
dog of common stock than one well bred. The
cases of Lucy and Hickory will illustrate what is
meant.

Lucy was a hound of unknown pedigree. I
bought her from a poacher of the pine-lands be-

134 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

cause it hurts me to have so lawless a hunter own
so matchless a dog; then, too, her beautiful head
and the great intelligence that looked out of her
large brown eyes appealed strongly to me. She
was, as any good observer might perceive, a sen-
sitive creature of delicate perceptions, and that
is the kind of material out of which to make dogs
that money cannot buy. I do not know that
I ever taught Lucy anything about hunting;
but what I learned from her was not a little.
She was the kind of a dog — that delight to a
hunter’s heart! — that did best when permitted
to have her own way. In the woods she simply
appeared to anticipate everything that I wanted
her to do. I can hear her now giving a gurgling
series of joyous yelps and whines as the tuning-
up of the horns announces that a deer-hunt is in
prospect. I can see her now, following me down
the dewy, pine-trashed plantation road, never
once pausing on the seductive scents of raccoon,
fox, opossum, or wildcat. And there were plenty
of these; for on both sides of the road stretch
fragrant dense thickets, deep swamplands, and
far-reaching wildwoods. But Lucy was all deer-
dog. If she came to a deer-track that had any-

thing alive about it, she would stop, and that

eS ee ig ae ee ae

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 135

long tail of hers would begin its high, expressive
waving; but without my consent she would not
follow the hottest scent. Whenever we found
ourselves in good deer country — in low thickets
of myrtle and sweet-bay, and in quiet stretches of
huckleberry, or on the borders of woodland ponds
— she was forever smelling on the bushes. This
is a true deer-dog trait, ever to be admired. A
hound that persists in traveling through bushes
with his nose to the ground is more than likely a
rabbit-hunter, or, to use a stock expression among
the negroes of the Santee country, “‘a fine var-
mint dog.” Of course, a cold-trailer keeps his
nose to earth, as he should do in open woods; but
a deer-scent will sometimes linger aslong ondamp
bushes as it will on the ground, and the best deer-
hounds invariably “travel high” in brush. The
scent-pockets or glands on the inside of the knees
on a deer’s hind legs probably leave the scent
by which deer commonly follow one another; and
that this must be exceedingly pungent is proved
by the readiness with which a good hound picks
it up. Hunters who have closely observed the
behavior of hounds trailing deer have noticed
that their noses are lifted higher and higher as the
hotness of the scent increases. I suspect that

136 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

they have an intense eagerness to view the game
they are pursuing. Lucy’s excitement at such a
time showed in her head, her tail, her voice, and
in the ever-increasing speed at which she would
travel. And when she once started a deer he
had to hoof it. There could be in front of her no
dilly-dallying and rabbit-hopping and easy dodg-
ing such as might be practiced on a slow-poke
hound. If she jumped a deer in a thicket she made
it her business to bring him out in short order.
But if she took the deer past the standers (and
she always seemed to know exactly where we
were) she would abandon the chase. By the
time we had mounted our horses to move on to a
new drive she would be with us again — oaert
obedient, full of fine intelligence.

I hunted with Lucy for five years; and I can’t
remember having scolded her a single time. At
last, when a negro poisoned her because I had
been obliged (according to the law and custom
of the land) to shoot his sheep-killing dog, there
was homicide in my heart — and all of it isn’t yet
gone. Lucy, Lady Lucy, was the type of hound
that makes the best traditions of deer-hunting.

Now, Hickory was a very different kind of a
creature. He is not dead yet; and when I con-

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 137

sider some of the treatment that he has sur-
vived, doubts as to whether he will ever die arise
in me. He has been clubbed and drubbed and
mauled scores of times by various men who have
owned him, but he has digested the bitterest
medicine that all these physicians could adminis-
ter. In size Hickory is a brute of a dog, and in
color he is a tawny, shaggy gray. He is powerful
and rangy; and the fierce independence of his dis-
position he must have inherited from wolfish an-
cestors. It is true that in some things he will lis-
ten to reason, is amenable to discipline; but in
hunting the deer he is simply bound to have his
own wild way. His character has strongly im-
pressed the community in which he resides, and
this impression is especially distinct among the
negroes. Hickory had not been in my possession
a week before I discovered that he seemed to be
public property. First a negro came nine miles
out of the pine-lands to borrow the dog.

“What do you want with him, Jason?” I
asked.

*T hab a wild bull,” he answered; “‘and I know
yo dog can ketch ’um.”

The dog was permitted to go on this unusual
mission and he speedily did the work required.

138 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

“He done scare all the meanness out o’ dat
bull,” Jason reported when he returned Hickory.

Another negro borrowed him to catch a savage
boar of Boggy Bay that had already killed three
ordinary “ketch dogs,” and had wounded and
cowed as many more. The only trouble arising
from employing Hickory for this kind of work
was that he almost killed the boar.

At another time, at dusk in the evening I
found a negro loafing near the plantation gate-
way, a quarter of a mile from the house. This
made me suspicious.

“What is it you want?” I asked.

“IT been waitin’ to see you, Cap’n.”

“Why did n’t you come up to the house?”’

“T ain’t ready for die,” my visitor laughingly
answered. “I been here all day, sah, ’caze I hear
dat Hickory ain’t done tie up.”

But perhaps I can best give you an adequate
idea of this remarkable dog’s character if I show
you Hickory in action.

“Now, Prince,”’ I will say to the best of negro
hunters who can drive out deer-thickets even
better than he can paddle a canoe in a freshet,
“don’t you let Hickory get away from you to-
day.”

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 139°

“No, sah,” Prince will lie amiably; for he
knows very well that I am “passing the buck”’ to
him, and he knows, too, from long experience,
that he cannot manage that shaggy gray brute.

“Do you have the long rawhide lash ready for
him and the halter-rope with the snapper to tie
him up?”

“Yes, boss, I got ’um.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, Prince, watch
yourself to-day, and see that Hickory does n’t
play rings around you as he usually does.”

In the first drive we jump a buck that we have
been after for years, and he comes sneaking out
a full mile ahead of the dogs. He is not in the
least scared, and he takes his own time and his
own course in coming. He looks bored at having
to leave his warm bed in a bay-branch and at
having to stop chewing the cud; but he is not
worried. Unfortunately he runs out between the
standers, and we watch him dodge, pause, and
then softly skulk into a beautiful thicket not
more than three hundred yards across the road
on which we are standing. I know that he is going
to stop there; and if only we can break off the
dogs without too much fuss, we can surround the
place and scalp the old rascal. But to handle the

140 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

dogs is going to take some skillful work, for the
trail is hot, the dogs are fresh — and Hickory
leads the pack! I can stop Lucy with a look, and
the two puppies with a lifted switch — but
Hickory! )

Prince, although driving far away from us,
knows that the buck has slipped past the standers.
Soon his horse comes breaking rapidly through
the branch. As soon as he is on the high ground
he jumps off his mount and comes running to-
ward me. He wants to know the buck’s exact
run so that he can post himself in front of the on-
coming hounds. I motion for silence, give the
deer’s course, and point toward the dense thicket
ahead where the “Old Miner” is at present
stopping.

**T’ll take care of all the rest, Prince; but, for
the love of Heaven, you stop that Hickory. Kill
him if necessary, but don’t let him pass you.”
~ I ean afford to be serious in this; for I know
that a broadside of Princes could not kill Hickory.

Here they come! Lucy’s grieving tenor is
ringing high and true. The two black-and-tan
puppies are chiming in with happy urchin yelps,
with now and then a comical squeal of pain as
one of them runs his head against a snag or

; d
A Group photographed * , .~\
by Flash-Light )

(Note the two albinos) \

Ae, iow “tap
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aE Ns

is sii
rae
5

CJ

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 141

catches his tail on the thorns of a huge swamp
briar. But Hickory? Oh, no; he does n’t open.
He isn’t that kind at all. On strictly business |
matters of this nature he is as shut-mouthed as a
clam. Occasionally he might tongue negligently
on a cold trail, but never on the track of a freshly
roused deer; for he seems to know that noise will
lessen his chances of overhauling his quarry. It
always seemed to me that this huge dog, with
a strange kind of silent and savage grimness,
simply set out purposefully to catch his deer.
Now he is running like a famished timber wolf
that has sighted a defenseless and fleeing fawn.
He is streaking it like lightning as his flying gray
bulk suddenly emerges from the edge of the
swamp. He is far ahead of the other dogs. He is
a terrible fellow, this Hickory. I am tempted to
help Prince with the business on hand; for a
glance at his face has failed to reveal to me that
high degree of fortitude and self-confidence that
is necessary to stop the howling hurricane that is
heading for him. But if I forsake my own post,
Lucy and the pups will pass me — gently, but
quite effectively. Therefore I merely give Prince
a fiendish look (meant fiercely to convey faith in
him and assurance that he will do his part in

142 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

treating Hickory roughly), gesture at him fero-
ciously — and then leave him to his fate.

Exactly what follows I am not permitted to
watch, for Lucy and the pups are now fast com-
ing over the pine-land hillock. But I catch the
thing out of the corner of a wary eye; and truly
’t is heart-breaking to see it come off. The negro
has the formidable lash whirling in manful cir-
cles, and the expression on his face closely re-
sembles that of a head-hunting demon in one of
Jack London’s Philippine Island stories. I had
warned him not to shout at Hickory for fear that
the big buck, whose ears, I knew, would be peeled
and a-quiver for just such a sound, would hear
him and make off. On our part, therefore, the
whole business was a dumb-show. And it was
quickly over.

Prince made two wild grabs at the huge dog
flying past him, and then he pitched headlong
against a pine-log. Lucy and the pups halted
at my mere quiet command, and they were soon
in leash. But by that time Hickory was on the
borders of that beautiful thicket that harbored
the buck. I looked remorsefully at Prince.

ee ran over you and trampled you, did n’t
/ he, Prince?”’

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 143

The good-natured, dusky woodsman grinned.

“Cap'n,” he protested, “dat kind of a dog
ain’t meant to be stopped.”

His answer seemed to me sound philosophy.

Just at that moment the old buck and Hick-
ory emerge from the bay-thicket, and we are
afforded a brief view of the race. Never before
in his crafty long life has that stag had busi-
ness so urgent calling him instanter to other
parts; and the grim and silent hound at his
heels surely stretches the lean old champion
racer of the pine-lands to the cyclone pitch of
his speed.

Such a contrast of temperaments as that
afforded by Lucy and Hickory should give a fair
idea of the very great differences observable in
the character and the behavior of deer-hounds.
I shall now, to illustrate another difference in
hounds, recount briefly the story of the great stag
of Pinckney Run.

In the early autumn of 1916 this magnificent
buck was shot down on the edge of Pinckney
Run, one of the best deer-drives in the Santee
country, and celebrated as such since the days of
the Revolution. The stag was brought to earth
by Ed Lincoln, as famous a deer-hunter as our

144 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

plantation region can boast. When the stag was
on the ground the other members of the hunting
party quickly gathered round. They were five in
number. One of these took hold of the buck’s
hind feet in order to stretch him across a log in
order that his slayer might cut his throat. All
this time the great creature was struggling, but
apparently in his last efforts. And all this time
the pack of hounds, no fewer than fourteen
strong, went wild around the fallen monarch.
Ed’s knife was dull and the neck of the buck
was like a bull-hide. The hunter sawed helplessly.
This the old stag did not relish; therefore in a sud-
den grand effort he kicked loose from his holder,
threw Ed (who had been sitting astride his neck)
over his head, and incontinently made a wild
break for liberty. Some of the hunters were
too amazed to shoot. The two who shot were
apparently too surprised over the amazing per-
formance of the big animal to hit him. All
thought that, of course, the fourteen dogs would
pull him down within a hundred yards. But
they clamored vainly on the slot. The buck ran
nearly five miles straight through the pine-lands,
he yumped the high wire fence of the Santee Club
preserve, he ran through the far-extending pre- |

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 145 |

serve, and at sundown was lost to the dogs in the
lonely marshes of Murphy’s Island.

Until I met that hunting party returning I
never clearly understood the meaning of the
word crestfallen. And I shall never forget what
my father, who for more than fifty years has
hunted in those regions, said when the story was
told him. I was emphasizing to him the severe
wounds of the stag and the great size of the pack.

“There is n’t one good dog among them,” he
said. “One good dog would have caught him.
Rowley would have caught him.”

This Rowley was a large black-and-white
deer-hound of English stock that we had on the
plantation for many years. On a hunt he was a
superb and masterful creature; and we had a cus-
tom of relying on him to overhaul a wounded
deer. He had one trait that was unusual: if he
pulled down a deer or if he reached a fallen deer
before the hunters, it was impossible for a man
safely to approach the quarry without first ar-
ranging to drop a noose over the dog’s head and
then pull him off the deer and tie him up. I re-
member killing a splendid buck one day —a
buck that ran a half-mile after being shot. When
I reached him Rowley was standing up on the

146. PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

deer’s body, and the moment he saw me he
bristled up and snarled savagely. He meant
business, too. All my efforts to approach him
were met menacingly. In the end I was obliged
to go back home, get a rope, return, lasso the im-
placable hound, and pull him off. At most other
times this dog was of a gentle and affectionate
disposition; but when he felt that he had made a
kill, ancient instincts returned, and forthwith he
became a dangerous customer. I may add that
the average hound that overhauls a deer will, if
the hunters do not find him, take a meal before
he will return home. More than once I have found
deer by tying up a full-bellied hound for a day,
and then by returning to the woods with him in
leash. He would, of course, make straight for the
spot where he had enjoyed his latest dinner.
There are conditions under which hounds
will catch unwounded deer. This is a curious and
interesting subject, and I have taken great pains
to collect data on it. And the material so gathered
has come from some of the most reliable deer-
hunters in the Santee country. All testify to the
fact that a deer can be caught, or at least brought
to bay, by good hounds, if the most favorable
conditions prevail. The chief of these conditions .

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 147

are the following: warm weather, the deer fat
rather than lean, the deer unused to be run, the
dog or dogs sticking to the track of the same deer,
the dogs having good bottom. Leaving the fawn
out of the question, an old fat buck is probably
the easiest deer to catch. This may be contrary
to general opinion, but I am merely relating what
experience has, in our region of the South, re-
corded. The heavy horns of a mature buck tell
on him in a long race, for their weight is con-
siderable; moreover, his hoofs are sometimes a
good deal worn and they become tender in a hard
chase. He is more likely, too, than a young deer
to try skulking and craftiness before the dogs;
and with these tactics he loses out in front of a
strong pack. If a buck thinks he has taken the
measure of the dogs after him he will quickly
come to bay, or will simply stop now and then to
menace and to beat off his pursuers. I shall never
forget the behavior of a certain old stag in this
regard.

My brother and I had been hunting with two
half-grown puppies, when this stag, a large and
very handsome one, was started. He appeared
almost at once to sense the nature of the dogs
after him. These he scorned. About every three

148 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

hundred yards of a leisurely chase he would de-
liberately stop and browbeat the pups into giving
him a decent chance to catch his breath! All this
happened in the open pine-lands; and as I was
following this traveling circus I could ‘see some-
thing of what happened. The day’s being a warm
one had something to do with the buck’s unwill-
ingness to be pushed hard. However, if the white-
tail has half a chance he prefers to play in front
of dogs, to dodge, to hide and slip along, rather
than to run wildly and at great distances. In the
region which I am describing I am persuaded
that each deer has a very limited range, and that
it is loath (especially when in danger) to go far
from home. It is entirely familiar with woods in
which it has been bred, and it usually prefers to
take a chance dodging about in them. Even if
run a long distance by hounds a deer will nearly
always return to the haunts with which it is ac-
quainted — this behavior resembling that of a
rabbit, except that the deer takes a wider orbit.
Indeed, a rabbit playing in front of dogs and re-
turning on its tracks is a genuine miniature white-
tail.

For going directly to the arduous business of
catching a deer, the most extraordinary dog of my |

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 149

acquaintance was one owned and trained by
Pinckney Combahee, a renowned hunter of the
pine-lands. This dog was deliberately taught to
catch deer. He was a cross between a strain of
very fleet redbone hounds and a highly bred
pointer. He had the speed and accuracy of the
bird-dog, and the nose and persistence and en-
durance of the hound. To my own personal
knowledge this remarkable dog caught “single-
handed” seven unwounded bucks. It was his
habit to tongue on the trail except for the last
mile or so of the race, when he would fly over the
ground with silent intensity. Of the deer that he
overhauled it is only fair to them to say that
they were fat bucks which, in the warm days of
the early autumn, had wandered out of the wilds
of Wambaw Swamp. Because of their not having
been run much they were probably not in the
best training. It may be added that if a deer in
flight ever drops foamy slaver, the following
hounds will go wild on the track, redoubling all
their efforts to overtake him. Nor, after such a
sign of the fugitive’s weakening, is he ever likely
to escape; and the dogs appear to understand
very well the nature of his plight.

When good hounds are after a deer, mere flight

150 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

is no assurance of safety. The best defense or
refuge that the pursued creature has is water;
and he knows this. Indeed, so perfectly is he
aware of the effectiveness of this barrier against
trail-followers that he often enters a daytime
haunt via the water route. In the Southern deer
country there are many long stretches of watery
thickets, through which deer can travel without
leaving much scent except on the bushes. No
white-tail deer — at least of the mental per-
suasion of those found in the old plantation re-
gions — hesitates to take the water, and when
wounded or hotly pursued, this is the most nat-
ural thing for a deer to do. Often I have known
bucks to swim the Santee where its width is
greatest, and at least one buck of my acquaint-
ance started, during the mating season, across a
bay several miles wide. He was nearly two miles
offshore when overhauled by a launch. Only
rarely does a deer come to bay except in water;
if he does, there is likely no water near

In water a bayed deer has a decided advantage
over dogs. So successfully can he defend him-
self that, if he is not too sorely wounded and if
hunters do not come up, he will get the better of
the pack, will probably put some of them out.

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 151

of commission in no gentle fashion, and may
effect his escape. In this kind of a duel with dogs
a buck uses his antlers very little. He menaces
the hounds with them; but the real work is done
with his front feet shod with their keen, hard
hoofs. A doe is especially vicious in the use of
her feet as striking weapons. I have seen scores
of deer brought thus to bay. Let us look at the
behavior of a few of them.

A ten-point buck had been shot in the shoulder.
He ran a hundred yards with three good dogs
after him. Coming to bay in a shallow pond
about an acre in area, he ran out until the depth
of the water in which he stood would force a dog
to swim to reach him. A deer seems to be able
nicely to adjust this depth. As I rode up the
foremost hound was swimming straight for the
buck. He swam eagerly and boldly; but that was
because he was a young dog and knew no better.
Before I could call him out of danger the alert
and angry buck, with a viciously swift stroke of
his forefoot, had struck the hound and had sent
him completely under water. He came up groggy.
The two old hounds were warier. They swam
in, and the clamor they made was entirely ade-

quate to the situation; but they did little but

152 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

clamor. They had diplomas from the school of
experience. The appearance of the buck mean-
while was truly ferocious; and there is something
awesome about the fury of a creature that is
naturally shy and gentle. The head of this old
bayed stag was held at a dangerous angle, his
eyes were darting light, and he had ruffed so much
of his hair forward that his size appeared doubled.
Knowing that I could shoot the deer if he made a
break, I carefully watched the performance of the
hounds. It was not courageous. Most hunting-
dogs have the weakness of supposing that much
fatuous barking helps along the business of bay-
ing game. Perhaps it does somewhat confuse
and irritate a bayed stag, thus permitting a
crafty dog to swim in behind him. The young
hound had now come ashore and was trying to
lick a wound on the back of his neck. The old
dogs appeared baffled. They did much swimming
and barking, but they kept their distance. At
last I rode down to the shore, when the buck
turned and bounded out of the water. Before he
had gone thirty yards the young dog, by racing
alongside, had made a fortunate leap for his
throat and had thrown him headlong. The three
dogs, fearless now that the buck was clear of the |

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 153

water, crowded him; and they held him until my
coming ended his struggles.

At another time, while hunting with an old
stager of a hound, I crippled a large spike buck.
He made for water, reached it safely, and swam
boldly out into the big and deep pond that he had
gained. The dog, following fast and apparently
without apprehension, overhauled the buck far
out in deep water. For some minutes they just
circled each other; and now that both of them
were swimming, the dog appeared as able to
handle himself as the deer. Finally the hound,
by a feint and then a sudden shrewd lunge, caught
the buck by the ear. Whether designedly or not
the deer’s head was thus held under water, and
he was quickly drowned.

While dogs readily follow deer into small bod-
ies of water, they are by no means so ready to
tackle a big creek or a river. Especially in the
regions of which I write there are dangers for
dogs in all fresh waters of any considerable size;
for the grim bull alligator lurks, and a lover of
hound-dogs is he. This cold-blooded monster
finds no meal quite so delicious as that afforded
by a good hound. Many a hunter of the pine-
lands has grieved for his favorite dog and in

'154 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

vain has waited for him to come home, because
he has gone to cram the voracious maw of this
cruel and secret killer. It is said that an alligator
will not readily attack a buck, however merci-
less he may be toward other deer and creatures
which come to the edges of his haunted domains
to drink. I have never known a mature deer to
be attacked by this savage saurian. Possibly the
deer’s antlers and sharp hoofs inspire among
other wild creatures a certain respect.

One of the most curious instances of the be-
havior of hounds after deer the following inci-
dent describes. On a Christmas hunt a very fine
eight-point stag was wounded, having one of his
forelegs broken. Despite this handicap he kept,
for more than a mile, his distance in front of a
good pack of hounds. Running northward from
where he had been jumped, asif he had the whole
design of his escape clearly planned, he made his
way through the dense thickets of pine, myrtle,
and holly on Wambaw Plantation, and forthwith
plunged into Wambaw Creek. Had he ever
placed that barrier between us it is doubtful if
we should ever have seen him again. But a
strange mishap awaited him. His big antlers,
which had a rather unusual pitch forward, were

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 155

securely caught by a strong grapevine that swung
down in a loop low over the water. The big vine
took him just below the brow-tines; and al-
though he could swim off a little distance, the
grapevine would then stay his progress and pull
him back. This was what was happening when
we rode up. The dogs were wildly clamoring;
some were in the water and some bayed from the
bank. It was a curious and interesting situation.
As the buck was large and well antlered, we dis-
patched him before we drew him ashore. His
horns, though hard, had had some of the beading
so effectively rubbed off that the telling of the
story never failed to be impressive when the
listener could be shown the marked antlers of
this fine stag, which we always called “‘the Grape-
vine Buck.”

On one other occasion I saw a buck get into
trouble with his horns; and these instances are
worth recording, for every deer-hunter will testify
to the fact that one of the most remarkable
powers of a stag is his ability to handle his horns
in dense brush. While hunting on Doe Hall a
very fine stag was driven by the hounds out to
the road and straight for a stander. On some
pines bordering the road there were looped up

156 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

some strands of telephone-wire, the regular sup-
ports of which had been blown down in a recent
gale. The buck, not noticing the wires, ran into
them, and his horns became fast to this curi-
ous obstruction. The stander, meanwhile, fired
both barrels at point-blank range at the tved and
struggling buck. A moment later, and just in
time to clear himself from the approaching pack,
the stag cleared himself, almost ran over the badly
bewildered stander, and made good his remark-
able escape into the wilds of Wambaw Swamp.
This account of the deer and the hound will be
brought to a close by a description of the strange
behavior of a pack of hounds in the presence of a
tame buck of mine. This buck I had raised on a
bottle. He had been an interesting pet; and,
aside from eating all the geraniums and play-
fully pushing over the pots with his horns, with
an occasional trip into the garden, where he
cleaned up all in sight that was succulent, he had
not given much trouble. Until he had been prop-
erly introduced (this matter took some weeks),
the hounds had been kept in a stockade. Finally,
when they were released they took small notice
of the deer; indeed, all that year their attitude
toward him was properly tame and disinterested.

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 157

It was really the buck that started the fun;
and this happened when he was a year and a half
old and had sharp spike horns. Of his new adorn-
ment he was inordinately vain. In the early
autumn I began to notice that the buck had be-
gun to “pick on” the dogs. When they would be
blamelessly dozing in the sun, he would bow his
head, swell his neck, roll his eyes, and come
stalking toward them with a gait that had some-
thing of the ridiculous German goosestep in it.
He would blow out his breath in scornful supe-
riority. This odd and truculent behavior increased
until the hounds took notice of it. But if one of
them got up the buck would start away, either
frightened or pretending to be. Then one day a
hound started after him, and a slow race began.
This little chase was merely the prelude; for
after a time, when the whole pack would fall in
after the fleeing deer, there was all the earnest-
ness of a real struggle for supremacy in speed.
The business might end in a few minutes, or it
might extend itself over an hour or more. The
chase sometimes passed the wide bounds of the
plantation. But always on returning to the
house, both the pursuers and the pursued agreed
that the game was at an end. It was a pretty

158 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

sight to watch this remarkable sort of a race, and
to see its strange and peaceful ending.

But one day I brought home a new hound that
knew nothing of the playful tactics of so innocent
a recreation; and by mischance I forgot the
proper caution. In a short time one of the cus-
tomary chases was on. I paid no attention to it
until I noticed that it was lasting a very long time.
Then I saw the buck, plainly tired, race by the
rice-barn, and then keep on racing. Close after
him pressed the new dog, while the pack clamored
somewhat shamefacedly in the rear. When my
attempt to stop the dog failed, things looked bad.
The best old hound broke off his running, and
he appeared curiously waiting for something to
do. What this was I was soon to see. In fifteen
minutes back came the excited, straining, and
pitiful buck, a hopeless expression on his face.
The grim pursuer was not fifteen yards behind
him. I had a club ready for the newcomer, but
my attentions to him were not needed. The old
dog, who had apparently dropped out on pur-
pose, waylaid the stranger, and there ensued a
royal dog-fight. It gave me a chance to collar
and to tie up the dangerous hound; and this
naturally ended the chase. I have always thought ©

THE DEER AND THE HOUND 159

that the strategic manner in which that wise old
hound befriended the distressed buck showed
more reasoning power than instinct. And when-
ever I think of the deer and the hound, I like to
remember that sagacious old fellow who had the
sense to recognize the difference between a regular
hunt and a mere game, and who properly regu-
lated his behavior accordingly.

CHAPTER XI
A UNIQUE QUAIL HUNT

WE were just about halfway through our plan-
tation Christmas dinner, which is no mean kind
of an entertainment, when a negro bearing a
note for me shuffled to the door. I took the letter
and read its brief contents. A friend in the city
was having a house-party of a dozen guests. As
yet they had enjoyed no game. Would it be pos-
sible for me to secure and dispatch immediately
about twenty-five or thirty quail? The writer
assured me that I knew where the birds were,
and all that; and that he would not trouble me,
but that he knew how much I should enjoy get-
ting the bag for him. But unless they could be
put on the mail Christmas night they would ar-
rive too late for the aforesaid purpose. Gentle
reader, have you ever had a friend who knew
nothing of hunting ask you to get game for him?
He thinks he is conferring a privilege on you;
for he honestly believes that on a big plantation
shooting quail is just like picking cotton, and
bagging a wild turkey is just like going out into

A UNIQUE QUAIL HUNT 161

the garden and cutting off a cabbage — just
like that!

But this friend of mine, however uninformed
on some matters, is a man whom I like to please;
therefore during the remainder of the dinner
I was honestly planning how I might accommo-
date his wishes. To do this would, in the first
place, require quick work, for the sun was hardly
two hours high. Moreover, to another friend I
had lent my only bird-dog for a Christmas-Day
hunt. Unless a man has two or three coveys of
quail shooed into a coop, and has the lid clamped
_ down over them, how is he going to produce them
suddenly at a friend’s mere wish? But in hunting
as in most things it pays to try.

Leaving the rest of the company discussing
juleps and the like, I emerged from the house
just before the sun had begun to burn the tall
pines to the westward of the plantation. Seeing
several little negro boys who had already had a
share of dinner, I impressed them into my serv-
ice. We crossed the cotton-fields, heading to-
ward a long stretch of broom-sedge that bordered
the creek. In this dense yellow grass there are
always quail, but to find them without a dog
would be difficult; yet there were my dusky

162 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

henchmen to help. Pausing once to look the
situation over, I heard, coming from a far edge of
the field, where an extraordinarily high tide had
begun to back the water into the grass, the
carrying-on of two coveys of quail that had run
into each other. The voluble gossip that they
were engaging in was sweet music to my ears.
And there was little lost motion in my getting to
where the birds were.

Telling my small trailers to stand close behind
me so as to give me a chance to shoot, I began
walking up the birds. They must have been hav-
ing for themselves some kind of a Christmas fes-
tival or dinner-party, for they were as loath to
rise as some friends I had just left had been un-
willing to leave the table. I never saw birds
rise so scatteringly; not if I live until the League
of Nations or the millennium or something like
that comes off, do I expect to see more quail in
one place. I said that two coveys had come to-
gether. That was all wrong. The thing I am
telling is a true thing; and when I say that,
standing almost in one place, with birds rising
almost continuously, I was enabled to kill eleven
birds “‘on the rise,’ you will understand what
kind of a camp-meeting I had invaded. Nor did |

A UNIQUE QUAIL HUNT _ 163

the birds, even after much shooting, fly wildly.
They must have been too deeply engrossed with
social engagements to consider me. From the
grassy edges where I had flushed them they
swung to the left, settling about in the tall
broom-grass on a little hillock that rose softly
from the dead level of the old field.

The little negroes retrieved all the shot birds,
and we now began to walk up the scattered ones.
The sun was down behind the pines now; and the
brightly lighted sky gave most excellent visibility.
To walk up these fine birds and to have them go
whirring off toward the fading sunset afforded
me as fine an opportunity for quail-shooting as
I have ever enjoyed. The crippled birds were
gathered in for me by the small boys, who per-
formed very creditably. They also carried the
game, so that all I had to do was to flush the
birds and shoot.

They were not followed for the third rise, both -
because they were by that time widely scattered,
and because, on pausing to count heads, I dis-
covered, to my surprise, that we had twenty-
eight. They would be enough. The house-
party would be supplied. Nor, strange to say,
had the matter in this instance been much more

164 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

difficult than picking cotton. I got the birds off
on the mail that night, and learned later that
they had arrived in time to render festive the
occasion for which they had been gathered in.
There remains, perhaps, a word concerning the
remarkable size of this bunch of birds that it was
my good fortune to encounter. I have seen at
other times coveys numbering as many as thirty-
five or forty birds, and these undoubtedly con-
sisted of two or more bevies that had come to-
gether. My accounting for this particular covey
is this: that on account of the very high water
prevailing in the creek, which had flooded the
marshes and bottom-lands, two coveys, possibly
three, that had been used to roosting in the marsh,
had come late in the afternoon to the broom-
sedge field, and there had met another covey.
They were discussing the situation when I heard
them; and the fact that they realized that their
regular haunts were flooded kept most of them
in the broom-grass. In all, the hunt was a unique
one, not the least interesting feature of which
being my new type of retriever that proved his
worth on that memorable occasion. |

CHAPTER XII
WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA

Among those happenings of nature that are cal-
culated peculiarly to impress the thoughtful
mind none is more interesting and picturesque
than the annual southward migration of our wild
water fowl. I mention this rather than the north-
ward migration in the spring because I wish to
give as accurate a picture as possible of one of the
southern resorts to which these swift-winged,
wise-headed folk repair when the autumn sets in.
What they have done for centuries untold the
American people are now beginning to do. Call
it instinct in the wild fowl if you will, but it is
an instinct pregnant with fundamental sagacity.

The southward movement of game birds be-
gins with the flight of the upland plover in mid-
summer. But these birds have a long journey,
for they spend the winter on the pampas of the
Argentine and on some of the plains of Pata-
gonia. Woodcock often begin to move slowly
southward as the summer wanes. But the first
striking migration is the flight of the reed-birds.

166 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

They answer also to the names of bobolinks, rice-
birds, and ortolans. Toward the end of August
these yellow-clad hosts begin to march down to-
ward the ripening rice-fields of the South. Many
linger in the North and East during September
and even to early October, but the migration
proper comes earlier. After these birds follow
the coots, various shore birds, the several species
of rails, and then the ducks and geese. How fast
and how far they follow depends chiefly on the
weather, but in ordinary seasons the migration
has been completed by the first of December.
By that time the winter haven of which I speak
has gathered to its warm and ample bosom its
wild children. Those who come later are strag-
glers.

One home to which they gather is the region
which is embraced by the delta of the Santee
River on the South Carolina coast. Its coastal
width is roughly from Cape Romain on the south
to the mouth of Winyah Bay on the north — a
distance of about sixteen miles. Such is, in large,
the fronting of the delta on the ocean. Its hinter-
land penetrates to a depth of about fifteen miles,
though northwest of this arbitrary limit are
Swamps and endless water-courses whereto the

WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA _ 167

ducks of the delta occasionally repair. At about
fifteen miles back from its mouth the river di-
vides into a north and south branch, which flow
almost parallel to each other to the coast. The
land between these two branches, which varies in
width from one to three miles, is the delta proper,
although the marshes and lowlands bordering
both sides of the two rivers are considered as
parts of the same region. At the end of the delta
proper is Cedar Island, a heavily wooded stretch
of shoreland, remote and wild. On it are brack-
ish marshes and ponds where wild fowl gather in
myriads. These ponds are shallow and sheltered,
and I know of no place to which ducks more
constantly resort. Southward across the south
branch of the Santee and cut off from the main-
land by Alligator Creek is Murphy’s Island, a
typical coastal island of the South Atlantic sea-
board. It is several square miles in area, is
wooded like the other island mentioned, and con-
tains brackish ponds and sloughs frequented by
wild fowl. The woods of this island contain herds
of wild cattle and wild goats as well as white-tail
deer.

Offshore from the mouths of the river is Bird
Bank, a long, low sandbar covered by high tides.

168 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

To this singular place, when the sun is bright and
the sea calm, the ducks flock by thousands. Ob-
servers who have hidden in barrels in the sand to
watch the coming of the quacking hosts have
told me that the bar 1s literally covered, while the
warm salt waters about it are dotted with “‘rafts”’
of mallards, teals, widgeons, and black ducks.
If the day is stormy the ducks stay in sheltered
ponds of the islands or in the thousands of mini-
ature sanctuaries in the delta.

This whole stretch of delta country was once
planted to rice, and had an intricate and admira-
ble system of canals and ditches for controlling
the water on the rice-fields. Rice-planting has
practically been abandoned in that section of the
country, and the fields have gone to waste and
are now grown to wampee, duck-oats, wild rice,
and other aquatic plants. The ditches, through
the constant dredging of the tides, have in many
cases not only remained, but have been widened
and deepened until some of them are more like
small creeks than ditches. Sheltered by over-
hanging marsh and jutting mud-banks, they are
ideal day resorts for ducks. When the tide is
high the wide fields are flooded and the savanna-
like depressions between the clumps of marsh are

WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 169

filled with ducks of many kinds. If the weather
is windy and cold they remain all day in the
ditches and fields; otherwise they go to the
islands or out to sea. Invariably they return to
the fields to spend the night. The time of their
return depends on the stage of the tide. They
come in at twilight if the tide is high then; if
not, they come in when they know that their
night haunts will have the proper depth of
water.

While the ducks thus move about over the
delta, traveling fifteen or twenty miles in as many
minutes to get a meal or a lazy place in which to
drowse, the wide marsh fields are full of life of a
less restless sort. There are melancholy great
blue herons, making the day silent with their
immovability — their watchful waiting — and
the night hideous with their raucous, guttural
calls. There are Worthington marsh-wrens, flit-
ting about with gay impudence. Purple galli-
nules are there, and Wayne’s small clapper rails.
The king rail is perhaps the most interesting bird
of these marshes, found here in the winter in
great numbers. If a man wishes to see Wilson’s
snipe he should visit this place, for he will never
forget the sight of flocks of these swift-winged

170 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

game birds with their darting speed and incisive
calls. There is a high, sandy mound in the delta
~ not more than an acre in area. Once in a time of
flood, when all the surrounding region was sub-
merged, I found that myriads of wild creatures
flocked to this refuge. The rails, the rabbits of
the lowlands, and the raccoons took care of them-
selves in the tops of bushes, in low trees, and on
floating masses of sedge on the borders of the
island; but the Wilson’s snipe came to the high-
land. I do not wish to be classed with Ananias,
but I know there were thousands of snipe on that
little space. They rose like the largest flocks of
shore birds, but with that indescribable alertness
in springing and surety of choosing their zigzag
direction of flight that is so characteristic of this
species. As I sat by a fire in a shack, on the tiny
hummock I heard for a long while the sharp cries
from thousands of long-billed wanderers seeking a
place on which to alight. All through the next
day I watched this extraordinary congregation
of snipe, and I am sure that before the waters
began to subside the following night the hum-
mock must have been visited by many thousands
of these birds. |
The most characteristic bird of the marshes

WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA § 171

is the red-winged blackbird. During the winter,
when the native birds are joined by the hosts
which have migrated from the North, it is no
uncommon thing to see flocks of several thousand
individuals. Rusty blackbirds consort with the
red-wings, and occasionally purple grackles and
boat-tailed grackles are found with them. The
planters along the delta who have a little rice
stacked in the open will be sure to have black
clouds of these birds descending to their very
doors and over their fields.

Certain species of ducks winter in this region,
and these are some that have been observed in
the Santee delta: mallard, black duck, baldpate
or widgeon, canvasback, wood duck, blue-winged
teal, green-winged teal, shoveller, hooded mer-
ganser, American merganser, buffle-head, ruddy
duck, blackhead, American golden-eye, scaup
duck, redhead, pintail, ring-necked, old squaw,
and the surf scoter.

Of these the mallard, the black duck, and the
two kinds of teal are the most common. The can-
vasback is rare, as is also the American mergan-
ser. The ruddy duck is seldom seen, and when-
ever seen is killed. It is a singularly foolish or a
strangely trustful little creature, for it seldom

172 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

takes wing until a boat has approached within.
forty yards of it.

The only duck mentioned that nests here is the
wood duck. Occasionally, to be sure, other ducks
that have not migrated because of wounds or
temporary sickness mate and rear broods on the
marshlands of the delta.. But in the fresh-water
ponds and lagoons in the pine-woods adjacent to
the river, there are ideal nesting-sites for the
wood duck. The bird sometimes makes its nest
in the crotch of a tree growing in the water, usu-
ally a cypress or a black gum. Occasionally it
nests in a hollow, in deserted holes of the pileated
woodpecker. From nine to sixteen eggs are laid,
and the young, almost as soon as hatched, are
hustled into the water, where, when only a few
days old, they disport themselves with a sort of
elfin surety that is beautiful to watch. In this
region the wood duck is increasing. Lately I
have seen a flock of forty in a small pond. One
afternoon I counted upward of three hundred
passing above the delta to feeding-grounds in the
swamps. There really should be a closed season
everywhere on this most exquisite of American
game birds.

Occasionally wild geese and swans come to the »

WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 173

Santee delta, but their migration route lies to the
westward, and those that winter on the lower
Santee are stragglers. They are rather common
in the Carolinas and in Georgia. During the win-
ter of 1918 I had the privilege of observing at
close range what was probably the largest flock
of Canada geese that ever stopped on the delta.
I was duck-shooting, with a negro paddling me
through the marshes. As we neared the river,
which at that point is half a mile wide, we heard
the loud honking across the delta. Looking back
we saw geese coming, flying very low. They
passed within one hundred yards, cleared the
marsh-tops, and alighted in a stately squadron
on the river in front of us. We were not observed,
as we had pulled the canoe under a canopy of
marsh. Both of us were curious to see the be-
havior of the big birds. There were fifty-six in
the flock, and all seemed of one size save a very
old gander that kept by himself and seldom
ceased his strident honking. Once on the water
the geese segregated themselves into small flocks,
numbering about fifteen each; and I could not
help wondering if these divisions did not repre-
sent families that naturally hung together. For
the most part these geese busied themselves with

174 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

a very ardent preening that they seemed thor-
oughly to enjoy there in the wintry sunshine.
When at last I told my paddler to push out
on the river the old gander rose first; and soon
the inevitable V-shaped battalion formed itself.
The geese rose very high, taking a northward
direction. Had it been spring I should have said
that they were heading for Saskatchewan; but
as it was only January I knew that they would
go but a few miles up the river. There are depths
of the great Santee swamp north of us that have
never been penetrated by man; and wild crea-
tures can live and die there without ever being
molested by human enemies.

This delta is a very pleasant resort for wild
fowl, but nowhere under natural surroundings
are wild creatures freed from enemies. Most wild
life belongs either to the pursuer class or to the
class pursued. In nature might makes right; or
at least might triumphs. The enemies that these
wild fowl of the Santee delta encounter are many,
and of these, formerly, the worst was the negro
hunter. Pushing about in his dugout cypress
canoe, which was hardly visible, he took heavy
toll of ducks. White men, also, made it their
business to kill ducks for the market. But legis- |

WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA = 175

lation, and the passing of most of the lands on
the delta into the hands of a good sportsman’s
club, have stopped this kind of pot-hunting.
While sportsmen bag many ducks they do not
follow the game constantly as does the market
hunter.

After man, the enemy of which wild fowl stand
most in dread is the bald eagle. This great bird is
found in numbers on the wide delta and on the
lonely coastal islands, and, during the winter, ap-
pears to prefer wild duck to any other food. Be-
ing indolent of disposition he catches a crippled
duck if there is one to be had; and will take every
dead duck that a hunter leaves in the marsh.
But when occasion demands he can exert his
majestic self. I have seen no more impressive
sight than the spectacle of a full-grown eagle
taking his toll of a mighty concourse of mallards.

At daybreak one December morning I was at
a blind near Cane Gap, two miles from the
mouth of the North Santee. Between my stretch
of the river and the mouth of the same, between
Cedar Island on the south and Ford’s Point on
the north, the “big ducks’? — mallards and
black ducks — were rafted. All were not in one
flock; but in all the flocks there must have been

176 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

fifty thousand ducks, and in single rafts there
were several thousand. Just before the sun rose
a great bald eagle launched himself out in flight
from a lonely pine on Cedar Island, where he had
spent the night. Three times he wheeled above .
the woods on the island; then he turned his course
northward. The ducks, I am sure, saw him sooner
than I did, and began to rise as soon as they
were aware of his approach. The roar of their
wings was so loud and continuous that it drowned
the low booming of the surf. With a mastery of
flight and an entire indifference to the consterna-
tion that he was causing, the huge eagle beat his
way onward. He was looking for the mallard he
wanted. Finally, from a small flock that was
hurrying westward up the river he seemed to
select one — an old mallard drake. The doomed
bird was coming up toward Cane Gap. The
eagle, always keeping above him, was hot on the
track. The duck was flying wildly; but the eagle,
with indolent ease, gained steadily. When about
a hundred yards from me the eagle, then almost
above the duck, suddenly swerved downward,
turning over in its descent until it was under its
prey. By a movement so quick that my eye
could not follow it the talons of the great bird

WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA = 177

had been buried in the breast of the mallard. A
moment later, by a masterly maneuver, the eagle
had regained his poise, and, rising slowly, beat
his burdened way off over the marsh. Far, far,
through the rosy morning I watched the lone and
lordly eagle pursue his flight until lost to my
limited vision in his larger liberty.

Wildcats, raccoons, and minks take but few
birds. The delta of the Santee is a favorite winter
resort for these aquatic birds; and they appear
to be increasing there. Nor are they eager to
leave when the mystic premonition of the ap-
proach of spring comes to them. Sometimes I
have started big flocks of mallards in the delta
even in late March, when all the cypresses are in
a mist of tender green. I believe that a mallard
can travel from the mouth of the Santee to the
mouth of the St. Lawrence in a single night.
Such speed seems prodigious, but the speed and
the endurance of a wild creature depend generally
on what is after it; and in the case of the wild
fowl we are considering grim Winter is after them
when they go southward; and love and mating
are before them when they journey northward.
They are, we may say, driven to the South, and
are lured back to the North.

CHAPTER XIII
MY WINTER WOODS

As I reached the plantation gate I heard the first
note of the winter’s morning: a timid phcebe
bird, always fairy-like and eerie, from a shadowy
copse beside the road gave a plaintive call. I
looked behind me, across the misty cotton-fields,
now brown and bowed, that stretched back to-
ward the house. In the east there was a whiten-
ing of the sky’s arch; and set in it, in a space
breathed clear by the wind that blows before the
dawn, throbbed and glittered the morning star.
The note of the phoebe, the shy woodland fra-
grances awaft from the great avenue before me,
the mantle of mist on the cotton, the blazing
star, and even the bulk and blackness of the
live-oak grove were elements of a type of beauty
that I had loved since boyhood. But for the deli-
cate bird-note there was silence. It was the
witching hour; and I was on the threshold of my
winter woods.

These are the woods in which I was born and
where the greater part of my life has been spent.

MY WINTER WOODS 179

As I go through the gate, with the glimmer of
morning resting with mystical beauty on all
things, I am at home, even in the dark and soli-
tary live-oak avenue into which I now pass.
Overhead the vast tops of these great trees
shut out the sky, while far and wide their deep-
- foliaged limbs extend. In the cool, vaulted space
under the oaks of this avenue there is ever an
ancient, sequestered peace. From such old
titans great limbs, larger than the bodies of or-
dinary trees, extend outward and upward, until,
passing the limbs of the neighboring oaks, they
lose themselves in the shadowy merging and
melting of gray moss and silvery foliage. Some-
times, over their monumental frames, vast net-
works of vines have clambered, lowering down,
even in the winter, heavy tapestries of jasmine
foliage starred with yellow blooms. In the damp-
ness and the fecund atmosphere of these wood-
land cathedrals, many kinds of mosses and lichens
grow; and often the limbs of the live-oaks will
be green or gray or brown —the color of the
delicate plants which cling to and clothe the
vast dimensions of these tolerant giants. Under
such a canopy of moss and foliage both barred
and great horned owls find a congenial home.

180 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Amid ordinary woodland surroundings owls hoot
at twilight and at night only; but in a live-oak
avenue they can be heard giving their weird
chorus when the sun is high overhead. These
strange birds interpret well one aspect of live-
oaks: they seem the veritable oracles of these
dim old trees.

As I come out of the avenue the sun is rising
and the wide pine-lands lie before me. All the
copses are shimmering; the dewdrops glint on the
tips of the pine-needles; from the thickets of
myrtle and bay come fragrances that mingle
with the spiceries from the pines. The most
characteristic feature of these woods is the prev-
alence of the evergreens. Everywhere, forming
glimmering vistas, fairy outlooks on the far and
the alluring, fabulous cathedral aisles, solemn
transepts, the pines prevail. After all, despite
the undergrowth and despite the live-oaks be-
hind or the water-courses grown with gum and
tupelo before, this is a pine forest, and through
it one can travel more than fifty miles in all di-
rections save that which leads to the sea; and
even then the pines march down to the very
beach.

I do not go far into the pine-land on this win-

MY WINTER WOODS 181

ter’s morning before I come to a turpentine still,
where the work of the day is beginning. I hear
the songs of the negroes as they roll barrels or
cram the little wood-burning engine with fuel.
The spiciest of scents are exhaled from the shin-
ing vats. I know the cooper at the still; so I
approach his little shed, which stands under a
small, gnarled live-oak. There is no more in-
corrigible optimist in the world than such a man.
All day long the sturdy chopping of his broad-axe
and the tuneful tattoo of his mallet can be heard
above the shouts of the mule-drivers and the
creaking roll of the full barrels as they are shoved
up the gangway of the still. This negro cooper
makes all his own staves and shapes his own
barrel-heads; then, with the help of a frame-vise
of his own design, he puts the staves together
until the rondure of their arrangement makes a
barrel. Forthwith, then, he hammers on the
hoops with surprising skill and dispatch. His
shop is always littered with snowy strips of pine,
with slabs of dry bark, with defective staves;
and the air is aromatic and resinous there. It
is said that a pine-woods cooper lives longer than
any of his fellows; and he might well be immortal,
with his wholesome, clean work to do, and such

182 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

delicious air to breathe. His profession must
affect his character, for I never knew a cooper
who was not merry. He is always singing and
whistling, keeping time with his axe, his hammer,
or his mallet. And he interprets very well the
liberty, the airiness, the joyous freedom that
abide in spacious forests of yellow pine.

The prevalence of these pines as a standard
element of every woodland view, and as a regular
background or setting for every scene, renders
the aspect of the winter forest here living and
green. Yet if there were no evergreens save the
pines there might be a beautiful monotony to
them; but there are many live-oaks and water-
oaks, which are never actually bare, but which
on the coming of spring reclothe themselves.
The foliage of the live-oak varies only in the tints
of its green; but throughout the winter the water-
oak wears its red and gold autumn foliage. Then
there are cedars and hollies, which in that cli-
mate and soil often attain stately heights. Some-
times long, level thickets of sweet-bay and myrtle
will be tufted and plumed at intervals by these
trees and by brilliant water-oaks. Along the
river, where there are sere reeds to rustle and dry
marsh and canebrakes to whisper, and immense —

est

For

Yellow Pine

MY WINTER WOODS 183

flights of migrated wild fowl to be seen, the pres-
ence of the season is more surely felt, and the
minor tones of its voice are more distinctly heard.
But afar off in the forest, where myriads of robins
are holding festivals of feasting in huge bunches
of mistletoe and in tall holly-trees, there seems
nothing wintry save the red and white berries and
the happy and excited tones of the birds.

Most of these birds are haunters of evergreen
trees and bushes — those which prevail suffi-
ciently to darken the water-course and to supply
dewy retreats and fragrant sanctuaries are the
myrtles, the three varieties of bay, the cab-
bage palmettoes, the gallberries, and the wild-
tea bushes. With the pines, hollies, oaks, and
cedars above, and with these smaller evergreens
below, the woods resemble the summer woods of
the North.

And in this pine forest wild life is everywhere
abundant and active; more abundant, I think,
than in the summer, for in addition to the native
wild things there are the migrant visitors. Birds
are seen and heard everywhere; some singing and
some silent, but all of them busy. Warbling
sunnily, in flocks of many hundreds, there are

bluebirds; think of a flock of five hundred blue-

184 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

birds flitting among the pines! There are small
groups of mourning doves, which feed in the pine-
lands upon grass-weeds and upon pine-mast.
There are meadow-larks, which find ample shelter
in the yellow broom-sedge. Along the edges of
a bay-branch I flush several woodcock that go
whirling off in a glimmering flight, their wings
faintly whistling. The purple finches are already
eating the buds of the sweet gum and the red
maple, and the ruby-crowned and_ golden-
crowned kinglets are examining food chances of
two great banners of gray moss that swing from
a pond cypress.

All these birds are either watchers or the
watched. The watchers that I see are somewhat
savage of mien: a sharp-shinned hawk darting
like lightning through the forest; a Cooper’s
hawk perched bodefully on a low pine-stump; a
marsh-harrier, flying high over the forest, beating
his way to the delta where he hunts; a red-tailed
hawk circling high over the trees; a great bald
eagle, somewhat out of place here, but not far
from his home on the wild seacoast, pursuing
a lone and splendid course above the forest.

Of this great and varied family of birds none
form a more interesting group than the wood-

MY WINTER WOODS 185

peckers. These are naturally companionable
birds, with little in their nature that is shy or
subtle; and, depending as they do for a living on
making a noise, they do not hesitate to announce
their presence by a scraping of bark, a vehement
tattoo on a dead limb, or by doughty blows on
the reverberant shaft of a dry pine. The great-
est of these birds, the ivory-bill, has, within the
past twenty years, become extinct in South
Carolina, through no known cause; but there
remains the black pileated woodpecker, which
is the largest and handsomest of the surviving
birds of this family. For nesting purposes it
makes a new hole each year; and often one tree
will have four or five holes that the same wood-
peckers have made. The abandoned holes are
soon occupied by other birds and animals. A
friend of mine found a huge dead pine which
contained three pileated holes: in the first, at
fifty-four feet from the ground, one of these
woodpeckers was nesting; in the second, seventy
feet up, there was a family of fox squirrels; and
in the third, ninety feet up, a pair of sparrow
hawks had built — and all were living in har-
mony!

Our familiar friend, the flicker, is everywhere

‘186 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

to be seen in these woods; and his handsomer rel-
ative, the red-cockaded woodpecker, brightens
with his presence the open stretches of pine-
woods.

Among the other woodpeckers that are here
to be observed are the red-headed, the downy,
the Southern downy, and the red-bellied. Their
close cousins, the nuthatches, are here also — the
white-breasted, the brown-headed, the red-
breasted. Restlessness with them is a family
trait shared by all the woodpecker tribe. And
a cheery race they are — calling, hammering,
flying hither and thither, restless, energetic, op-
timistic!

Turkeys and deer are the “big game” of
these woods. Deer are the most interesting of
all the living things of the pine-lands, but they
are the most difficult to observe. At least, this is
true of observation under natural conditions.
Unless disturbed, they do most of their moving
about at night, or in those eerie half-lights which
precede dawn and darkness. But sometimes the

haunting charm which is conferred on woodlands
| by the known presence there of essentially wild
life is much the same whether the life be observed
or unobserved. If it be there, the forest has a

MY WINTER WOODS 187

mysterious allurement that is readily sensed by
the lover of nature’s wilder aspects and wilder
creatures. That deer are very plentiful in my
winter woods is attested by the innumerable
deer tracks which can be seen.

I take my place beside a pine, for I have a
mind to watch for fox squirrels.

I do not have to wait long, for on balmy winter
days they are as restless as woodpeckers. I see
a big gray one sitting on his haunches on a fallen
log, thoughtfully mastering the mysterious con-
volutions of a pine-cone; another one is coming
slowly, watchfully, head-foremost down a tall
tupelo. As I can see no black squirrels from this
point of vantage, I leave my log and go quietly
along a dim water-course, grown with giant short-
leaf pines, maples, and sweet gums. Among the
clumps of gray moss on a dwarfed gum I see what
I take to be a wisp of dead moss, for it is black.
But then the black object takes shape. I see
the rather slender tail, the delicately shaped feet
a shade darker than the coat, and the telltale
white ears and nose. The moment the squirrel
sees me approaching he leaps to the ground.
Scurrying away the dusky fugitive chooses the
largest yellow pine in the vicinity as a place of

188 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

refuge. Eighty feet it soars without a limb, and
it spires forty feet above the initial branches.
Up the slippery bark of this the black squirrel
climbs, shrewdly keeping the immense bole of
the pine between us. I time his ascent. The
climb to the first limb was made in a minute and
a half; and he has paused several times, not to
rest, but to locate me and to set his bearings ac-
cordingly. But even the lofty refuge thus reached
does not satisfy his ideas of safety. I see him as-
cending still, past crutches of the highest desira-
bility, until at last he has reached the very top-
most frond of the pine, the slender green spire
beyond which there is naught but space and blue
sky. There, a hundred and twenty feet from the
ground, the fugitive clings craftily. What his
feeling is it is easy to imagine: elemental fear
possesses him. But the emotions of the man
watching him are more complex. I admire the
climber’s Excelsior determination; but I regret
that so beautiful a creature’s attitude toward me
is expressed by his swiftly putting between us the
height of the loftiest object on the landscape!
Continuing my walk, I come to a woodland
pond. It is several acres in extent; and even to
me, to whom the sight of it is familiar, the pe-

MY WINTER WOODS 189

culiar attribute of motionlessness is strikingly
noticeable. And it is in the winter that this is
chiefly so. In summer in this pond, black bass
can be seen jumping for dragon-flies; alligators
will swim with indolent strength on the surface
or will bellow grimly from its dim borders; and
patriarchal frogs will encircle the edges as if
holding some mysterious council. But now all
these are asleep. And the waters sleep with them.
The wind that is swaying the pines has small
effect upon this pond; for the many trees densely
bordering its edge and standing here and there in
the water are draped in gray moss that affords a
delicate but effective barrier. Of these trees the
*‘bald” cypresses are at once striking in their
appearance. Their tops open and spread like the
sequoias, giving the appearance that they had
grown to a certain level of ascent, above which
no farther growth save the lateral was permis-
sible. These cypresses usually have the outer
layers of bark stripped off, which gives the trees
a yellowish color. This is the work of raccoons
and fox squirrels, that use this particular soft
bark almost exclusively for bedding their holes.
In seasons of great drought these ponds do not
go dry. Nor have I ever known one to overflow.

199 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

But they are constant in loftier things than the
level of their waters: for they change not in their
beauty nor in their peace. A spirit broods here
that is autumnal; it is rich and sad, full of haunt-
ing pathos and romantic charm. It has a tran-
quillity that seems entirely detached from life;
and I can never look over the spiritual serenity
of this place without imaging, out of the remote
and mysterious vistas between the mourning
cypresses, the figure of Swinburne’s Proserpine:
** Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves she stands,

Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands.”

I am now within a mile of home, and the sun
is not a half-hour high. For my twilight watching
I choose the top of a sandy ridge that falls to a
deep water-course on one side and toward level
woods on the other. While I love the dawn in
these woods, with the dew-hung bay-bushes, the
rainy fragrances, and the happy activity of the
birds, I love the twilight better; and some of the
best hours of my life have been spent sitting
alone on a pine-log as the evening falls. I say
alone; but all about me there is life.

As the sun sinks behind the dark-tressed pines

MY WINTER WOODS 191

there is movement everywhere in the forest about
me and in the skies above me. One half of the
life of the forest is looking for a place to sleep;
another, the craftier and wilder, is coming forth.
Everywhere birds are flying, with those subdued
comrade calls that tell of the approach of dark-
ness. Far above the pines there is a fait, sweet
whistle of wild ducks’ wings; they are hurrying, I
know, to their night haunts in the waste marshes
of the Santee delta. The sky is suddenly darkened
by a vast flock of birds; they are Florida grackles,
boat-tailed grackles, red-winged blackbirds, cow-
birds, and rusty blackbirds. They are going to
roost in the marshes along the river. Now, in a
funereal line, pass the black vultures; their pow-
erful flight is very impressive. A covey of quail
that has been scattered by some enemy begins
to call together, the sweet, querulous note of the
old female having in it a human quality. Great
flights of robins pass overhead, “ changing
swamps,” or migrating from one feeding-ground
to another. Befitting this hour of mystery, from
the depths of a gray swamp that has been mould-
ering in misty silence a great horned owl gives
his far and melancholy note.
The light in the west is fading. The voices of

192 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

the day give place to the voices of the night. In
a lone pine standing on the edge of a pond a wild
turkey has gone to roost, though I neither saw
nor heard him fly to his perch. He is rather du-
bious over something, for he will not settle on the
limb, but stands there rocking awkwardly, his
long neck craned. There is a noise in the sandy
road; it is the creaking buggy of an old rice
planter driving homeward in the dusk. Far off
I hear the melodious whooping of a negro. He
does it partly from sheer love of music, and
partly because “‘hants”’ fear such music as he
can make. He, too, is going home. Now from the
shadowy water-course below me, above whose
shimmering copses a wraithlike mist is rising,
two forms emerge. I thought they would come,
yet I feared it might be too dark for me to see
them. They are graceful beyond belief. Their
movements are as fairylike as they are silent. In
a little misty glade they frolic and caper. Are
they the spirits of this Southern solitude? They
are; for they are deer coming out of the thickets
to roam the glimmering woods of night.

Their coming is the signal for my going; for
now I know that there will be nothing more for
me to see, save a great owl dimly brushing past

MY WINTER WOODS 193

on a silent wing, or a crafty fox pausing spectrally
for an instant in the road to snarl secretly at me
ere he vanishes into the black woods. The old
planter is now out of sight and sound. The
negro has stopped his whooping, indicating that
he is either at home or that the “hants” have
him. The deer have vanished. The roses have
faded from the great gateway of the west. The
day in my winter woods is done.

CHAPTER XIV
ALLIGATORS AGAIN

THERE is a famous negro hunter in the delta
country of the Santee River, in South Carolina,
West McConnor by name, who has, I believe,
taken more alligators than all the other hunters
in that county.

“West,” I said one day, “‘what was the closest
call you ever had with an alligator?”

The negro scratched his head and looked me
squarely in the eye with that inscrutable stare
which the black man so readily assumes.

“Alligators, mister,’ said he, “ain’t common.
Is you sure you don’t mean just ’gators?”’

“No,” I replied, catching the drift of his
humor, “I mean ‘alligators, mister’ —or to
turn it the other way round, mister alligators.”

“The big Jackfield bull,” he said at last, with
a smile that showed his gleaming teeth; “he done
spoil my Sunday clothes fo’ me.”’

He then told me the following tale which I shall
translate from West’s quaint gullah dialect,
which would be intelligible only to natives —
and possibly to alligators.

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 195

One Saturday he had “set” for the great bull
alligator that had long haunted an abandoned
rice-land tract on the delta known as “Jack-
field.””, On Sunday afternoon he decided to visit |
his set; and when he came to the head of the old
canal he found the line stretched toward the
water as taut as wire; but the alligator was not
in sight. By tapping the rope the alligator was
made to bounce to the surface; and a formidable
prize he must have been, for West declared he -
was not under fifteen feet. West had no weapon
with him; besides, he had on his Sunday clothes.
But he decided to get the alligator home that
evening. He thought he would make him crawl
down the long rice-field bank after him. |

The alligator had not swallowed the bait; in-
stead he had been hooked through the jaw, and -
his frantic tuggings at the line had loosened the
hook. But of all this West was not at first aware;
he was forbidden by prudence to make a close —
inspection. At first the great bull came after
the negro willingly enough; but when once fairly .
up on the bank, he seemed to discover what was
ahead for him. Every ten or fifteen yards he
would rise on his short, stocky legs, open wide his
ponderous jaws, hiss harshly, and make an awk- ©

196 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

ward rush at his captor. As it was near twilight,
as the footing on the bank was very precarious,
and as West had to be doubly careful so as to
preserve the sheen of his Sunday suit, the situa-
tion was full of perplexity. It was a cruel thing that
the negro was doing; but retribution was coming.

It was with increasing difficulty that the
hunter had been able to keep his distance from
the reptile, which, having long used the bank as
a crawl, was on familiar ground. Finally, just
before he reached a slippery crevasse, the giant
bull made a splendid rush. He probably saw
before him, and to one side, the gleam of the
water in the canal. West stepped quickly back,
slipped, and in a moment had been plunged into
the canal. Whether or not the furious bull was
after him it certainly was on him; and the negro,
in terror and dismay, let go the line and swam
for his life. He managed to crawl out into the
marsh on the other side of the canal.

I asked him if he saw the ’gator again.

**No, sah,” he said; “I got hol’ de line, but he ’d
done gone un’er de roots of a buck-cypress
growin’ in de water. I pulled on it till I pulled de
hook outer his jaws. But he was n’t no ’gator,
I tol’ you.”

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 197

*Ts he still in Jackfield, West?”

““Yes, sah, and he’s gwine stay there. He ain’t
no ‘gator, ner not even a alligator,’ added the
negro, a far-off look coming into his eyes; “he’s
a token.”

By this I was given to understand that West
believed the mighty bull to have powers border-
ing on the supernatural. And no self-respecting
negro is going to tamper with a spirit.

Joel Boone, a white man living in the pine-
lands near the Santee, told me this story of an-
other “‘alligator.”

“Late one afternoon I went down to Blake’s
Reserve”’ — a great artificial lake in the woods,
from which, in the old days, water used to be
drawn to flow the rice-fields — “to kill a ’gator.
After waiting around for a while without seeing a
*gator, I got in my canoe and pushed out toward
the channel. I was sitting in the stern and my
coat-tails were hanging over the end. Well, since
I always call a ’gator by barking like a dog, I be-
gan to tree a ‘coon up one of those big cypresses.
Every now and then I would stop to look and
listen; but I could n’t see a thing. I was just
thinking of turning back for home when, out of
that still water behind me, there came, with a

198 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

rush as sudden and quick as the stroke of a rat-
tler’s head, the head of a monster alligator. His
jaws closed with a snap and they tore off the
end of my coat. I never paddled so since I was
born. I think that ’gator heard the dog barking
and came creeping up under the water, not seeing
the canoe, and took my black back for some kind
of a canine. When I bark after this, I bark on
shore.”

One of the strangest mishaps that ever befell
an alligator or a rice planter occurred at Eldo-
rado Plantation. A fourteen-foot alligator at-
tempted to enter the rice-field canal from the
river by way of the trunk, which is the wooden
box set in the bank for the passage back and forth
of the water; when halfway through he became
wedged. No one knew what was the trouble; but
since the trunk would not work, a naked negro
diver was sent down to discover it. He discovered
it, and also his ability to break all world’s records
as a swimmer.

““Not me!” he protested to one of the group of
negroes watching him, who had offered to hold
his clothes if he would go down again. “De
grandpa alligator done take up his residence in
dat trunk. Not me!”

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 199

Before the trunk could be put in working order
the bank had to be dug away, the ponderous box
lifted, and the ’gator freed from his prison by
prying off one side of the structure.

I long ago ceased to wonder that the natives
find so much interest in the largest of the
North American saurians, having myself learned
through experience that happily this great reptile
is as interesting in his habits as his position would
lead us to expect him to be.

The breeding habits of the alligator are nat-
urally difficult to observe, but they have pro-
vided me not only considerable food for thought,
but as well many valuable bits of “animal in-
terest.” Like the great family of terrapins and
turtles, and like some snakes (especially water
snakes), the alligator lays eggs. Well and good —
you learned that in your school-days. These are
from ten to thirty in number, and are deposited
in sand or earth not far from the haunt of the old
*gator. A shallow excavation is made for the re-
ception of the eggs, and over this when the eggs
are deposited is piled a considerable mound of
sand, and over this leaves and trash, and some-
times dry brush. The leaves are evidently for
purposes of protective concealment, for alligator

200 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

eggs are often found and devoured by crows,
foxes, buzzards, and other marauding scavengers.
The eggs themselves closely resemble the eggs
of the sea-turtle; they are dull white in color, and
the shells are harsh to the touch; they can be
dented as can all eggs of the same type. They
are not so large as might be expected, averaging
the size of turkey eggs, though they are round in
shape.

When the time for hatching comes the little
alligators emerge from the mound of sand; and
while most of the eggs will have proved fertile,
but a small number of the wide-awake little
fellows will ever reach the water. Their move-
ments are readily sighted by the keen-eyed birds
of prey and their helplessness is recognized.
Hawks, crows, buzzards, and eagles descend on
the small adventurers into the world, and only
the luckiest ones ever reach the water. The
mother alligator seems definitely to know when
her eggs will hatch; for while she seldom if ever
visits the nest during incubation, she is nearly
always there when the young come forth.

It is a pitiful sight to watch a tiny alligator
trying to defend itself. Its instinct seems to tell
it that its head and tail must be snapped together —

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 201

vigorously, first on one side and then on the
other. When molested a little ’gator will begin
this performance, which resembles some kind of a
savage dance, and will keep it up until exhausted;
often during this strange reptilian tango, the eyes
are closed and the movements are mechanical
and clocklike.

I once observed a mother alligator attempting
to shelter her young to the refuge of the water.
She was as much in earnest about it as any
mother could be, yet her efforts were pathetically
ineffective. She was not in her element and all
her movements were awkward. Her great jaws
opened and snapped convulsively, her unwieldy
body turned and twisted with amazing agility,
but with pitiful indirection; her powerful, mus-
cular tail struck out valiantly but impotently.
I saw a big bald eagle drop grardly out of the
open sky, talons wide; and in a moment he was ©
beating his way up again, a tiny alligator strug-
gling vainly in his claws. An osprey took one
away and returned for the second; several crows
were on hand for their scavenger’s share. The
mother alligator made painful progress toward
the safe retreat offered by the dark lagoon, a
hundred yards off. The bewildered little reptiles

202 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

followed as best they could, but evidently found
progress through the swampy brush exceedingly
discouraging. When once the thin fringe of
marsh had been passed (the tiny ’gators taking
famously to the wake of muddy water left by the
mother) the formidable old saurian turned and
the pursuers halted on the track. The sharp-
taloned marauders know better than to attack
the young of a ’gator when that great creature is
in her element. I followed the strange procession
quietly, and on approaching the lagoon I saw the
monster bull alligator lying at his ease out in
the deep water. Domestic cares evidently lay as
lightly on him as on the proverbial lazy husband.
As the little black alligators swam out toward
him through the broad lily-pads, he regarded
them with indolent interest; but he did not break
the peace of his satisfying siesta by any move-
ment or sound. After they once gain the water I
do not think that alligators pay any more at-
tention to their young than turtles do; they live
in the shallower parts of lagoons and bayous and
appear quite able to take care of themselves.
The habits of alligators during the winter, ip
most latitudes where the weather is liable oc-
casionally to be severe, are also difficult to study. |

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 203

They certainly hibernate; but of their choice
of sleeping-places little is known. It is possible
that they bury themselves in the mud under stag-
nant waters. But it is generally agreed that al-
ligators have dry caverns and caves under the
banks of the bodies of water which they inhabit,
to which they resort, not only in winter, but also
at other times, notably when they are eating their
occasional but heavy feasts. It is possible that
they hibernate in these subterranean haunts;
which are distinct from alligator holes, that are
simply favorite places of retreat beneath the
water, preferably where it is deep but stagnant.

Though I have observed many hundreds of
alligators, and have seen them under almost
every condition imaginable, I have never yet
seen one eat its catch. I have frequently observed
an alligator seizing its prey or taking a bait; but
the invariable subsequent move was to disappear
beneath the water. Whether the saurian’s vic-
tim was a pig or a dog, a wild duck or a piece of
meat on a line, the ’gator’s actions were always
the same. Perhaps, in addition to seizing and
perhaps stunning his catch with a blow ot his
tail, it is his habit to drown him also. At any
rate, I conclude that alligators have obscure re-

204 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

sorts, above the water-line, but approachable
through it only, to which they carry their vic-
tims. This belief is further strengthened by the
fact, well known to alligator-hunters who bait
the animals, that an alligator seems to prefer
meat that is tainted to fresh meat.

In the latitude of Charleston, South Carolina,
where most of these observations were made,
the alligators disappear in October and reappear
about the end of March or the first of April. In
ponds and lagoons where they literally swarm
during the spring and summer months, I have
never observed one between the first of Novem-
ber and the first of March.

Among alligator-hunters it is a well-known
fact that those taken early in the spring invari-
ably have in their stomachs a hard substance,
such as a pine-knot or a ball-like root. This is
often worn and rounded as smooth as a glass
ball, probably by the long processes of digestion.
It is supposed that these substances are swallowed
before hibernation and are disgorged in the
spring; for they have been found on the shores of
waters inhabited by ’gators. During the great
reptiles’ long sleep the presence in their stomachs
of such a substance probably keeps the organs of |

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 205

digestion in mild but wholesome action. I once
killed a large alligator that had in its stomach an
amazing object, which helped to unravel a mys-
tery of the plantation. The object was a good-
sized brass bell which the autumn before had been
worn by a young heifer that had unaccountably
disappeared.

Among the habits of the alligator none is
more regular or characteristic than his custom
of taking siestas. I once saw an amusing end
of a river-bank siesta. A very large ‘gator had
crawled out, evidently at high water, and was
sunning himself on the sedgy brink when I ap-
proached in a canoe. The tide had dropped three
or four feet; and the ’gator, awaking suddenly
and much excited over his danger, took a swift
plunge (as he thought) into the river; falling far
short he turned almost a complete somersault,
striking the water with a resounding smack. He
evidently thought some perilous trick had been
played on him, for great was his consternation
and incredibly speedy his recovery and tumul-
tuous escape. When surprised from his siesta on
a log an alligator will throw himself convulsively
off with a gigantic wriggle, and the disappearing
flash of his black tail will be about all that is seen

206 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

of him after he strikes the water. When a ’gator
is taking his siesta on shore it is dangerous to
get between him and the water, and the reason
for it is simple: he is going to reach the water by
the shortest route and he has the momentum of a
catapult.

One day I saw a small ’gator asleep on a log,
and I determined to try to catch him by wading
up to him through the shallow water. It looked
safe and easy; yet just before laying hands on the
little fellow, I happened to sense danger behind
me; looking back, I saw, directly in the course
I had followed through the reeds and muddy
water, a ‘gator of formidable size and truculent
mien; and though I had no way of establishing
its relationship, it must have been the mother of
the little fellow I was after. It did not take me
long to get ashore; and on looking back I could see
nothing of either alligator. They are very swift
to vanish, and they have the advantage of all
amphibious creatures in that they cannot be fol-
lowed below the surface of their natural element.
Yet this ability to retreat safely is an incentive
toward making alligator-hunting a good sport.

_ Contrary to a superstition quite common even
in localities in which the alligator is native, the |

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 207

great reptile is easily killed with rifle or shot-
gun, and is, indeed, vulnerable in many spots;
in the brain and under the fore-shoulder into the
heart are the most vital points. However, the
*gator possesses the stubborn vitality of many
other reptiles, and often long after the huge
saurian 1s apparently dead, he will come to life. It
is at such times that the alligator is most vicious
and dangerous. I once hauled an apparently
lifeless ten-foot ’gator into a canoe with me; and
when I had come from the lagoon into the river
my monstrous companion revived, and began
crawling leisurely over the side of the boat. As I
anticipated no adventurous pleasure in being
swamped in sixty feet of swift water, I let him
crawl overboard. It was a balancing feat, as it
was, to keep the canoe from capsizing. The al-
ligator’s brain is situated far back in the head
and immediately between the eyes. This is
naturally the most vital spot; a ball, entering the
eye from either side or from any of the front
angles, will almost surely pierce the brain. I have
shot an alligator from behind, the bullet taking
off the brain cap, but not entering the head.
After one great plunge the ’gator sank, and when
recovered was stone dead.

208 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Alligators are taken at night by hide-hunters
who traverse their haunts in boats fitted with
lights. They rap on the gunwales, and the *gators
rise to discover the cause of the strange sound.
The hunter will then shoot for the brain and
seize the ’gator with a boat-hook before he sinks.
This is, withal, no sport and a rather brutal pro-
ceeding. The largest ’gators are seldom taken
in this way, for they seem too wary to be so
easily trapped, but the younger generations are
slaughtered in multitudes. The common method
of taking alligators is by shooting with a rifle
or by capturing with a hook and line. In the
coastal waters of Florida they are sometimes har-
pooned.

The rifle shooting hardly need be commented
upon; but there are features about hooking al-
ligators that are not generally known. The old
method was by fastening a stout wire about the
middle of a thick oak stick, six or eight inches
long and sharply pointed at both ends. The wire
was then attached to the regular line, usually a
strong cotton or hemp rope of plough-line size.
The wooden hook was put lengthwise through the
bait, and the alligator would generally swallow
it, point down. When, however, it had passed

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 209

his narrow throat, tension on the line would turn
the stake across the passage at the base of the jaws.
An alligator so caught is firmly hooked and can
be hauled out of the water and made to follow
his captor on land. But, of course, the easiest
and surest method is to use a stout hook or set
of hooks, with six feet of small chain or heavy
wire attached and well swiveled.

For baiting the line a squirrel or a large bird
answers quite well, while a chunk of side-meat
serves satisfactorily. The bait is hung over the
limb of a tree or over some kind of support that
is frail enough to permit the line to clear itself
when the alligator strikes. Most hunters, per-
haps, generally let the bait hang two feet above
the water. The weight of the alligator, as he falls
back into his element after having seized his
prey, is almost sure to hook him securely.

On being hooked an alligator is not at all back-
ward about trying to tear things up. When an old
alligator, mad as a tortured bull in a ring, begins
to cut loose, he changes the aspect of the land-
scape, as it were. In his mighty gyrations he may
foul the rope on a snag and break it or twist it
until it parts from double tension. As a rule, be-
fore the hunter gets back to the line the alligator

210 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

will have expended most of his strength and is
sullen and stubborn. Until he is out of his
element his tactics are invariably defensive; but
once on land he will not hesitate to attack his
tormentors.

Sometimes, when an alligator hole has been
definitely located, it is possible to capture the
reptile by simply fishing him out by means of a
pole with a hook on the end of it. When, how-
ever, the alligator has been brought to the sur-
face in this manner, he must, especially if he be
of any size, be speedily dispatched, else he will
smash things in all directions.

Most of the time alligators feed on fish and
water birds. The sad depletion in the number
of wood ducks may, I believe, be as much at-
tributed to alligators as to hunters; for in the
South wood ducks breed almost invariably over
alligator-infested waters, and the half-grown
ducks fall easy prey to these monstrous maraud-
ers. At other times, and as opportunity offers,
alligators will kill hogs, young cattle, sheep,
fawns, and particularly dogs, of which they ap-
pear excessively fond. Many a fine deer-hound
has been caught while attempting to swim waters
in which ’gators live. Indeed, it isan easy matter

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 211

to call a ’gator by standing on the shore of a
pond or lagoon and imitating the bark of a dog.

When his prey is taken in deep water the al-
ligator comes up under it and seizes it with his
jaws. If it is in shallow water or on the shore, he
approaches under water, with, perhaps, his eyes
out. When near his victim he turns sideways,
lunges and strikes with his tail, which sweeps the
prey into the dreadful vise of the crushing jaws.
In every case the ’gator after prey is a swift,
silent, patient, crafty stalker. If his blow has
been a fair one the animal is stunned; if not, it is
so frightened and disconcerted that it is seized
before it attempts to escape. The shock of the
closing of the alligator’s jaws is so great that there
is seldom any outcry from the victim.

As the alligator grows old he is inclined to be-
come solitary, and to take up a fixed abode, near
which he can always be found. It may be be-
side a great tree in a lagoon, or on some point in
the river, or in some elbow of a pond; there he
has his domain, which he rules with morose
watchfulness. The smaller alligators keep to
themselves, which they have probably been
taught to do by severe experience.

But in the early spring the solitaries consort

212 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

with the other ’gators. It is then that the bulls
can be heard roaring — which is certainly one of
the wildest, most awe-inspiring sounds in the
whole realm of nature. The alligator is a silent
creature; but the bellow of a great bull is amply
sufficient to offset long periods of quietness on the
part of the whole family. One who has heard the
roar of a bull alligator will remember it as one
of the unique voices of the wild, comparable to
the bugling of the elk, the challenge of the lion,
and the trumpeting of the elephant.

For acreature so huge and so apparently awk-
ward the alligator is amazingly agile and swift.
I have frequently tried in a canoe to overtake a
swimming gator or to get close enough for a shot.
But with an ease that was exasperating, he seemed
always able to keep his distance. Often, too, a big
alligator can steal quietly along, leaving hardly a
noticeable ripple in his wake. At such times he
swims with his partly-webbed feet, not with his
tail.

The alligator is not only amphibious, but he
can live in salt water as well as in fresh. Some
naturalists believe that these belong to different
species; but my observation has not led me to
such a conclusion. In Alligator Creek, at the

ALLIGATORS AGAIN 213

mouth of the Santee River, the water as a rule is
blackish. Sometimes it is wholly salt and some-
times wholly fresh. This creek is infested by alli-
gators, and they do not seem to mind the changes
in the water. They come out into the river and
they follow the coast up and down. I have taken
a fresh-water ’gator on the coast nine miles from
the mouth of the river.

As is the case with all large game it is unsafe
and unscientific to attempt to lay down any set
of rules concerning their conduct. What I have
said of the alligator has been from my own ob-
servation. There is no doubt that different alli-
gators will, under identical circumstances, act
differently. As the creatures of the wild increase
in intelligence, the probability of their behavior
is more difficult to determine; they gain in in-
dividuality and resourcefulness.

Will the alligator ever deliberately attack man?
This, like the question of the shark, will have
many partisans on both sides. The alligator as
a menace to man is practically a negligible quan-
tity. But if cornered and provoked an alligator
will not only defend himself, but will attack his
molester. I once found a big bull in the open
woods crawling from a summer-dried pond to

214 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

the river. As I approached he made no attempt
at flight; instead, he rose awkwardly, opened
wide his great jaws, and made a waddling rush
at me. His legs could not support his weight and
his great bulk subsided, his jaws closing at the
same time with a hissing sound. There are a few
authentic instances of negroes who have been
attacked and injured by alligators, but the vic-
tims themselves have generally been to blame.
To swim in water where alligators are known to
be would doubtless be a very foolhardy proceed-
ing; for in the water a man seldom looks formid-
able, and loses, as it were, his identity. More-
over, an alligator of even ordinary size could
pull under the strongest swimmer who ever
swam a stroke. In short, it cannot be considered
safe to tempt an alligator.

On account of the nature of its environments
the alligator of North America bids sure to sur-
vive in considerable numbers. In spite of all the
bags, purses, and belts which have been made
from the skin, its numbers are still large in most
of its natural haunts; in short, they are still so
plentiful as to be common. But speaking of
alligators “‘as are alligators,” or in the words of
West McConnor, “alligators, mister,’’ meaning |

ALLIGATORS AGAIN Q15

the occasional big old bulls, it must be admitted
that they literally “ain’t common.” Strange and
interesting creatures, these great solitaries, living
examples of those half-chimerical forms that
inhabited the earth during the age of monsters.

CHAPTER XV
THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK

WHEN I am at large in deer country there is no
need for friends to try to lure me off the fascinat-
ing following of the white-tail by promises of
more abundant sport with smaller game. Quail
and ducks and woodcock and the like do not look
very good when a man feels that an old buck with
majestic antlers is waiting in the woods for some
one to talk business to him. I admit that the
game of deer-hunting is sometimes tedious and
the shooting of the occasional variety; yet my
experience has been that the great chance does
come to the faithful, and that to make good on
it is to drink one of Life’s rarest juleps, the mem-
ory of whose flavor is a delight for years.

It may be.that this love of deer-hunting was
not only born in me — the men of my family
always having been sportsmen — but was made
ingrowing by a curious happening that occurred
when I was not a year old. One day I was left
alone in a large room in the plantation house
where first I saw the light of day. Lying thus

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK Q17

in my crib, what should come roaming in but a
pet buck that we had. My mother, in the great-
est dismay, found him bending over me, while,
if we may believe the account, I had hold of the
old boy’s horns and was crowing with delight. I
have always felt sure that the old stag (since he
knew that his own hide was safe) passed me
the mystic word concerning the rarest sport on
earth. He put it across to me, all right; and Iam
going to do my best here to hand on the glad
tidings. I want to tell about a deer-hunt we had
one Christmas not long past.

Things on the plantation had been going badly
with me. There were plenty of deer about, and
a most unusual number of very large bucks; but
our hunting-party had achieved nothing of a na-
ture worth recording. We had been at the busi-
ness nearly a week, and we were still eating pork
instead of venison. That’s humiliating; indeed,
in a sense, degrading. On a certain Wednes-
day (we had begun to hunt on the Thursday
previous) I took our negro driver aside. It was
just after we had made three unsuccessful drives,
and just after some of the hunters had given me
a look that, interpreted, seemed to mean that
I could easily be sold to a sideshow as the only

218 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

real fakir in captivity. In the lee of a great pine
I addressed my partner in crime.

“Prince,” I said, drawing a flask from my
pocket, “as deer-hunters you and I aren't
worth a Continental damn.” (This term, as my
readers know, is a good one, sound and true, hav-
ing been the name of a coin minted before the
Revolution. )

**Dat’s so, sah, suttinly so,” Prince admitted,
his eyes glued to the flask, his tongue moistening
his lips.

“Now,” I went on, “‘we are going to drive this
Little Horseshoe. Tell me where to stand so that
we can quit this fooling.”

The flask sobered Prince marvelously, as I
knew it would. To a negro there is no tragedy
like seeing a drink without getting it; and the
possibility of such a disaster made the good-
natured Prince grave.

‘“Dis summer,” he said, “I done see where an
able buck done used to navigate regular by the
little gum-tree pond. Dat must be he social
walk,”’ he further explained; “‘and dat may be he
regular run. You stop there, Cap’n, and if he
is home, you will bline he eye.”

That sounded good to me. Therefore, the ©

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 219

calamity that Prince dreaded might happen did
not occur; for we parted in high spirits, and with
high spirits in at least one of us. But there must
have been a prohibition jinx prowling about, for
what happened shortly thereafter appeared like
the work of an evil fate.

As I was posting the three standers, the man
who had already missed four deer took a fancy
to the stand by the gum-tree pond. I tried politely
to suggest that there was a far better place, for
him, but he remained obdurate. I therefore let
him stay at what Prince had described as the
critical place. And it was not five minutes later
that Prince’s far-resounding shout told me that
a stag was afoot. Feeling sure that the buck
would run for the pond, I stood up on a log, and
from that elevation I watched him do it. He was
a bright, cherry-red buck, and his horns would
have made an armchair for ex-President Taft.
He ran as if he had it in his crafty mind to run
over the stander by the pond and trample him.
He, poor fellow, missed the buck with both bar-
rels. His roaring ten-gauge gun made enough
noise to have stunned the buck; but the red-
coated monarch serenely continued his march.
All this happened near sundown, and it was the

220 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

end of a perfectly doleful day. Prince laid the
blame for the bull on me when he said, in mild
rebuke:

“How, Cap’n, make you didn’t put a true
gunnerman to the critical place?”

The next day — the seventh straight that we
had been hunting — it was an uncle of mine who
got the shot. And this thing happened not a
quarter of a mile from where the other business
had come off. My uncle and I were hardly a
hundred yards apart in the open, level, sun-
shiny pine-woods. Before us was a wide thicket
of bays about five feet high. The whole stretch
covered about ten acres. Prince was riding
through it, whistling on the hounds. Suddenly I
heard a great bound in the bays. Prince’s voice
rang out — but a second shout was stifled by him
designedly. A splendid buck had been roused.
He made just about three bounds and then
stopped. He knew very well that he was cor-
nered, and he was evidently wondering how to
cut the corners. The deer was broadside to my
uncle and only about fifty yards off. I saw him
carefully level his gun. At the shot the buck, tall
antlers and all, collapsed under the bay-bushes.

Then the lucky hunter, though he is a good

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 221

woodsman, did a wrong thing. Leaning his gun
against a pine, he began to run forward toward
his quarry dragging out his hunting-knife as he
ran. When he was within ten yards of the buck
the thing happened. The stunned stag (tall
horns and all) leaped clear of danger, and away
he went rocking through the pine-lands. Be-
lieving that the wound might be a fatal one we
followed the buck a long way. Finally, meeting a
negro woodsman who declared that the buck had
passed him “running like the wind,” we aban-
doned the chase. A buckshot had probably
struck the animal on the spine, at the base of the
skull, or on a horn. Perhaps the buck simply
dodged under cover at the shot; I have known a
deer so to sink into tall broom-sedge.

That night our hunting-party broke up. Only
Prince and I were left on the plantation. Before
we parted that evening I said:

“You and I are going out to-morrow. And
we ll take one hound. We’ll walk it.”

The next day, to our astonishment, we found
a light snow on the ground — a rare phenomenon
in the Carolina woods. We knew that it would
hardly last for the day; but it might help us for a
while.

222 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

In the first thicket that we walked through a
buck fawn came my way. He was a handsome
little fellow, dark in color and chunky in build.
It is possible to distinguish the sex of a fawn even
when the lithe creature is on the fly, for the doe
invariably has a longer and sharper head and
gives evidences of a slenderer, more delicate
build. I told the bucklet that I would revisit him
when he had something manly on his head.

Prince and I next circled Fawn Pond, a pe-
culiar pond fringed by bays. Our hound seemed
to think that somebody was at home here. And
we did see tracks in the snow that entered the
thicket; however, on the farther side we dis-
cerned them departing. But they looked so big
and so fresh that we decided to follow them.
Though the snow was melting fast I thought
the tracks looked as if two bucks had made them.
Deer in our part of Carolina are so unused to
snow that its presence makes them very uncom-
fortable, and they do much wandering about in
daylight when it is on the ground.

Distant from Fawn Pond a quarter of a mile
through the open woods was Black Tongue
Branch, a splendid thicket, so named because
once there had been found on its borders a great.

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 223

buck that had died of that plague of the deer
family — the black tongue, or anthrax. Deciding
to stay on the windward side (for a roused deer
loves to run up the wind) I sent Prince down to
the borders of the branch, telling him to cross it,
when together the two of us would flank it out.
The tracks of the deer seemed to lead toward
Black Tongue, but we lost them before we came
to the place itself. While I waited for Prince and
the leashed hound to cross the end of the narrow
thicket, I sat on a pine-log and wondered whether
our luck that day was to change. Suddenly,
from the green edges of the bay I was aware of
Prince beckoning violently for me to come to
him. I sprang up. But we were too slow. From
a deep head of bays and myrtles, not twenty
steps from where the negro was standing, out
there rocked into the open woods as splendid a
buck as it has ever been my fortune to see. He
had no sooner cleared the bushes than he was
followed by his companion, a creature fit to be
his mate. They were two old comrades of many
a danger. Their haunches looked as broad as
the tops of hogsheads. Their flags were spec-
tacular. They were just about two hundred
yards from me, and, of course, out of gunshot.

224 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Had I been with Prince at that moment (as I had
been up to that fatal time) I should have had a
grand chance — a chance such as does not come
even to a hardened hunter more than a few times
in a hundred years or so. The bucks held a steady
course straight away from me; and their pace was
a rocking, rhythmic, leisurely one. Speechless I
watched them go for half a mile; my heart was
pretty nearly broken. As for Prince — when I
came up to him, I found him quite miserable and
unnerved.

“Oh, Cap’n, if you had only been where I been
jest now!” was all he could say.

From the direction that the two great animals
had taken the negro and I thought that we knew
just where they were going. Telling him to hold
the hound for about fifteen minutes I took a
long circle in the woods, passing several fine
thickets where the old boys might well have
paused, and came at last to a famous stand on a
lonely road. Soon I heard the lone hound open
on the track, and you can imagine with what
eagerness I awaited the coming of what was be-
fore him. The dog came straight for me; but
when he broke through the last screen of bays
he was alone. The deer had gone on. It was not.

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 225

hard to find where they had crossed the road
some ten yards from where I had been standing.
Judging from the easy way in which they were
running they were not in the least worried. And
from that crossing onward they had a perfect
right not to be concerned; for beyond the old
road lay a wild region of swamp and morass
into which the hunter can with no wisdom or
profit go.

I did not stop the dog, deciding that by mere
chance the bucks might, if run right, dodge back
and forth, and so give me the opportunity for
which I was looking. The old hound did his best;
and the wary antlered creatures, never pushed
hard, did some cunning dodging before him. Once
again I saw them far away through the wood-
lands, but a glimpse of their distant beauty was
all the comfort afforded me. After a two-hour
chase the hound gave them up. Prince and I had
to confess that we had been outwitted, and in a
crestfallen mood we quitted the hunt for the day.

The next day was my last one at home; and
every hunter is surely familiar with the feeling
of the man who, up until the last day, has not
brought his coveted game to bag. I felt that we
should have luck on our side or else be beaten.

226 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

I told Prince as much, and he promised to be on
hand at daybreak.

Before dawn I was awakened by the sound of a
steady winter rain softly roaring on the shingle
roof of the old plantation house. It was dis-
couraging, to be sure; but I did not forget that
the rain ushered in my last day. By the time I
was dressed Prince had come up. He was wet and
cold. He reported that the wind was blowing
from the northeast. Conditions were anything
but promising. However, we had hot coffee,
corncakes deftly turned by Prince, and a cheer-
ing smoke. After such reinforcement weather
can be hanged. By the time that the dim day
had broadened we ventured forth into the
stormy pine-lands, where the towering trees were
rocking continuously, and where the rain seemed
able to search us out, however we tried to keep
to the leeward of every sheltering object. The
two dogs that we had compelled to come with us
were wet and discouraged. Their heads, I knew,
were full of happy visions of the warm plantation
fireside that they had been forced to leave. Be-
sides, it was by no means their last day, and their
spirit was utterly lacking in all the elements of
enthusiasm.

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 227

After about four barren drives, when Prince
and I were soaked quite through and were be-
ginning to shiver despite precautions that we
took (in Southern deer-hunting a “precaution”
means only one thing), I said:

‘“Now, Hunterman, this next drive is our last.
We’ll try the Little Corner, and hope for the
best.”

Two miles through the rainy woods I plodded
to take up my stand. All the while I took to do
this Prince waited, his back against a pine, and
with the sharp, cold rain searching him out. The
wind made the great pines rock and sigh. Even
if the dogs should break into full chorus I thought
I could never hear them coming. At last I
reached my stand. A lonely place it was, four
miles from home, and in a region of virgin forest.
So much of the wide woodland through which I
had come looked so identical that it hardly
seemed reasonable to believe that a deer, jumped
two miles back in a thicket, would run to this
particular place. But men who know deer nature
know what a deer will do. I backed up against
an old sweet-gum tree, waiting in that solitary,
almost savage place. I thought that in about a
half-hour my good driver, bedraggled and weary,

228 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

would come into sight, and that then we two dis-
illusioned ones would go home sloshing through
the drizzle.

But wonderful things happen to men in the
big woods. Their apparently insane faith is not
infrequently rewarded. Hardly had I settled
myself against the big tree for shelter when, far
off, in a momentary lulling of the grieving wind, I
heard the voice of a hound. One of the dogs had
a deep bass note, and it was this that I heard.
Sweet music it was to my ears, you may well
believe! From where I was standing I could see
a good half-mile toward the thickets whence had
come the hound’s mellow, rain-softened note.
And now, as I looked searchingly in that direc-
tion, I saw the deer, heading my way, and coming
at a wild and breakneck pace. At that distance
I took the fugitive for a doe. It was running
desperately, with head low, and lithe, powerful
legs eating up the pine-land spaces. If it held
its course it would pass fifty yards to the left of
me. I turned and ran crouchingly until I thought
I had reached a place directly in the oncoming
deer’s pathway. I was in a slight hollow; and
the easy rise of ground in front of me hid for a
few moments the approaching racer. I fully ex-

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK ~— 229

pected a big doe to bound over the rise and to
run slightly on my left. I had a slight suspicion
that the deer might be an old buck, with small,
poor horns that on my first and distant view had
not been visible. But it was not so.

Hardly had I reached my new stand when over
the gentle swell of ground, grown in low broom-
grass, there came a mighty rack of horns forty
yards away to my right. Then the whole buck
came full into view. There were a good many
fallen logs just there, and these he was maneuver-
ing with a certainty and a grace and a strength
that it was a sight to behold. But I was there for
more than just “‘for to admire.”

As he was clearing a high obstruction I gave
him the right barrel. I distinctly saw two buck-
shot strike him high up — too high. He never
winced or broke his stride. .Throwing the gun
for his shoulder, I fired. This brought him down
— but by no means headlong, though, as I after-
wards ascertained that twelve buckshot from the
choke barrel had gone home. The buck seemed
crouching on the ground, his grand crowned
head held high, and never in wild nature have I
seen a more anciently crafty expression than that
on his face. I think he had not seen me before I

230 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

shot; and even now he turned his head warily
from side to side, his mighty horns rocking with
the motion. He was looking for his enemy. I
have had a good many experiences with the be-
havior of wounded bucks; therefore I reloaded
my gun and with some circumspection ap-
proached the fallen monarch. But my caution
was needless. The old chieftain’s last race was
over. By the time I reached him that proud
head was lowered and the fight was done.

Mingled were my feelings as I stood looking
down on that perfect specimen of the deer family.
He was in his full prime. Though somewhat lean
and rangy because this was toward the close of
the mating season, his condition was splendid.
The hair on his neck and about the back of his
haunches was thick and long and dark. His hoofs
were very large, but as yet unbroken. His antlers
were, considering all points of excellence, very
fine. They bore ten points.

My short reverie was interrupted by the clam-
orous arrival of the two hounds. These I caught
and tied up. Looking back toward the drive I
saw Prince coming, running full speed. The dogs
had not had much on him in the race. When he
came up and saw what had happened, wide was

THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 231

the happy smile that broke like dawn on his
dusky face.

“Did you see him in the drive, Prince?” I
asked. “He surely is a beauty.”

“See him?” the negro ejaculated in joyous
excitement. “Cap’n, dat ole thing been lyin’ so
close that when he done jump up he throw sand
in my eye! I done reach for he big tail to ketch
him! But I done know,” he ended, “‘dat some-
body else been waitin’ to ketch him.”

I sent Prince home for a horse on which we
could get the buck out of the woods. While he
was gone I had a good chance to look over the
prone monarch. He satisfied me. And the chief
element in that satisfaction was the feeling that,
after weary days, mayhap, and after adverse
experiences, the great chance will come. For my
part that Christmas hunt taught me that it is
worth while to spend some empty days for a day
brimmed with sport. And one of the lasting
memories of my life is the recollection of that
cold, rainy day in the Southern pine-lands — my
last day for that hunting trip — and my best.

CHAPTER XVI
THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL

Tue sunny wide pine-lands are still save for the
restless calling of the nuthatches and the far-off
whooping of the negro who has been sent around
a big thicket to drive out the deer. For woods so
wild and virgin, it seems for a time that they are
singularly lacking in wild life. But that is be-
cause the wild life has seen the approach of the
deer-stander. But if he will sit quietly beside
the big pine that he has chosen as a stand, he
may see much — though what has already seen
him may continue to lie close for a long time yet.
But other wild life, moving out in front of the
whooping negro and the trailing dogs, will come
out to him unaware. Of these forms few are more
beautiful and graceful than the fox squirrel.
Many a time, as a deer-stander such as the
one just described, I have watched this beautiful
dweller in the great pine-forests of the Carolina
coastal plain. My observation has taught me
that, except at two seasons of the year, the fox
squirrel is a worker on the ground. He is far

THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL 233

more so than the common gray squirrel, and in-
finitely more so than that common pest, the red
squirrel. The reason for this is simple: the chief
food of the fox squirrel is pine-mast and young
buds. In the late summer he has a great habit of
feeding on the ripening mast; sometimes he will
cut off the pine-cones, drop them, and then come
after them. Again he will pull them toward him
as he sits with precarious grace on a high pine-
limb and will open the tight sheaths that hide
the coveted food. As the cones begin of them-
selves to fall, and as the wind begins to drift the
mast down, the squirrels come down to feed.
They travel great distances on the ground, for-
aging as far as a quarter of a mile from the den
tree. When pursued on the ground, if they do
not take at once to a pine they appear to prefer
to run on fallen logs than on the ground itself.
And they can make good time on a log if the
bark is n’t too slippery. However, both on the
ground and in trees I think fox squirrels are not
so quick and resourceful as the gray. In high
trees they move with a good deal of care, and
they do little long jumping.

In the spring of the year — that is, during the
month of March in most parts of the South — it

234 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

is a comparatively easy matter to find all the
fox squirrels in any one section of country by
visiting, in the early morning or late afternoon,
all the redbud maple-trees. This squirrel is
excessively fond of the buds of this tree which
come early; and it will do more venturing after
this food than it will after mast. I remember
seeing a black fox squirrel out on the tip of a red-
bud limb, bending it down some ten feet. It was
a curious sight in wild life to observe this coal-
black squirrel, with its characteristic white ears
and nosetip, delicately maneuvering among the
pink buds. One day, following a water-course
in the pine-lands, I counted eleven of these fine
animals in a walk of a mile, and every one was
in a redbud tree.

I mentioned a black squirrel. This color-phase
is not very rare; and other variations from the
standard iron-gray are common. Occasionally a
pure white fox squirrel is found. Other colors
range from light gray to the deepest black; some-
times a piebald specimen is seen — that is, one
having a gray body and black legs and feet or a
body splotched with black and gray. The one
constant feature of the coloring is the white on
the ears and the nose. In the North this coloring |

THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL 235 '

is not characteristic of the fox squirrel; and in
the matter of body-coloring there is usually a
good deal of dull rusty red. The Southern fox
squirrel is undoubtedly larger than that of the
North; but the Northern gray squirrel is superior
to its cousin of the warmer latitudes.

The Southern fox squirrel loves to nest in a
dead pine — often in the abandoned sleeping-
hole of a black pileated woodpecker. At other
times he will be found in hollow tupelos, sweet
gums, and pond cypresses. In whatever situa-
tion he may decide to make his home one feature
of it is almost as characteristic as is the snake-
skin in the nest of the great-crested flycatcher:
this is that the nest is lined with soft strippings
from the pond cypress. In the Southern woods,
wherever fox squirrels are found, it will be ob-
served that the cypresses have had their outer
bark stripped. I have seen a fox squirrel in the
open woods carrying a mouthful of the silky
yellow fiber; and he had traveled some distance
to get it.

On being startled and pursued a fox squirrel
will nearly always choose a big pine for climbing.
A feature of his ascent is worth noticing. If at all
badly scared he usually does this: with hardly a

236 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

pause he will climb until he has reached the top-
most spiring frond of the great pine, and there he
will cling as long as he believes that danger is
present. I have watched a fox squirrel thus
cling motionless in his precarious position for up-
ward of three quarters of an hour. It is exceed-
ingly difficult to see a squirrel unless the pine-top
be somewhat open. I may add that the same
game is sometimes played by a wild turkey. More
than once I have vainly tried to see a turkey that
had alighted on the very crest of a big short-leaf
pine.

Except under certain conditions the fox squirrel
is a silent creature. He permits the gray to do
the barking. But once I drove two old black ones
into a hole in a den tree. I don’t know how many
more were there, but I have never heard such a
racket as they set up. This continued for at least
five minutes. Matters must, however, have been
amicably settled, for the two blacks did not re-
appear.

The fox squirrel is one of the familiar sights of
the lonelier roads that wind through the forests
of the South. He is, however, a lover of big tim-
ber, as are the other squirrels; and after the waste
left by the lumberman he is likely to move off —

THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL 237

into uncut timber. When given anything like
protection, and when his native woods remain
intact, the fox squirrel increases rapidly. Dur-
ing the late winter, while on a deer-stand at the
Santee Club, whose great estate near the mouth
of the Santee is a sanctuary for many kinds of
game, I saw numbers of these fine squirrels play-
ing about almost as tamely as grays frolic in some
city parks. It is a pity that the negro and his
trailing cur dog have accounted for the depleting
of the ranks of the fox squirrel in the free-range
woods; but even there he maintains something
like encouraging numbers. To me, no sight of
wild life is more pleasing on a sunny winter’s day
in the lonely pine-lands than the graceful, alert,
delicate movements of this most beautiful of all
the squirrels.

CHAPTER XVII
THE OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE

OnE winter day while on a duck hunt I was being
paddled by a negro boatman through one of the
many winding creeks that interlace the broad
delta of the Santee, a few miles above its mouth.
Expecting to jump ducks at almost every turn,
we were moving slowly and silently. This man-
ner of progress enabled us to see many forms of
wild life; some of these birds and animals we saw
before they saw us, and we were therefore observ-
ing them quietly going about some of their rou-
tine practices. I remember seeing an old marsh
coon, plodding along the muddy border of the
creek. In that region, where fur-bearers are little
molested, raccoons are often seen abroad during
the day. We saw two minks gracefully and
swiftly swimming across the creek. Shy king
rails stood preening themselves on small tidal
flats; these hurriedly made use of their long, mus-
cular legs as soon as they saw our canoe approach-
ing. Not infrequently, because the creek was so
still and the sunny stretches of it were so drowsy
and warm, we came upon sleeping ducks. Some

OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 239 ©

of these were on the motionless water; others
were on sand-spits. All had their heads neatly
tucked beneath their wings; but invariably they
appeared to have one eye open, or at least ex-
posed, so that it flew open at the first sign or
sound of danger approaching.

As we rounded a particularly peaceful bend,
making up to where an old rice-mill with its
wharf once had stood, my paddler told me to be
ready, as we were sure to jump something. His
caution was a timely one; although what we saw
did not “jump.” Indeed, both of us were too
surprised to do anything but look with fascinated
eyes on what is perhaps as rare a scene to human
gaze as there is in all the great panorama of wild
life: a number of otters were disporting them-
selves on the quiet waters of the creek just ahead
of us. We were very close to the left bank of the
stream, and my paddler, by a deft maneuver,
sunk his paddle in the soft mud, staying the prog-
ress of the boat. For some fortunate reason the
beautiful and graceful creatures before us did not
for the moment see us. We were therefore privi-
leged to watch the family in its purely wild
state, and certainly in a most playful mood.

Every form of wild life has some trait in its

240 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS ©

nature that under normal conditions predomi-
nates, and the otter’s is a singularly attractive
one: it is playfulness. Most wild creatures when
young have spells of being frolicsome; but in the
majority of instances this playfulness disappears
with youth. In the otter, however, it lasts as long
as life; and nothing is so characteristic of it as the
playing of some sort of joyous game.

In the few minutes allowed us for watching,
before the shy creatures saw us, we saw a be-
wildering number of things happen. In the first
place, the otters, as my negro boatman expressed
it, “had the creek all tore up.”” They did in the
sense that they were disporting themselves in the
water at so lively a rate that the stretch of creek
was full of ripples and choppy waves, and with
sleek brown bodies swimming, turning somer-
saults, and performing all sorts of aquatic antics
with the utmost ease and abandon. ;

There was a rather steep, muddy bank on the
left; and twice down this we saw an otter slide in
fun, striking the water hard and sending it flying.
The mud-covered timbers of an old wharf were
just beyond the slide, and were, at this particular
time of tide, almost flush with the water. On
these old logs the otters would climb, glistening ~

OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 241

in the warm sun, and move with their swift,
paddling gait to a convenient launching-place,
and then plunge into the creek — only, after a
few gay somersaults, to return to the logs. Some-
times a majority of the family would be under
water; again, most of them would be on the logs.
There were certainly four, perhaps five, of them.
It was more difficult to count accurately than
can easily be imagined. As soon as we had
“taken the number” of one he would vanish,
and another would appear. But of seeing four
at one time we were certain. And of all my mem-
ories of wild-life pictures I think I would exchange
this for no other.

Suddenly, and almost simultaneously, an elec-
tric shock appeared to pass through the whole
family. Alas, they had seen us! Instantly four
slim, dark bodies vanished with incredible swift-
ness under the yellow waters. In each case the
last thing we saw of each of the shy creatures
was the long, somewhat flattened, heavily furred
tail. When an otter means to dive deep, it humps
its back and goes straight down, its long tail
waving curiously.

After the family had vanished we sat still in
the canoe for a long time. But not another

242 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

glimpse were we afforded of the otters. Mean-
while the waters of the creek became calm, and
we might have imagined that we had been dream-
ing if the signs of the fur-bearers having been
present had not been so abundant. Upon ex-
amining their “playground” we found that the
muddy slope had been used as a regular slide,
apparently for a long time. On the logs, which
had a half-inch deposit of mud, were fresh tracks
and old tracks; and at the end of one was a rem-
nant of a fish that an otter had left. The exact
place where I made this observation was in At-
kinson’s Creek, between Moorland and Tran-
quillity plantations, some three miles from the
mouth of the North Santee River.

And what became of that interesting family?
I never saw any one of them again. Undoubtedly
we had happened upon a regular haunt of these
fine animals; but I had learned what perhaps few
people know: and that is that the otter is a wan-
derer. He will, it is true, inhabit a certain region;
but he is a restless traveler, and will cover pro-
digious distances, usually, of course, by the water
route, but not infrequently wholly by land, as
when he desires to go cross-country from one
river to another. As nearly as I have been able

OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 243

to ascertain — for the habits of a creature so
excessively shy can never perhaps be established
with finality — the otter has ranges; and favorite
places along his routes have periodic visitations
from him. This is true wherever the otter is
found; for example, an otter will range for many
miles up and down a river.

This habit accounts for the apparently strange
appearance near big cities of this exceedingly
wild and rare creature. For an instance of such
an appearance, I may mention that early in the
winter of 1920 two very fine specimens of the
otter were taken within a few miles of Philadel-
phia, in a region whence the otter was long
since supposed to have vanished. Undoubtedly
these animals had come downstream from some
wild region. However, so shrewd is the otter
that it is not impossible for him to live near man,
and even near large centers of population. The
largest otter-skin I ever measured was from an
old male otter taken in a creek very close to
Charleston. This hide was very beautiful, being
almost black in color. It was forty-two inches
long, with a tail seventeen inches long.

To show further that the otter will not remain
long in one place, I may say that I observed in

244 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Wambaw Reserve, a large freshwater lake near
my home in Carolina, a splendid specimen of the ~
animal. As there was not any hunting or trap-
ping in that section just then, I am satisfied that
the creature was undisturbed; but, for all my
watching, I never saw it there again, despite the
fact that the lonely lagoon was an ideal place
for it. However, not long after I saw an otter
some four miles away, in an old rice-field that had
obscure water connections with the Reserve. I
surmise that this was my otter, but it was 1m-
possible for me to confirm the guess.

In the old days of rice-planting the otter was
a creature considered valuable to the owners of
the fields, for he is a wonderful destroyer of craw-
fish; and these latter creatures often wrought
great damage by burrowing through the banks,
thus causing serious leaks and disastrous floods.
The otter’s staple diet consists of fish; and I
need say nothing more of his skill in catching
fish than that it is an easy pastime for him to cap-
ture the wariest and wildest brook trout. In-
deed, if once an otter gets in a trout-stream or in
a trout-preserve, he may do great damage. As
he is a large and powerful animal he has a raven-
ous appetite; and it is a fairly true saying that

OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 245

when he is not playing he is eating. There is
absolutely nothing sluggish or lazy about the
otter. All his movements are quick and alert;
and even on land, though awkward, he can cover
ground rapidly. As a swimmer I should put him
in a class by himself. His tail helps him in this,
but his expertness in the water is due chiefly to
his curious feet, which are webbed much like a
duck’s. The feet are also furnished with sharp
claws, whose principal use is to enable the animal
to seize its prey.

Mention has been made of the otter’s strength.
Perhaps no other animal of its size is a better
fighter. Though naturally gentle and playful,
he is no mean antagonist. He is said to be
greatly feared by minks, which are creatures of
somewhat similar habits.

The otter builds no house. Its home — if it
may be said to have a regular home —is
usually in a bank-burrow, with an entrance close
to the water-line; and this burrow commonly ex-
tends under the roots of some old tree overhang-
ing the water. Inasmuch as I know that an
otter cannot be depended upon to be at home
regularly, I am sure that he has several of these
haunts, in any one of which he may upon occa-

246 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

sion be found. Sometimes they are seen in very
strange places. An uncle of mine once observed
two playing in a small pool of fresh water beside
a pine-land road, many miles from a river. They
were probably migrating from one large body of
water to another, and merely stopped in the
woodland pool to have a little frolic.

I never fully appreciated the otter’s sense of
humor until I used to watch one in captivity in
Hampton Park, in Charleston. Despite the fact
that it was in rather cramped quarters, it was
by far the most lively of all the animals being ex-
hibited. There was something pathetic in the
way in which this harmless and gentle animal
tried to entertain itself. I even saw it try to slide
down a rough concrete slope into a little tank of
water. Always it was bright, active, amusing,
friendly. An otter never sulks. I think if it were
properly trained, it would be an amazingly in-
telligent performer — far more so than a seal.
It is one of the few animals that are, in captivity,
entertaining by nature. Most of these prison-
ers are morose and unhappy, but the otter seems
always happy, childish, and spontaneously gay.

Of the famous sea-otter of the North Pacific
I have no personal knowledge; for I have never

OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 247

seen one of these creatures alive. I do know,
however, that formerly it ranged from California
to the Aleutian Islands; and that now it is found
only in certain parts of Alaskan waters, where
by law its hunting is strictly limited to the natives.
A white man taking a sea-otter pays a fine of
five hundred dollars. This otter has seal-like
habits, and is really a child of the wild ocean.
Though oftenest found near shore it has been
taken more than forty miles at sea. It sleeps on
its back in the water, literally “‘rocked in the
cradle of the deep.” The female sea-otter gives
birth to only one young at a time, and this baby
is born on a bed of floating kelp, perhaps many
miles from land. The mother takes her child into
the sea with her, and is said to handle and play
with it as a human mother plays with her baby.

The fur of the sea-otter is more highly prized
than any other kind of fur; and even the common
otier has an unfortunate bounty on his coat. A
fine sea-otter hide has brought more than one
thousand dollars at a fur sale. For my part I
wish that there were not an otter in captiv-
ity; and I heartily wish that the killing of these
beautiful, gentle, and harmless creatures would
cease. I know of no animal so appealing; and if

248 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

we do not know enough about it to pity it, this is
because we have hunted it almost to the point of
extermination.

A strange characteristic of the otter (which is
shared by many fish, the mink, the alligator, and
other creatures) is its ability to live equally well
in fresh or salt water. Where its home is near the
sea it is constantly passing from fresh water into
salt or living in brackish waters. I know now of
an otter that lives in a long brackish creek, one
end of which meets a fresh-water river, and the
other end of which flows into a salt bay. Un-
doubtedly this otter makes use of both exits.
Recently, while in. a boat within sight of the
ocean surf, I saw two otters swimming far up the
creek ahead. They were then in wholly salt
water; but I knew that if they continued their
course, they would soon reach brackish, and then
fresh, water. The fact that the otter thrives in
any waters broadens the limits of its range. And
in times of flood, when all natural landmarks are
obliterated, this extent of range will be incredibly
widened. I have in time of a great flood seen an
otter where surely one never had appeared be-
fore; he had come I knew not whence, and went
I knew not whither.

OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 249

This observation occurred one rainy day when
I was abroad in a boat on a terrible freshet tide
that had inundated the Santee delta. In going
through a small tract of woods near the house —
woods in which the water stood twelve feet
deep —I saw a beautiful otter swimming near
me. For a moment, probably because the rain
interfered with his sight, he did not make me out,
and I was enabled to identify and admire him.
Then he humped in his characteristic way,
waved his long tail, and was gone. Though I
waited about the place for a half-hour, he never
reappeared. But I am always glad to remember
that an otter actually came so near our house,
albeit under extraordinary circumstances.

Such are some of the ways of this appealing
wild creature: an animal whose intelligence, gen-
tleness, and genuine love for play should endear
him to every lover of nature. Not long ago a
negro trapper told me that he had watched two
otters in an old ditch that had more mud in it
than water. I asked him what they were doing.

“Just playin’ ’bout,” he said. And that gives
an admirable picture of the most common habit
of the otter — “‘just playin’ ’bout.”’

CHAPTER XVIII
WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS

Onze of the very useful and informative maps of
the Biological Survey shows graphically the dis-
tribution points of the migrated ducks and geese
during the winter months. The observer of this
map will see that the makers thereof have ap-
parently taken a pepper-shaker and dusted the
lower Pacific Coast; they have done the same
to the lower Mississippi Valley; along the Gulf
coasts of Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, they
upset the pepper. But they had enough left
thereof to sprinkle somewhat liberally the Gulf
coast of Alabama, and the seaboard of Georgia,
the Carolinas, and Virginia. Especially were the
map-makers generous in showing that the great
delta of the Santee River is a regular Riviera for
the wintering wild fowl. I am glad that due jus-
tice has thus officially been done this region; for
it is one of the most picturesque and interesting
in America; and it is one of the great concentra-
tion camps of the migrants. There are not, in-
deed, many geese there; occasionally in very cold

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 251

weather a flock will be seen. I have counted
fifty-six in one such flight. But they winter to
northward on Currituck, and far to the south-
westward. However, on some of the rivers of
upper Carolina wild geese are not uncommon.
But the district in question is one into which,
from the close of October to the close of March,
countless thousands of wild ducks throng. The
reason for the ducks’ love of this country is both
natural and interesting.

Formerly this was the best-known rice-grow-
ing section of America. Thousands of acres of
land of fabulous richness, both on the delta itself
between the North and South Santee and on the
low-lying country adjacent, were under a high
state of cultivation before the Civil War. It
was a busy, prosperous, and beautiful country
in those days. The war naturally put a damper
on extensive agricultural operations; but it by
no means terminated rice-planting. As late as
1900 great crops of rice were grown along the
Santee; but now there is hardly an acre planted.
One hunting club, indeed, plants rice for the
ducks; and it has at present a project under con-
sideration for reclaiming a thousand acres of
delta land. But the old planting days are over.

252 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

The reason is not commonly understood. It is
simply this: within the last twenty years the
Santee has been subject to freshets of such
height and of proportions so formidable that no
man-made dikes could keep out the waters.
Formerly a ten-foot rise was thought large; in
1916 there was a twenty-six-foot rise in the re-
gion lying about ten miles above the river-mouth.
Such waters make rice-growing impossible.

The phenomenal floods in the Santee are di-
rectly traceable to the deforesting of the moun-
tains and hills in the northwestern part of the
State, where the river rises; indeed, almost the
whole region through which it now flows, for-
merly heavily wooded, is bared of timber. The
rains, therefore, with no growth to check them
until the soil can absorb them, run straight into
the river; and the end of rice-planting is the re-
sult. As I have, through many years, watched
this inevitable thing happen, I have been curi-
ously interested to see whether the passing of
rice as duck food would mean the passing also of
the ducks. As they probably were attracted orig-
inally to certain localities by the character of the
food obtainable there, it was reasonable to sup-
pose that they might seek other haunts when

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 253

the food-supply was withdrawn. But this has not
proved true in this instance. Of course rice was
a kind of dessert; there are other foods abundant
in the delta of the Santee, and to the mighty
swamps north of the delta the ducks annually
repair at a certain time to feed on the acorns
there.

As far as my observation extends, the ducks in
the region mentioned show a decided increase in
numbers over the ducks wintering there ten years
ago; the number appears to be about equal to
that of thirty years ago. This is saying much.
This increase is undoubtedly due to the excellent
spring-shooting law which prevents the slaughter
of thousands of paired ducks on their way to
the breeding-grounds. I say “paired,” because
often, even before leaving their winter home, these
wild fowl show signs of mating. In mid-March,
among the greening cypresses fringing a swamp
along the Santee, I have repeatedly jumped
paired mallards and widgeons, black ducks, teal
and ruddy ducks. But better evidence of their
housekeeping plans than is afforded by their
merely being paired is the fact that, if one’s ap-
proach is quiet and crafty, he can hear some fond
speech that means but one thing, and is therefore

254 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

wholly different from the loud and jovial quack-
ing of the materialistic winter season.

It is a strange thing that some of these ducks
do not breed in the Santee delta; for the oppor-
tunities there are admirable. I have, indeed,
found both the eggs and the young of mallard
ducks in the marshes of this great wild tract;
but the ducks thus breeding were undoubtedly
wounded ones, which did not recover in time to
join the regular spring flight northward. Audu-
bon, however, found an American merganser
breeding on a small lagoon here; and, of course,
the wood duck breeds regularly. It is generally
known, I presume, that this interesting duck lays

its eggs in the hollow of a tree over water, or in ~

the fork of a tree growing in the water; but occa-
sionally a wood duck will build far from water,
and at a height from the ground that is surpris-
ing. Such a nest was found not far from the
Santee delta by Arthur Wayne, the well-known
ornithologist. The duck had nested in a hol-
low abandoned by a black pileated woodpecker.
This home was forty feet from the ground, and
more than a mile from the nearest water.

That the delta of the Santee should continue

to attract wild fowl is due not only to the delight- —

:
4

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 255

ful climate there, and to the quantities of food
available at all times, but also to certain features
of the landscape which form almost the only trace
of the old rice-planting régime. I mean that the
interminable marsh-grown areas are intersected
at regular intervals by old canals and ditches,
which are not only kept open, but in some cases
are actually deepened by the constant dredging
of the tides. Many of the great canals, con-
structed almost two hundred years ago, are now
wide and placid sheets of water, overhung by
bushes and reeds, and so well protected by high
banks that even on a stormy day hardly a wave
disturbs their surfaces. Then, too, there are
winding creeks of astonishing length and con-
tortive ability. For example, Six-Mile Creek
takes its name from its actual length; it joins the
North and the South Santee. Yet the distance
across the delta is not more than a mile. But
while the creeks and canals and some of the larger
ditches remain, the tides and the occasional fresh-
ets and storms have a disastrous effect on the
banks and high dikes. Most of these have disap-
peared. Fragments of some have remained; and
the ancient lines of most of them are marked by
growths of bushes and by moss-draped cypresses.

256 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

Thus the action of the tides, by preserving the
canals and by destroying the banks, has created
those very conditions most favorable for attract-
ing wild fowl. I know of no other region where
Nature has apparently conspired with such
happy results to take care of her winged chil-
dren. For, when the tides are high, the old fields
are flooded, and to them the ducks resort to feed
and to paddle around delightedly in the warm,
shallow waters; when the tides are out, the ducks
repair to the rivers, or pass out to sea, where they
collect in amazing flocks either on the water or on
long, glistening sandbars laid bare by the retreat-
ing tide. If the days are stormy, there are the
old canals and ditches for ample shelter, while on
the nearby coastal islands are brackish ponds and
lagoons — some sheltered by high woods, others
bordered by tall reeds and marsh — all of which
are ideal for wild fowl on rough days.

‘ In this region the routine of a wild duck’s day
can with accuracy be followed. Since at some
time during the night the old fields will be flowed,
he will be sure to spend a part or the whole night
there, and it is then that he does most of his feed-
ing, finding wampee, alligator acorns, duck-oats
and wild rice much to his fancy. If the following

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS = 257

day should be cold and rough, this old mallard
drake, let us say, will stay in the sheltered fields
or in the warm creeks all day long — sometimes
preening himself ashore (and his toilet is a mat-
ter attended to regularly and scrupulously),
sometimes adrift asleep on the dreamy waters, his
head under his wing, sometimes foraging assidu-
ously in that hearty, vacuum-cleaner, duck-like
fashion. But if the day be fair and still, by
“daybreak”’ the old drake will leave the fields.
His first stopping-place will be the river-edge,
among those sibilant marshes he will float until
after sunrise. Then he will go out to sea, or he
may resort to one of the coastal island ponds. If
in the river the ducks are “rafting” the drake
will join one of these vast concourses, and with
the myriads of his happy fellows go drifting with
the tide out to sea. There are two common ene-
mies that break up these rafts: one is a hunter;
the other is a bald eagle. Often, while duck-
shooting on the lower reaches of the Santee I have
marveled at the almost incalculable number of
ducks in one of these great rafts; and to see a
great bald eagle launching himself majestically
from a lonely pine on one of the coastal islands
and come soaring and beating his way powerfully

258 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

toward the ducks is a wild-life sight that the ob-
server can never forget. I recall one incident
concerning an eagle that is unusual.

One morning at Cane Gap, some two miles
from the mouth of the North Santee, I had out
my decoys off a point of marsh. Most of the
ducks that had spent the dark hours in the old
fields were already rafted farther down the river.
But my decoys were drawing a few — plenty to
afford exciting sport. Suddenly, unobserved by
me, a great eagle came beating over the marsh.
To my surprise he fell among the decoys, grap-
pled an old cedar drake, and lifted him almost out
of the water. Clearly disgusted at his mistake,
he released the decoy and winged his way up-
ward, heading down the river. Far off the mighty
raft of ducks spied his coming. While the eagle
was still half a mile away, but remarkably clear
in the morning heavens, the closer ducks began
to rise. Soon with a roar like that of distant
blasting they thronged into the sky. Though
I knew that this breaking up of the camp-meet-
ing would bring some stragglers past my blind,
I decided to watch the eagle’s maneuvers, and to
let up on the ducks for a while. And he was well
worth watching. He appeared to pick his duck

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 259

while that unfortunate was with the assemblage.
At any rate, his movements were deliberate as
only carefully planned movements can be. The
duck that he wanted was a drake in a flock of
four that headed northward on the rise. These
fugitives appeared fully aware of their peril, for
I think I never saw ducks fly so fast. But the
eagle, without apparent exertion, kept up with
them. I noticed that the great bird kept above
the ducks, and the line of his flight bore down
on them, so that by the time they came near
me they were quite close to the water. About a
hundred yards from my decoys the thing came
off. The bald eagle, as if suddenly tired of fool-
ing, made a sudden rush, intense and irresistible.
Three ducks swerved aside, and thus escaped.
The fourth was literally driven into the water.
When the eagle rose he had his drake gripped
tightly and held close to his body. He bore his
breakfast back to the lone pine on Cedar Island.

But it should not be supposed that His High-
ness exerts himself every day in the manner
described. On the contrary, an eagle’s taking of
an unwounded duck is rare. This is because he
feeds on the cripples and the dead ducks that
hunters leave in the delta. Indeed, such close

260 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

scavengers are bald eagles that if a man leaves
at dusk a duck that he cannot find, he will have
to be at the spot by daylight in the morning if he
hopes to get it before an eagle does. Sometimes,
but I am glad to say not often, the eagle will feed
on carrion. I saw a male bald eagle on the banks
of the Santee feeding with black vultures on the
carcass of a hog. In the pine woods that recede
from the river the eagle is something of a menace
to the young of many animals. I have heard of
its killing a fawn, but I never saw this. If it did,
the doe must have been far away; and if it killed
the fawn it must have eaten it where taken, as a
fawn would be too heavy for a bald eagle to carry
any great distance — unless, perchance, the little
thing were caught almost at birth. I have, how-
ever, seen a wild gobbler that was killed by a
golden eagle; when shot the eagle was feeding on
the turkey. These interesting specimens are now
in the Charleston Museum.

While the delta of the Santee has not, in
twenty years, changed its aspect very much, the
situation of wild life there has undergone ma-
terial modification. In the old days the delta
was any man’s hunting-ground and the creeks
and canals daily saw the canoes of negro and

ae aA eee ee

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 261.

white market-hunters traversing their almost end-
less ramifications. Some of the old-time negro
“duckers’’ were very successful. Indeed, the
record for the best shot of the delta was made by
London Legree, a negro, who killed twenty-eight
mallards with one shot from a musket. He
caught them one cold day swarming in a half-
frozen ditch, and the execution followed. But
neither a white man nor a negro could long pursue
this kind of a life. It is a sad but a true fact that
a man reaches an age when he would rather stay
by a plantation fire than shoot ducks in a freezing
drizzle six miles from home, in the vast and in-
choate wilderness of the delta. Yet not all this
former shooting was hard. Many a day I have
dropped down the river on the ebb in the early
morning, and half-filled my canoe before reaching
the river-mouth. Or the paddling of creeks and
ditches when the tide suited would give similar
results. The ducks would sometimes jump soli-
tarily, but commonly in twos and threes. I re-
member once hearing my negro paddler give a
sudden exclamation of surprise, at the same time
bringing his cypress paddle down sharply into
the edge of the river-marsh. We had paddled
past a drowsy old mallard drake; and just as he

262 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

was about to jump the negro killed him with the
paddle. That may be, for all I know, another
record. To-day the tides are there; the ducks are
there; the old fields and canals and winding,
warm creeks are there. But the hunters are gone.
I mean that no longer will the typical dugout cy-
press canoe be seen poking about in these haunts
of wild life. The reason is simple. Not only the
delta, but great stretches of country adjacent
thereto, have been taken over by hunting clubs
that are ably managed, law-abiding, and, to my
way of thinking, among the most admirable
game-preservers that we now have. The mem-
bers of these clubs do not hunt in the old hap-
hazard ways; they kill ducks more regularly, per-
haps, but they shoot in season only, they have
strict bag-limits, and they keep out the poachers
and lawless hunters. Such organizations as the
Santee Club, the Kinloch Club, and the An-
nandale Club, owning or controlling thousands
of acres, conserve the wild life thereon, which
distributes itself into the hinterlands beyond
their preserves. Now, at one of these clubs,
twenty-five ducks is the morning’s bag-limit;
yet I well remember the day when men, shooting

in island ponds over decoys, would bring back as

ee ee ene ee

Se ee

— Wiens cee

WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 263

many as two hundred big ducks, and sometimes
more. Therefore, these great preserves, passing
from the hands of the original owners, have come
under the control of men who have the time and
the money and the interest to care for the wild life
on their lands and waters. And I think that it
would be fortunate if what has happened in the
Santee delta could happen elsewhere; for this is
the day when only strict and intelligent game
protection will insure the survival of those forms
of American wild life which are most beautiful,
most interesting, and most valuable.

CHAPTER XIX
THE GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN’S BANK

Tuts title sounds as if a story is to follow; and
I suppose this narrative might be dignified by
calling it a story. But distinctly it is not fiction.
It is just a matter-of-fact account of a rather
unusual deer-hunt that I was fortunate enough
to enjoy during the Christmas season of 1919.
The circumstances surrounding it were some-
what romantic, perhaps; and there was a coinci-
dence involved that seldom occurs, even in the
big woods, where almost anything unexpected is
likely to happen.

The time was the 3lst of December, and the
place the pine-lands near the mouth of the San-
tee. I had been at home on the plantation for a
week and had had some successful hunting, but
most of my time had been spent in fighting a far-
reaching forest fire that threatened destruction
to everything inflammable in the great coastal
plain of Carolina. I know for a fact that this fire
burned over a territory forty miles deep by more

than a hundred miles long. Of course, here and

eS ee

GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN’S BANK 265

there it was cut off; but for the most part it made
a clean sweep. The wild life of the countryside
suffered less in this conflagration than might have
been expected; and more than once I saw deer
which seemed not in the least dismayed by the
roaring flames near them. Finally the fire passed
us, and then I took to the woods as usual with my
gun.

On several successive trips I hunted deer near
a place called Bowman’s Bank, a wild and soli-
tary stretch of swampy country about four miles
from home. In the old sandy road that dipped
down from the wild pine-lands, I had seen a track
that showed the maker to be a stag worth follow-
ing. It was, indeed, I suspected, the track of a
very old friend of mine — one who on a certain
occasion had played me a kind of a mean trick.
He got the thing off in the manner I now describe.

Early one October morning, two years before
this, a party of us had been hunting near Bow-
man’s Bank. In the big main road we had come
upon a track so large and so fresh that we had de-

cided to let the hounds take it; but before we
_ slipped them from the leash, four of us tiptoed a
half-mile through the dewy morning woods and
took up the well-known stands at the head of the

266 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

bank. Within a few minutes we heard the dogs
open as they were loosed, and they lost no time
in coming our way. From the manner in which
they kept bearing hard toward the left, I felt
sure that the buck would come out to me. The
hounds surely were bringing glad tidings in my
direction. They clamored through the deep bay-
thicket ahead of me; they were so close that I
saw them. But no deer appeared. He must have
dodged, thought I, and I listened for the gun
of one of my partners. Suddenly the hounds
broke out of the branch and headed straight up
the easy hill toward me. They came flying on
the trail, and straight at me; yet not a sign of
what they were running could I see. With some
difficulty I stopped them and tied them up. Then
I examined the ground. A big running track had
come head-on over my stand. The buck must
have heard us coming, and made off over my
crossing about a minute before I reached it! The
thing hurt me, for I had the crazy idea that a
hunter sometimes gets that a certain old stag
belongs to him by rights, despite a clever getaway
and other significant facts. I felt no better when
our party had gathered and when the stander
next to me said:

GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN’S BANK 267

“T saw the deer. I was up on a little ridge
when you were in a hollow, Arch; and he went out
about a hundred yards ahead of you. He surely
was a beauty —and a peculiar-looking buck,
too. He seemed an iron-gray color to me; and his
horns were enough to give him the headache.”

Well, ever since that day I had had a leaning
toward Bowman’s Bank which was nothing but
my hankering after another sight of the gray stag
that had played me so heartless a trick. And the
track that I had begun to pick up in the vicinity
of the bank gave me reasonable hope that my
wish might be fulfilled. Although several expedi-
tions into that section of the woods had yielded
me only a spike buck, I had a feeling that some-
thing else was waiting for me there. That in-
stinct in hunting is not a bad thing to follow; for
while I have small faith in premonitions and the
like, I do believe in anything that exacts patience
from a hunter. In fact, it has been my experience
that a man in the woods gets the chance he wants
if he keeps in the game long enough.

One afternoon after dinner, which on a South-
ern plantation means about three o’clock, I got
on a horse and turned his head toward the Bow-
man Bank region. In many places in the pine

268 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

forest the woods were still smouldering, and as
the afternoon was still and warm, the smoke
hung low. Occasionally a smoking mass of dé-
bris of some kind would suddenly burst into
flame. So prevalent was the smoke that I saw
myself coming home within an hour or two with
nothing to show for my afternoon’s ride.
Turning off from the main road I made my
horse circle a small pond fringed with bays.
From the farther side of the pond I was sud-
denly aware of a deer slipping silently out. It was
too far for a shot; and it melted with astonishing
quickness into the haze that now was hanging
everywhere. Had I been on foot I might have
come much closer on that deer, I thought.
Therefore I dismounted and tied my horse on a
strip of burnt ground, where, I knew, whatever
fire happened to spring up near him could not
cross to reach him. I went forward then on foot
toward Bowman’s Bank, taking the identical
route that I had followed that October morning
two years before when the gray stag had out-
witted me. The sun was now taking a last red
and glaring look through the smoke. The aspect
of the forest was weird and anything but inviting.

But in hunting, a man has to take the rough with

)
7
.
.

GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN’S BANK 269

the easy; and not infrequently it is the poor-
looking chance which yields the luck.

On account of the smoke, and because the sun
was now going down, I knew that I had but a
short while in which to do what I was going to do.
There would be no long and dewy twilight, with
an afterglow in which a man can see to shoot.
Night and the pall of smoke would soon shut out
the world from human vision. Prospects were
discouraging, but I trudged onward.

Perhaps it will not be amiss for me to say that
the kind of deer-hunting I was now doing is of
the type that I have long enjoyed and found suc-
cessful. Because the pine-lands are interlaced
at almost regular intervals with narrow bay-
branches, which are small water-courses grown to
low underbrush, it is possible for a man to walk
these out and get about as many and as sporty
chances at deer as he can have in any other way.
It approaches stalking as nearly as any hunting
in the Southern woods can approach it. I some-_
times go thus alone, and sometimes with a friend;
and I have had as much luck hunting without
a hound as with one. A man gets his money’s
worth when, in this type of still-hunting, he
bounces an old stag out of his bed, and has to

270 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

hail him for business reasons within the range
commanded by a shotgun. I find that a Parker
twelve-gauge, with thirty-inch barrels, gives
good results when loaded with this shell, which is
the best I have ever seen used on deer: U.M.C.
steel-lined Arrow, high-base; two and _ three-
fourths inches long; twenty-eight grains Infalli-
ble smokeless; one and one-eighth ounces of
buckshot. The second size of buckshot is pre-
ferred to the big ones, the very best being those
that chamber sixteen toa shell. I was loaded
with two of these shells on that smoky twilight
that will live in my memory as long as mem-
ory and such things last.

I had come to a certain wide arm of swampy
growth that stretched out from the dim sanctu-
ary of Bowman’s Bank, and was undecided as to
whether I should cross it or pass round its edges.
I decided on the former course. My way was
none too easy. Smoke worried my eyes. A fire
of some four years previous had left the swamp
full of black snags. There were slippery hum-
mocks of sphagnum moss and sudden pools of
black water. It is a hard thing for a man to watch
his footing when he is intent on looking for some-
thing else. Yet his footing is a vital matter; for

— eee. ee ee eee

GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN’S BANK 271

if he misses it at the critical moment, his chance
may be gone.

About halfway across the melancholy morass
into which I had ventured I felt as if I might just
as well turn back. If anything did get up, there
was hardly enough light for a shot — certainly
not enough light for a decent chance. Besides,
off to the left a terrible fire had suddenly begun
to rage, and it appeared unreasonable to suppose
that any wild life would be lying serenely so close
to that withering sweep of destruction. But
strange are the ways of nature, and strange are
the things that sometimes happen to a woods-
man.

As I was toiling on in a half-hearted way, sud-
denly above the dull roar and the sharp crackle
of the fire I heard a familiar sound. It was the
“rip”’ of a deer out of bay-bushes. I located the
sound before I saw the deer. A buck with big
antlers had jumped some thirty yards ahead of
me, a little to my right. He had been lying on the
very edge of the swampy arm, and on the farther
side from the point at which I had entered it.
I saw his horns first, and they were good to look
upon. They gleamed high in the smoke. For the
first twenty yards or so he ran like a fiend, in one

272 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

of those peculiar crouching runs that a buck

assumes when he wants to make a speedy start.
He hardly had his tail up at all. My gun was at
my shoulder, but because of a dense screen of
black gum and tupelo trees, I had no chance to
‘put anything on him. And he was getting away
on all six cylinders! But he was bearing a little
to the left — to run over the regular stand. It
was the identical stand where the buck had es-
caped me before. Into the gap between two trees
I threw my sight. By the time the stag reached
it, he thought he was clear; for the rabbit-like
contortions through which he had gone at his
start had given place now to regulation long leaps,
with a great show of snowy tail. Indeed, that
tail was the thing on which I laid my gun. But
the shot seemed hopelessly far. Just beyond the
stand that the buck was about to cross was a
thicket of young pines. I must shoot before he
reached that. Holding on the regimental flag
as accurately as I could, I fired. The second bar-
rel was ready to let go, but not a sign of a deer
could be seen. “He is gone,” thought I; “he’s
gone into that pine-thicket. It was too far, and
too smoky.”

I crossed the remaining part of the swamp and

rr —

GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN’S BANK 273

“made my way slowly up the sandy hill. A huge
pine marks the stand there. To my amazement,
stretched beside the pine lay the stag, stone dead.
He lay exactly where I had stood two years be-
fore. And he was iron-gray in color! Had I been
one of the ouija-board people, I suppose I should
have run. But I just stood there in the twilight
admiring the splendid old stag, and wondering
over my absolutely dumb luck in getting him, and
over the strange coincidence that I had killed
him ‘precisely where he had once escaped me.
For there was no doubt in my mind that this was
the same old buck. Every hunter knows how a
stag will take possession of a certain territory
and remain in it for many years. As to his color,
I suppose that he had some strain of albinism in
him. I have seen other gray deer in that part of
the country; and, within twenty miles, several
pure albinos have been killed.

That my luck was extraordinary I did not fully
appreciate until the buck was dressed, when I
discovered that the buckshot had struck him in a
peculiarly vital manner. Two shots only reached
him. Both of these entered the small of the back
just forward of the left haunch, and ranged for-
ward through the body, through the neck, and

274 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

lodged behind the jaw. It was no wonder that he
came down without any preliminary flourishes.
Had he not been going up a slight rise from me
those shots probably would have taken him in the
haunches and he might have kept right on. More
than once I have taken old buckshot out of a
deer’s haunches, and the deer themselves ap-
peared to be in prime condition.

Leaving the stag, I walked down into the
swamp, carefully pacing off the distance. This
I found to be eighty-nine steps. It was too long
a shot; but the break had come my way. The
question now was how to get my stag out of the
woods. But here, too, luck favored me.

I walked toward the main road, hoping to meet
a negro. To meet a negro in the pine-lands is the
easiest thing a man has to do. I met one within
a few hundred yards. He and I managed to get
the old buck out to the road. It happened that
two sisters of mine had driven down in a spring
wagon for the mail, the post-office being some five
miles from home. As I reached the road, I saw
the wagon approaching in the dusk.

**Have you much mail?” I asked my sisters;
**T have a little package here I’d like you to take
home for me.”

CHAPTER XX
NEGRO WOODSMEN I HAVE KNOWN

_ Tue question of the education and economic ad-
vancement of the negro has, during the past dec-
ade, so occupied the attention of those interested
in his welfare that some of those picturesque
qualities that often serve to determine personal-
ity have been lost to view. Since boyhood days
I have known the negro in that wild and beauti-
ful stretch of country that borders the great
delta of the Santee; and there I have delighted
to observe him as a woodsman. During the past
thirty years I have hunted with negroes the pine-
lands, the swamps, and the tortuous creeks of
the delta; and the conversations we have had,
both while hunting and while merely exchanging
reminiscences and recalling memories, have been
for the most part on the subject of woodcraft.
I think it might be interesting to describe certain
of these true characters; for I have long desired
to do something like justice to the extraordinary
powers of woodcraft that some of them possess.
To exercise these powers, these negroes I shall

276 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

describe have most unusual opportunities; for
while the country in which they live was once
well settled, it is now a wild and lonely land, with
great plantation houses standing eight or ten
miles apart. The woods are full of deer and tur-
_ keys; and the delta swarms during the winter
months with migrated wild fowl. Moreover,
since neither the average negro nor white man of
that region hunts, game of all kinds finds a con-
genial home there, and is afforded opportunity
to increase normally.

The first negro woodsman [I shall describe is
Old Galboa, the son of a former slave, who had
been born and reared in Africa. He died some
twenty years ago, at a great age, after having
spent more than sixty years on our plantation in
the Santee country. Throughout my boyhood,
Galboa was to me all that is wonderful as regards
knowledge of the habits of wild creatures, and all
that is ingeniously skillful in the matter of out-
witting them. He had been a professional fisher-
man and “gunnerman” of the plantation; and
for half a/century his only duties consisted in se-
curing for the plantation house fish and game in
season. Often I can remember my honest envy
of this powerful black, whose responsibility in life

NEGRO WOODSMEN 277

seemed to end just where mine began; I mean to
say, that my recreations were his work, and his
only work was my most beloved pastime. When,
as a boy, school-days would begin in the autumn,
how near despair was the feeling with which I
regarded Old Galboa as, singing a quaint “spirit-
ual,” he would paddle away from the plantation
landing in quest of mallards and widgeons, or
would slouch with his inimitably wary walk into
the green-and-gold silence of the autumnal pine-
lands in quest of deer and turkeys. But my envy
of Old Galboa had as a reasonable foundation
my admiration for his extraordinary success.
Though I have all my life been more or less asso-
ciated with woodsmen of many types, this former
slave was the most uniformly successful hunter
I ever knew. And he possessed secrets of wild
life that have died with him.

One of these secrets was the place where he
found that splendid fish, the rock bass (some-
times called the Susquehanna salmon), and how
he managed to catch as many of them as he
wished to take. No other man has ever, to my
knowledge, taken these fish in the Santee; yet
Old Galboa discovered the secret of their haunts,
and seemed to know how best to capture them.

278 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

When he was very old, he promised to tell me all
about the matter; but death overtook him sud-
denly, and I failed to secure the desired informa-
tion. But I did learn from him a hundred other
matters concerning the game of the Santee re-
gion, particularly the deer. It was Galboa who
told my brother and me (when, as little lads, we
listened wide-eyed on the steps of his old cabin,
or sat beside him on a rude bench before his ever-
burning chimney-fire) that an old buck will nearly
always come out of a drive behind his does. “You
see,” the ancient hunter would explain, “he
wants somebody else to try the example of the
shot — yes, sah.” He it was who brought us a
fawn that we reared; and it was to his generosity
that we owed the rather remarkable collection of
alligator teeth that we gathered. As far as I ever
could tell, this negro’s only limitation as a hunter
was his superstition. During those twilight hours
when game is sometimes easily taken, Galboa
did not care about being too far from home. He
had too much respect for spirits to “become a
borrower of the night for a dark hour or twain.”
I can clearly recall the solemn look that used to
come over his face when he heard the weird, soft
notes of the great horned owl, which he never

NEGRO WOODSMEN 279
called anything but the “hiddle-diddle-dee” —

which is not at all a poor example of onomato-
poela.

I have told of this negro’s success; but some
men are successful only after prodigious efforts.
Even some woodsmen expend a degree of energy
that is remarkable. But Galboa knew how to
save himself; and the simplicity of his perform-
ances had, at least to me, something of magical
glamour about them. My memories would, in-
deed, be lacking in much that is picturesque if
there were withdrawn from them my recollec-
tions of this quiet, efficient, resourceful woods-
man, of invaluable service to my family, and of
genuine credit to his race.

While Galboa was an independent hunter,
William Snyder, the negro who for thirty years or
more was our deer-driver, never went into the
woods alone. Hedid not shoot. It was his part
to ride a fast horse, to post standers, to locate
deer, and drive them to the hunters, to manage a
yelping, swarming pack of hounds, and to follow
wounded deer or strayed dogs into what Milton
might call

Infamous hills and sandy, perilous wilds.

William was a social and genial soul; and if he

230 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

loved hunting better than anything else, I shall
be the last one to blame -him. He lived about
three quarters of a mile from us, across a wide
rice-field. His house was in plain sight from our
porch. Many an autumn morning I would go out
on that porch and wind the horn for William;
and I seldom had to wait for more than a few
minutes if I wanted to see him dismount at our
house. I could see him leave his own, run to the
shack where he kept his little black mare, lead her
out, throw the saddle on her as if he were going
for the doctor, and then I would hear the soft roll
of the mare’s hoofs as William made her eat up the
spaces of sandy pine-land road that led to our
house. Once there, he was all dispatch; the only
thing that ever put him out of humor was our
delaying the start. He would gather the hounds,
admonish them severally, remount his mare, and
sit there like an impatient centaur until we
joined him.

For a description of William running his horse
at full speed through the pine-woods, how can
I find words! I have seen him trying to cut off a
deer that had taken an insurgent notion into its
head to run not according to regulations. The

black mare, her long, silky tail straight out be-

NEGRO WOODSMEN 281

hind, her graceful head far forward with the ears
laid back, would skim over the level floors of
the woodland, leap blithely over obstacles, flash
through water, and never once falter or stumble.
William, whooping melodiously at the top of his
singularly musical and resonant voice, would now
be lying on the mare’s neck to avoid being swept
away by overhanging limbs, now waving his hat
with a wild surety as he let the splendid little
mount have her free head. I never knew this
negro to be thrown from a horse; I never saw a
dog which he could not manage in the most abso-
lute fashion; and I have known few deer that did
not go where William intended that they should.
Perhaps this sounds like high praise; it is not even
praise. It is a bare recognition of fact. However,
William’s whooping did sometimes have an effect
that was unfortunate. ] remember that a friend
of mine of a somewhat nervous temperament ex-
plained remonstratingly his missing a huge stag
that ran within twenty paces of him, by saying:
*“How could you expect a man to keep his
nerve when that driver kept yelling like the blast
of doom, ‘Don’t miss him! Don’t miss him!
”T is the old buck! Don’t miss him!’ ”
William’s chief value as a woodsman consisted

282 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

in his prescience in locating deer. When riding
along his eyes were always fixed on the ground.
He was a tracker; and he was so familiar with the
_deer-haunts that he could find a deer merely by
noticing the freshness of the sign and the direc-
tion that the track had taken. He had what I
think the most indispensable part of true field
equipment: a genuine game sense. He was a
game-finder; and if the deer and turkeys were not
secured, the fault lay with us.

There is another negro in the Santee country

whose woodcraft merits an especial interest. He —

is Gabriel, the trapper. He is still alive; and
from a conversation I recently had with him, his
past few seasons have been very prosperous ones.
Even to the remote wilds of the Santee the news
of the high price on furs has penetrated, although
the negro trapper never gets a fair proportion of
the profit that good skins are now bringing.
Gabriel is a hunter for whom the night has no
terrors; and he is therefore singularly successful
in the matter of trapping those forms of animal
life that prowl the old plantations’ regions during
the dark hours. Wildcat, otter, mink, raccoon,
fox, and opossum are the fur-bearers he follows.
So skillful is he with his trapping that I have

:
}
i

NEGRO WOODSMEN 283

known him to catch an old mallard drake by set-
ting a very light spring-trap on a floating hum-
mock of marsh roots. He is one of the few men in
the Santee country who has trapped the otter, an
animal so wary and intelligent that a man might
live in that region a lifetime without ever even
seeing one. He has discovered that the best lure
for the fox is not, as might be supposed, a chicken
or a bird, but a burned sweet potato! How he
discovered this is past my understanding. Find-
ing it difficult to trap a certain old red fox, he
used this ruse: In the middle of a broad and
shallow stream he built a small artificial island.
To this he ran an old log from either bank. A fox
loves to travel a log, especially over water. Then
for a week or more he left bait on the island.
When he discovered that it was being taken, he
hollowed a place in one of the old logs and therein
set his trap. I saw the hide of this fox, and it
was a beautiful specimen. Gabriel, it was, also,
who was with me one day when we caught a great
bull alligator that had long been a menace to the
plantation stock. Catching this marauder was
not a difficult task, but what Gabriel did when we
brought him ashore was what not many men
could be persuaded to attempt.

984 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

We had hooked the alligator on a long plough-
line with a big shark-hook attached. The hook
was not very firmly embedded in the bull’s mas-
sive jaws; consequently, in his struggles on the
shore after we had pulled him clear of the water,
he threw the clumsy, blunt hook out of his mouth.
There, within ten feet of us, lay the fifteen-foot
reptile, unhurt, truculent, and dangerous. Slowly
he turned toward the water. I confess that I
was at a loss what to do; the situation called for
native resourcefulness that I did not possess.
Gabriel, however, was equal to the occasion.
Seizing the rope in his left hand, he leaped lithely
down the slope. He avoided a savage sweep of
the alligator’s powerful tail, a weapon to be
dreaded. While maneuvering for the opening he
wished, the negro had swiftly made a slipknot in
the end of the rope. When he saw the proper
chance, which was not until the scaly bull was
almost at the water-line, Gabriel leaped directly
for him, and sat down suddenly on the great
saurian’s back! To use a nautical term, he was
immediately abaft the alligator’s front legs —
a point of vantage from which he could not well
be reached either by the monster’s tail or jaws.
In a moment the skillful negro had slipped the

NEGRO WOODSMEN 285

noose over the alligator’s head and had drawn the
loop tightly behind the bull’s massively articu-
lated jaws. Then he cleared himself with a single
bound, and handed me politely the other end of
the rope! I do not know that I ever saw a woods-
man perform a difficult feat so quickly and with
so unassuming a deftness and surety. But Ga-
briel’s like is not to be frequently found.

The number, indeed, of negroes who are genu-
ine woodsmen is comparatively small. I know
personally about seven hundred negroes who live
in situations which would naturally lead one to
suppose that they would hunt and fish exten-
sively. Butit isnot so. The same fact holds with
the white man. How few in any community are
interested in the pursuit of game! In a settle-
ment of negroes consisting of a dozen families,
perhaps only one genuine hunter is to be found.
The great hunting clubs which have splendid pre-
serves in many parts of the South have learned to
their chagrin that many of the negroes employed
as guides and deer-drivers know absolutely noth-
ing of woodcraft. And it is a hard matter to
train a grown man to bea woodsman; the training
should begin with childhood; indeed, it is often
a matter of pure heritage. Whenever a club of

286 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

the type mentioned learns that there is a formid-
able negro hunter in its region, it is careful to put
him at once in its employ, in this manner insuring
itself of the services of a good man and also rid-
ding itself of the probable menace of a wary and
efficient poacher.

Of all the genuine negro poachers I have ever
known, West McConnor is the most vivid and
proficient — vivid in personality, and surely the
last word in proficiency when it comes to carrying
out his designs. One might suppose that a man of
West’s far-heralded reputation would be stal-
wart in frame and frowning in countenance. It is
not so. West is small, slight, stooping; and he
speaks with a lisping drawl. Yet among his own
people he is the one negro I have ever known who
is positively dreaded. There is something sinister
about his character which is perhaps the effect of
the singular paradox of his mild appearance and
his marvellous power. For West is known all
over Charleston and Berkeley counties as a des-
perate man, at whose door strange crimes may
be laid. However this may be, I am not con-
cerned with it; he interests me as a personality.
He is a prodigious game-getter. He lives by his

gun. And he ranges a vast scope of country;

NEGRO WOODSMEN 287

sometimes in a dugout cypress canoe, sometimes
afoot. Often when I have been hunting miles
from home, West has suddenly appeared out of
the densest jungle and approached for a friendly
word and the exchange of the day’s hunting ex-
periences. But I have observed that it was never
I who detected the approach of this silent negro;
I think he always sees me a half-hour or so before
I see him. He is a still-hunter of those vast and
melancholy swamps that moulder in the ancient
silentness of primeval peace. He is the only pro-
fessional alligator-hunter in the Santee delta; and
his prowess in this particular type of endeavor
may be judged when I say that, in a lonely
- stretch of pine-land not far from his house, there
are the skulls of the alligators he has killed, and
that a half-acre of the pine-land floor is whitened
by these bones. On more than one occasion I
have gone there and gathered more than a quart
of fine alligator teeth. It is, perhaps, a grue-
some place; but it undoubtedly testifies to the
skill of this negro hunter.

Whenever I want to know definitely about
game, whether of the delta or of the swamps or of
the pine-lands, I consult West. Among the negro
woodsmen of my acquaintance, he is the special-

288 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

ist. Except when discussing secrets of the wild,
he is a silent, almost shy man, with a touch of
that uncanny spirit that not infrequently at-
taches to those who have spent their lives in out-
witting the best intelligence of the game world.
I have heard that West is at the head of all the
negro fraternal organizations of our part of the
country; and if so, he should be the man for such
places, for his ascendancy is but the recognition
of certain superior and masterful elements in his
character. I have said that he is a hunter of pro-
ficiency. By this I mean that, since the passing
of Old Galboa, West is the only negro I know
who can go into the woods after a certain kind of
game, and return with it, with almost unerring
certainty and dispatch. It is an easy matter
sometimes for any one to kill a deer or a wild
turkey; but even the most hardened hunter is
often baffled in an attempt to secure a certain
type of game at a certain time. West McConnor
ean do this; and with an ease and nonchalance
that are impressive. Some negroes, especially
those who fear him, claim that his success is due
to a league that he has with dark and mysterious
powers. But nothing save his own eerie skill
brings him his extraordinary success.

NEGRO WOODSMEN 289

Whatever the future may bring to the negro in
the matters of economic and political advance-
ment, I trust that such progress will not efface
from certain types of the race those hardy and
generous qualities that are bred in a man who has
followed the calling of Esau. All the negroes of
the Santee country are interesting to me; but,
after the appealing little children, the negro
hunters most engage my attention. And I trust
that I have in this brief chapter done some-
thing like justice to their characters.

CHAPTER XXI
A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS

In the rural sections of the South, and especially
on the great estates and plantations, Christmas
is probably as picturesquely celebrated as any-
where in the world. The Christmas found there
has an old-English flavor; it is the jovial Christ-
mas of Dickens. There are manifest the high
spirit, the boisterous cheer, the holly, the mistle-
toe (not starved wreaths and single branches, but
whole trees of holly and huge bunches of mistle-
toe) the smilax, the roaring fires of oak and pine,
the songs, the laughter, the happy games, and all
the festive enjoyments of the old-time Cavaliers.
Whatever else may be said of those who settled
the South from. the Court of Charles I, who,
according to Edmund Burke, “had as much pride
as virtue in them,” they certainly knew how to
make themselves happy at Christmas; and this
characteristic they have bequeathed to their de-
scendants. While their rollicking spirit may not
be so nearly akin to that of the Original Christ-
mas as the stern joy of the sober-hearted Puri-_

A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 291

tans, their souls were warmer and their homes
were happier and more picturesque. The Puritan
had the lilies and the snow and the wintry star-
light of mystic love and devotion; the Cavalier
had the roses, the red wine, and the ruddy fire-
side of human affection.

To see how a typical plantation Christmas in
the South is observed you must go with me far
through the pine-woods that fringe the South
Carolina coast, to one of those old plantations
that lie along the Santee River delta. As we
drive along the level road, the great forest will
withdraw from us on all sides, disclosing magic
vistas and mysterious swamp views, or perhaps a
still stretch of water retired mistily among the
pines. In every water-course there will be elm-
and gum-trees, burdened with great bunches of
mistletoe; while beside the road, beautiful in
their symmetry, their foliage, and their berries
lovely holly-trees will invite our fascinated eyes.
And probably in the hollies or in the black-gums
or tupelos of the swamp, but surely darting
swiftly among the tall pines, the light of the sink-
ing sun striking vividly on their scarlet breasts,
we shall see a hundred, possibly a thousand,
robins, joyous among the delights afforded by

292 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

the Southern winter. Almost as friendly, though
far less numerous than the robins, are the
cedar waxwings. Among the other birds which
give real meaning and cheer to the season are
the wood thrush, the Carolina wren, the cardi-
nal, the mocking-bird, the catbird, the brown
thrasher, and many kinds of sparrows, notably
the Peabody-bird, which is so welcome a summer
visitant to the Northern States. Besides these
common birds we may catch sight of a wild tur-
key, a flock of bright-colored wood-ducks, or a
giant black pileated woodpecker.

After our drive through the woods we shall en-
ter the plantation gateway, sentineled by cen-
tury-old live-oaks, and overhung with blossoming
sprays of fragrant yellow jasmine. We drive past
the cotton-field whose dry bolls rattle and whis-
per in the wind, past the clustered sweet potato
banks and the tobacco drying-houses, until be-
neath its ancient trees the snowy pillars of the
great house come into view. As we approach the
steps we see a red woodbine festooned over a
cedar frame in the flower garden, and groups of
rose bushes laden with buds and blooms. The
sun has now gone down behind the dark pines,

and the sky above them is softly aflame; and

Se

A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS — 293

there in that red setting the evening star glitters
like a dewdrop on a poppy flower.
«, It is Christmas Eve on the old plantation, and
everywhere there is an air of expectancy, espe-
cially among the negroes, who, like children,
feel most deeply the material joys of the season.
And they share, too, in the mystic meaning of the
Holy Night. From far-off cabins, sunk deep in
the pines or across waste rice-land or on the open
uplands, there come sounds of singing, the mel-
ody of the negro voices blending wondrously on
the calm night air. Their hymns of “spirituals”
they can render with amazing feeling and felicity.
The negroes have a pretty superstition to the
effect that at midnight on Christmas Eve all the
birds and animals go down on their knees in
adoration of their Lord. I remember, as a little
boy, creeping out to the chicken-yard with my
brother in the dead of night to spy and see
whether the wondrous thing would happen, really
believing that it would. But we were forced to
the melancholy conclusion that the fowls were
agnostics; for though, seen by the blanching
moonlight, they ruffled their feathers and
stretched their necks, they did not take an atti-
tude of reverence.

294 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

While we sit in the balmy air on the broad
white veranda, listening to the singing as it floats
softly through the night, the spirit of Christmas
comes very near to us. There among the ancient
oaks the wind through the swaying mosses
breathes olden runes, while the Christmas stars
above the solemn woods hold the promise of
eternal light.

After the children have gone to bed in the
great rambling plantation house, we begin ar-
ranging the Christmas presents; and these in-
clude not only the number for the family, but
those for the servants, and the servants’ families,
friends, and visitors, and the friends’ and visi-
tors’ friends, and so on. Many will come, and
every one will get a present. There must always
be a reserve store of gifts for cases of emergency
in the form of negroes who come unexpectedly.
Many boxes for distribution come to us from the
North, from friends who, having visited us dur-
ing the hunting season, remember the needs of
the negroes and answer their silent appeals gen-
erously.

Early Christmas morning stealthy steps are
heard along the halls; then there will be a soft
knock, a shout of “Merry Christmas! Christ-_

A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS — 295

mas gift!” from some one of the older servants;
then peals of laughter from the delighted negro
and from the victim who has been caught nap-
ping. Often on the plantation we feign ignorance
of the approach of some favorite servants just to
give them the real delight that our apparent
consternation affords them.

After the first surprises and greetings are over,
fires — genuine Christmas fires —are kindled
on all the hearths — fires that are soon merrily
ablaze with that old-English cheer that none but
the right wood can give. Southern fires do not
have to run the dread gantlet of infant paralysis;
nor are they dependent on newspaper, kerosene,
and other abominable means of tender solicitude.
“‘Lightwood” suffices for all their needs. It is
the rich pine, full of highly inflammable resin
that does the work in an instant. The favorite
wood for backlogs is live-oak, which will burn for
many hours with a soft ruddy glow that gives
out great heat. Scrub-oak or black-jack is more
popular for general purposes because it is so plen-
tiful; while tupelo, elm, black gum, and sap pine
fill in those gaps in the yawning fireplaces be-
tween the kindling sticks and the giant yule log.

A Christmas breakfast on a Southern plan-

296 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

tation is one of those leisurely and delightful
events that have no definite beginning or ending,
but which are aglow throughout with the light
and warmth of mirth, fellowship, and affection.
Perhaps a cup of tea and a roll and marmalade,

with a bunch of fresh violets or a rose from the ©

garden on the tray, will be served first, as we
gather on the piazza. Later there will be an
elaborate breakfast in the quaint old dining-
room, where, by the red firelight, and watched
intently by the frieze of deer’s antlers festooned
with holly and smilax, we shall pass two happy
hours. Among the truly Southern dishes most
enjoyed are the roasted rice-fed mallards, the ven-
ison sausages, and the crisp, brown corn-breads.
After breakfast we shall all repair to the vast
old echoing ballroom, which occupies one whole
wing of the house — a room with carved wain-
scoting, waist-high, with tall, faded mirrors be-
tween the high windows, and blue tiling of antique
designs on the sides of the fireplace. It is a room
fragrantly haunted by memories of the past,
where the strains of the minuet and the courtly
grace of the dancers of colonial days would seem
far more fitting than our practical presence. But

our coming to the ballroom has a real Christmas |

A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 297

significance, which is what most concerns us now;
for it is here that we give presents to the negro
children. They, dressed in their best Sunday
clothes, have been gathering for hours from our
own plantation and from those adjacent ones
whose sole occupants now are their tenants.
And now they come happily into the room
through the dark entryway at the back, the older
ones, who recall the joys of other years, leading
and reassuring the tots who seem awed at the
expanse of the room and the light of the stately
candles.

Their ages run from two to ten; their faces are
remarkably bright and appealing. There is little
stolid dullness, but in its place we see big bright
eyes, rows of snowy teeth, and chubby black
hands that will soon be filled with the generous
stores of Santa Claus. Most of the children have
a touch of color about their dress; one will wear
a red necktie, one a string of blue beads, while a
third may be the proud possessor of a favorite,
though exclusive, mode of decoration, namely, a
white or colored handkerchief pinned on the front
of the shirt or dress or on the lapel of the jacket.
As its secure fastening indicates, it is for purposes
of ornament only.

298 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

On two long tables before the ranged rows of
negro children, their gifts are heaped high; and
these include not only toys and trinkets and
candy, but useful and durable gifts such as shoes
and. stockings, little dresses and suits, and many
other kinds of apparel. Some of the children are
too bewildered to appreciate their happiness;
others in their joy will begin to dance (as this is
the most spontaneous way for them to express
their feelings), tentatively at first; but soon the
whole crowd will join, and even the tiniest tot,
clutching her gifts tightly, will lift her skirts and
go through the swiftest and most intricate move-
ments with great dexterity. This dancing is al-
ways a feature of a plantation Christmas. 5

Of course there is always a big deer-hunt on
Christmas Day; though there is a proverb in the
South that Christmas is hard on a hunter’s aim.
A Christmas hunting party is picturesque in a high
degree. Gathering in a pre-arranged meeting-
place, all the planters in that section of the coun-
try will appear dressed for the festival, each with
his hounds trailing after him in the order of their
enthusiasm. The presence of some planters who
hunt on Christmas only, and who have never

been known to hit anything, offers the wags of the |

a

A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS — 299

party a rarer sport than deer could afford. About
this company there is a spirit of irresponsibility,
of holiday laxity that Southern hunters, who take
their sport seriously, do not usually indulge in.
As they ride away under the pines, to the wind-
ing of horns and the barking of dogs, they appear
like some cavalcade of old, riding away into the
shadows of the past. Into the woods they go, the
wonderful woods of the Southern coast country, a
company of merry gentlemen, light-hearted and
— since the day is a festival — perhaps a little
light-headed, too.

The return from the hunt is usually made
about dark; and out at the barn the deer is un-
slung and the hounds begin to clamor for their
share. By flickering lanterns and red-flaring
lightwood torches the work is done. At the blow-
ing of a horn the negroes come from their cabins
for venison steaks. Then will follow the royal
Christmas dinner, served by candlelight. Rare
merriment goes with hunters’ appetites, and the
house echoes with laughter that courses about
the old-fashioned board.

Then once more we shall gather about the
generous fireplace to hear the old Colonel tell.
how he shot the buck, recounting with delight

300 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS

that the negro driver had shouted to his fellow-
beaters, ““Put on the pot, boys, de Cunnel is
done shoot!” of how this or that dog conducted
himself in the race; of how the sly old gobbler
slipped away, and the whole series of adventures
of the day.

And now the fire is very low; only the great
live-oak log glows like a bed of rubies in the cav-
ernous black chimney. The Colonel is asleep in
his armchair, his favorite hound drowsing on the
hearth at his feet. The room is hushed and the
heavy curtains are motionless. The old stag’s
head gazes down with human wistfulness and the
faded portraits seem alive in the soft shadows.
The big clock above the fireplace intones the
midnight in its mellow way. Christmas Day on
the plantation is over.

THE END

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