Hunting ground

“ Others were good spirits and aided the hunter in his chase, the lover in his suit, and brought male offspring to the mother's arms. Finally, he had prepared for them a "Happy Hunting-Ground," where every one should go after death. There beautiful birds would make resonant the hills and valleys with their enchanting song. The Great Spirit had covered that vast and magnificent country with plains, and forests, and limpid streams, in which and over which would sport the red deer, bears, buffaloes, wild horses and all animals and fishes useful for clothing and food. ”

“ But, as a general rule, races engaged exclusively in hunting, who rarely turn their attention to the ground except to examine a trail or to search for water, would have little opportunity of profiting by the mineral wealth of the soil over which they roamed. ”

“ The advance of civilization, keeping up its untiring march to the westward, is daily encroaching upon their wild haunts and bringing the day close at hand when warrior and trapper will depart forever to their "Happy Hunting Grounds." ”

“ There they plant their little patches of ground, the care of which is consigned to the women. The men takes their bows and arrows and set out on hunting expeditions, during which they are for weeks, often months, absent from their homes. ”

“ The trail winds on over high rocks to the beautiful land. No storms and no winter enter the Happy Hunting Grounds. The sky is always blue, and the grass never grows dry with heat nor brown with frost.
The trees are full of birds, the bushes of fruit, and the forests are alive with game. Feasting and dancing fill the day, and the war cry is heard no more.
[Pg 160]
ABOUT THE BOOK
The facts and stories which have made this little book possible are found in the works of Schoolcraft and in the Government reports of Ethnology. ”

“ Here, too, were most fair hunting grounds, offering the hunter choice between enclosed parks [5] and a wide expanse of field and fell; 16and all around there flowed a river full of fish of every sort; and for the sportsman versed in fowling, winged game in abundance. ”

“ By means of their sledges these hunters can move swiftly to the bear-hunting grounds, and no hunters in the world display more indomitable courage and presence of mind, or more skill and judgment in the exercise of their craft. ”

“ At the end of some years, during which such a hunter has collected a large stock of skins, he proceeds to the nearest settlement, fetches pack animals thence, takes a sufficient number of men into his service, and proceeds to his hunting-grounds, in order to carry to market the produce of his lengthened labour. ”

“ Landmarks upward to the mountains,
That this hunter may not wander,
May not fall, and falling perish
In the snow-fields of thy kingdom,
Hunting for the moose of Hisi,
Dowry for the pride of Northland. ”

“ Aqueducts and tailor work may be alike out of my individual and personal knowledge, yet I may not necessarily be an ignorant man. The primitive hunter stood in the forest. For him to be a hunting-sage, was to know the weather, traps, weapons, the times, and the lairs and ways of beasts. ”

“ Even if we descend to the consideration of such trivial matters as hunting, the case is still the same; for he will be most successful in the chase who is acquainted with the size and nature of the wood, and one familiar with the locality will be the most competent to superintend an encampment, an ambush, or a march. ”

“ Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest. ”

“ Forests were enlarged for the shelter of wild animals, and for the more ample enjoyment of the diversion of hunting, at the expense of every principle of justice and humanity. Happily for us, the scenes of devastation which this pursuit occasioned have long ceased to exist; and those vast tracts of country which were once dedicated to hunting, are now, for the most part, applied to the advantages and comfort of man. ”

“ Hunters hunting with incredible silver guns, skimming along the roads to the hills and the forests in fantastic vehicles, alighting by roadsides and lumbering across fields to timber stands; routing out the people from elms and oaks and maples and locusts and even sumac, flushing them out like rabbits and shooting them down in cold blood with blinding shards of bullets. ”

“ Hunting as a recreation, pursued with zest from pole to tropics by restless seekers after the new, supplied a species of narrative singularly akin to what the first animal stories must have been,—narratives of desperate encounter, strange peril, and hairbreadth escape. Such hunters’ stories and travellers’ tales are rarely conspicuous for the exactitude of their observation ”

“ I have sometimes wondered why some such large preserves of land, stretches of forest and meadow as are taken by clubs for shooting and fishing, are not set apart for hunting, in which it would be possible to hunt the stag and the fox or even to revive sports more old fashioned. ”

“ The boy was beginning to find out that hunting in the Northern woods was hard enough work. The tiny icicles one the branches hurt his eyes until he looked as though he had been crying and his heart thumped against its ribs as if it would break. ”

“ But the detachments whose especial duty it was to watch the frontier appeared to be under a spell, [Pg 280] for they passed their time in the usual light-hearted way, and went out shooting and hunting in large parties. They had never known the forest so full of game of all sorts before—wild buffalo, bears, wolves, deer, fawns—as it had been since "the woods had begun to talk," as they expressed it.
By the third day the distant sounds had altered their character, and were no longer like the ordinary noise made by sportsmen and their beaters, but more puzzling still. ”

“ Here I sat and saw fully a hundred horsemen, dressed in the gay colors of the hunting-field and mounted as men rarely are mounted out of England, all, horses as well as men, eager and excited in the chase, flying over hedge and ditch into the carriage-way and over ditch and hedge into the higher field, beyond and away, headlong after the hounds, every man for himself, and every man for the front, and on they went over another hedge, and out of sight. ”

“ For more than twenty years he had taken hunting-parties and fishing-parties to those woods, drawing pay as guide and provider; and when the hunting season closed, he would continue to follow the trails and blazed lines, tending traps. ”

“ Its scanty population is engaged almost entirely in logging, lumber manufacturing, and hunting, the immense forest covering the face of the country abounding with deer, bear, wolves, foxes and other game. ”

“ While these sectional prepossessions, imbibed by their descendants, gave to their religious persuasions, an ascendency in that section of country, which it still retains.
They were also men of industry and enterprise. Hunting, which too frequently occupies the time, of those who make the forest their dwelling place, and abstracts the attention from more important pursuits, was to them a recreation––not the business of life. To improve their condition, by converting the woods into fertile plains, and the wilderness into productive meadows, was their chief object. ”

“ In one hunt the very number who turn out, or a tactless Master, spoil the sport, while in another the field [Pg 173] consists, in the main, of farmers who take a neighbourly delight in riding over each other’s holdings. Whenever you see a hunt where wheat and seeds are ridden over more ruthlessly than usual, you may be sure it is a farmer’s country.
There are as many ways of hunting a country as there are styles of riding a horse. The object of one huntsman is to kill foxes, of another to give his field a run, of another to see hounds work. ”

“ The women had to go in parties down to the river in the valley and carry the heavy jars of water all the way up the hill to the huts. And the men had to beat a track through the woods and take the cattle down to drink at the stream, and guard them carefully going and coming for fear of wolves, every man carrying his weapons: and this kept the men at home and hindered them from hunting. ”

“ If you want to shew here your skill in weapons and your strength, shew it in the forest an appropriate field for it, and in hunting. And since kings are not generally exposed to fatigue, hunting is approved to give them exercise and excitement, but warlike expeditions are not recommended. ”

“ I have heard the hunters say, that they never attack any one, unless there is a great flock together and the man is alone and unarmed. My uncle used to go out a great deal hunting, sometimes by torchlight, and sometimes on the lake in a canoe, with the Indians ”

“ And it is claimed that the amount of damage done to agriculture is infinitesimal—though farmers who have had hounds over young corn, or seeds, or fine fields of turnips, might bring conflicting evidence to bear on the point. Perhaps the favourite argument in favour of hunting is that the sport is good for horse-breeding, and that the hunting-field is the finest training school for cavalry. ”

“ The wily hunters, skilled in their life’s trade, turn on every side, observe the lower boughs, fresh cropped, imitate the call of birds, the cry of deer, peer through the thick underwood which stood here and there in clumps, and plunged into the forest upon a trail which promised success. ”

“ Every waterfall or cataract has associated with it some legend or tradition. Its dense forests are the haunts of the bear and wolf, of the moose and reindeer, and many other valuable animals, in the excitement of hunting which he finds his chief delight.
To this land had come our three lads for sport and adventure, and we shall see how fully all their expectations were realised.
Chapter Two. Hudson Bay Company—Frank’s canoe mishap—Duck shooting—Clever Koona—Goose hunting—Queer battles. ”

“ It is conceived that scattered bands of mounted hunters, with the speed of a horse and the watchfulness of a wolf or antelope, whose faculties are sharpened by their necessities; who, when they get short of provisions, separate and look for something to eat, and find it in the water, in the ground, or on the surface ”

“ While hunting is the chief source of subsistence, a vast extent of territory is requisite for supporting a small number of people. In proportion as men multiply and unite, the wild animals, on which they depend for food, diminish, or fly at a greater distance from the haunts of their enemy. ”

“ Swift as the doe's Wiwâstè's feet Fled away to the forest. The hunters fleet In vain pursue, and in vain they prowl, And lurk in the forest till dawn of day. They hear the hoot of the mottled owl; They hear the were-wolf's 52 winding howl; But the swift Wiwâstè is far away. They found no trace in the forest land, They found no trail in the dew-damp grass, They found no track in the river sand, Where they thought Wiwâstè would surely pass. The braves returned to the troubled chief ”

“ One day, while hunting, he allowed himself to be drawn far away from his companions, in pursuit of a wild animal, and presently found himself alone in the midst of a dense forest, where neither path nor of sign human life was visible. ”

“ The hunter goes; a swineherd, seeking lost droves of pigs turned loose to fatten on the acorns, comes across the place. The news filters through the country, reaches the huddled villages by the river, reaches the dwellers in the hills, the people of the forest. ”

“ Communal hunting was supervised by a hunt master; and game, such as rabbits, peccary, and buffalo were surrounded by people in a circle and clubbed, shot or driven to hidden hunters, lassoed or run over a cliff or bank. Dogs were used for hunting as well as for watch dogs and pets. ”

“ We shall therefore suppose that we are now about to follow the true hunter, as the Still Hunter is also called, through the interior of the tangled woods, across morasses, ravines, and such places, where the game may prove more or less plentiful, even should none be found there in the first instance. We shall allow our hunter all the agility, patience, and care, which his occupation requires, and will march in his rear, as if we were spies, watching all his motions. ”

“ The emigrant swings a heavy axe of six pounds weight, incessantly, day in, and day out, against immense trees, in the heaviest forest, until he has opened the land to the rays of the sun, and prepared an amount of cyclopean labours for the power of fire, and the ox. The hunter clears no forests, the limits of which on the contrary, he carefully cherishes for his deer to range in. He seats himself down, with his lodge, in the borders of natural glades, or meadows, to plant his few hills of maize. ”

“ The experienced hunter, taking advantage of this peculiarity, lies down and secretes himself in the grass, after which he raises his handkerchief, hand, or foot, so as to attract the attention of the animal, and thus often succeeds in beguiling him within shooting distance. ”

“ For hunting, also, the woods, lakes, and rivers afford not only chase sufficient for any that delights in that kind of toil or pleasure, but such beasts to hunt, that, besides the delicacy of their bodies for food, their skins are so rich as they will recompense thy daily labor with a captain’s pay. ”

“ Among the latter were several hunters, cunning in woodcraft, who could follow a trail, whether of man or beast, the livelong day; and over ground where nothing might be distinguished by the inexperienced eye but grass or leaves, sand, pebbles or solid rock. ”