Hunting grounds

“ They had shrunk from the advent of the latter, and as a rule were found only in isolated tracts which were useless for tillage or pasturage, the dense forest forming their habitual dwelling-place and retreat of safety. From the best hunting-grounds, those where the great game teemed, they had been driven; yet these hunting-grounds were often untenanted by human beings for much of the year, being visited only at certain seasons by the cattle-owning nomads. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whichever way he looked, he beheld vast plains glimmering with reflected sunshine; mighty streams wandering on their shining course toward either ocean, and snowy mountains, chain beyond chain, and peak beyond peak, till they melted like clouds into the horizon. For a time, the Indian fable seemed realized: he had attained that height from which the Blackfoot warrior, after death, first catches a view of the land of souls, and beholds the happy hunting grounds spread out below him, brightening with the abodes of the free and generous spirits. ”

“ Long after this wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HOW AN HUNTER SHOULD GO IN QUEST BETWEEN THE PLAINS AND THE WOOD
Also a man may go in quest in the fields in corn, in vines, in gardens, and in other places, where the harts go to their pasture in the fields out of the wood, and he must go forth right early so that he may look at the ground and judge well, and if he sees anything that pleases him he can break boughs and lay his mark and cast round as before is said. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Looking off to the east and south, the eye caught a glimpse of distant mountain peaks, standing out white and clear against the blue horizon, like a snowy conical cloud, and the intervening stretch of country was broken by hills, ravines, gorges, wood, stream, rocks and prairie, in an interminable jungle, making a country that was the chosen roaming-ground of the fiercest wild animals, the most valuable game, and the wild Indian, and the equally wild hunter and trapper. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In an extend of hundreds, and thousands of square miles, no other surface of smiling green attested the presence of civilization. The hunter's path crossed mighty rivers, flowing in solitary grandeur, whose sources lay in remote and unknown regions of the wilderness. ”

“ In the wilderness, before the white man came, there were to be found paths made by the wild folk going to and from their watering places and feeding grounds, and paths made by the red hunter and warrior. Although hundreds of deer traveled to this lick yearly, they had not originally made the trail. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But they have been so ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed by successive intruding races, that these keen-eyed children of the wilds have almost entirely disappeared from the vast territory which at one time was their exclusive hunting-ground. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In an early stage of society the necessity of hunting acts as a principle of repulsion, causing men to spread with the greatest rapidity over a country, until the whole is covered with scattered settlements. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Fences would be impracticable, and damages would be ruinous; and any attempt to maintain the institution of hunting would be a long warfare in which the opposing farmer would certainly be the ultimate conqueror. ”

“ To obtain a better understanding of the subject we may classify those who hunt for the purpose of destroying wild life under three divisions: sportsmen, market hunters and butchers. The last expression I have employed in a peculiar sense as indicating a very objectionable class in itself. ”

“ Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly,
Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky,
Hemm'd through the purple mists afar
By peaks that gleam like star on star.
Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line,
Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine,
Sleeping until the zephyrs throng
To kiss their silence into song. ”

“ One of the hunters, among the bravest in the valley, then rose and spoke in his turn: "Why do these people with painted faces come into our valley? It is to take possession of it and drive us away. They are strangers to us, and we have never done them any harm. Why do they not remain where they were born? Will there be fish enough in the river and enough wild animals in the forest to feed them and us? They will take all and leave us nothing. Fighting against them is impossible, it is true—but we can fly. ”

“ By the plan now adopted, also, each of these three hunting parties, after they had reached their respective destinations and built their camps, were to explore the rivers ten or fifteen miles upward through the forest, and to some suitable and convenient terminus of their proposed trapping and hunting range; there build a camp, in which to lodge on their outward jaunts; and mark off, on their return, by blazing the trees, lines for setting log-traps for sable, marten, stoat, or ermine,—for, whatever may be said to the contrary, the noted ermine of Europe is a native of our northern forests. ”

“ The older the inscriptions and records, the more we see of the hunting, so that we may imagine, as we should expect, that the quieter business of farming gradually came to occupy more of their lives as time went on, and that the hunting occupied them less. ”