Hunting season

“ I certainly do not think it right to keep a hunter in hard work from the end of one season to the beginning of another. At the close of the season, shoes should be taken off, and the horse be turned into a loose-box with a yard, and bedded down with tan and sawdust, if not with straw. ”

“ At the end of each hunting season—if the fur-runners have not traded with the hunters and if the hunter is not too far away from the post—he usually loads upon his sled the result of his fall hunt and hauls it to the Post during Christmas week ”

“ In the Arctic regions, hunting and collecting must be done in midsummer, or not at all. While it is true that in the torrid and temperate zones there is a certain amount of work to be done all the year round, there is always a particular season which may be regarded as the harvest-time. ”

“ Anastasio said it was customary to hunt in summer, when the sheep were fat, and were compelled to resort to the water holes. Aside from the meanness of taking advantage of the animals' necessities, the summer is a bad season for hunting, both because the flesh is rank and spoils quickly, and the heat and insects are intolerable. ”

“ The hunting season lasts about six weeks, and begins early in June, soon after the arrival of the seals. The men arm themselves with clubs, and then drive the seals up into a cleared space away from the shore, where the animals are helpless, because they are clumsy and move slowly when out of the water. 74 A single blow on the seal’s head is enough to end his life, and to give the hunter the beautiful soft skin he wishes. ”

“ We do not see pink coats and heavy hunters, the bay of the hounds does not break on our ear, there are no hedges to leap, nor brooks, followed by a flounder through a ploughed field; we do not come home in a cold drizzle at the end of a delightful day, and sit near the fireside, wondering whether there will be a frost before morning, and whether the mare's legs will last this season. No, our hunting is done under a bright sun and balmy breezes, and, though we miss the prettiness and order which accompany a meet in the "auld countree," still, there is a rugged beauty about our surroundings. ”

“ Harvest Home having been celebrated, the "master" was free to make holiday with horse and gun, and my father was ever eager—too eager—to do so. Weather that was right for hunting was a matter of more joyful satisfaction to him than weather that was right for crops. All thought of crops was thrown to the autumn winds as soon as "the season" opened.
Those old roads of Norfolk were to me haunted with hounds and red coats, echoing with the music of the pack and the horn. I asked Mr B., as he was driving me from D—— to my cousin's house, how hunting stood in the old hunting county now. ”

“ The large majority of people who hunt nowadays, rent hunting boxes for the season, and take so little interest in country life that they fly off to town on the first appearance of frost, and are not seen again until the land is fit to be ridden over. When the season ends, they disappear till the following one. Few of them know any of the resident farmers or inhabitants of hunting centres even by sight, or want to know them. ”

“ Some of them make a voyage of five hundred miles to receive a few blankets and kettles; coasting along the shores, encamping at night, and paddling all day from sunrise to sunset, living on the fish or game they may meet, and the little provision they can carry with them, which consists chiefly of parched Indian corn and bear's fat. Some are out on this excursion during six weeks, or more, every year; returning to their hunting grounds by the end of September, when the great hunting season begins, which continues through October and November ”

“ In April they arrive from their hunting excursions, and in the month of May they attend to their horticultural interests, and plant maize, beans, pumpkins, and water-melons, besides which they cultivate no other vegetable. They also at this season dress the bison skins, which have been procured during the winter hunt, for the traders, who generally appear for the purpose of obtaining them. The young men, in the mean time, are employed in hunting within the distance of seventy or eighty miles around for beaver, otter, deer, musk-rat, elk, &c. ”

“ Every hour of weather fit for out-door work is spent in fishing and hunting, and preparing food for the winter. In the light sledge, or on skates, with nets and spears, they labored at each of these employments in its season. Toward the end of the long winter, just as famine and starvation threaten the whole population, a perfect cloud of swans, and geese, and ducks, and snipes, pour in; and man and woman, boy and girl, all rush forth to the hunt. The fish come in next, as the ice breaks; and presently the time for the reindeer hunt comes round. ”

“ The fur in summer is universally of inferior quality, and this, too, is the season when wild animals rear their young. For both these reasons it seemed desirable that the hunting should be suspended during the summer months, and this was effectually procured when all the best hunters, all the young and active men of the Indian tribes, were engaged in a distant excursion. There was consequently a material advantage in requiring them to leave their hunting grounds in summer, and come to the factories on the coast for a supply of European goods. ”

“ Nothing is done in the summer months in the way of hunting. The small furred animals are changing their pelt, which is out of season. The doe retires with her fawns, from the plains and open grounds, into thick woods. It is the general season of reproduction, and the red man for a time, intermits his war on the animal creation, to resume it against man. ”

“ On the frontier we are obliged by other buyers and circumstances over which we have no control to take common out of season skins. As the Indians find sale for skins of any kind, they hunt actually ten months out of the twelve. At our interior posts, where our word is law, we appoint the 25th of October to begin hunting and the 25th of May to finish ”

“ During the summer months when you are running around through the fields and woods fishing and hunting and having a good time, then is the time to start the foundation for the coming season's trapping. ”

“ During the snow season, deer are always watchful of their back track. They are generally at rest during the day, starting out late in the afternoon on their usual ramblings, which they continue through the night. During the dark hours they love to resort to the water side in quest of aquatic plants, and are here often taken by hunters, many of which consider "night hunting" the favorite and most exciting sport. It is pursued in the following manner: The hunter requires a boat or canoe, page 261, a good rifle, and a lamp. ”

“ But, however delayed, the haymaking is finished at last, and by-and-by, when the leaves have fallen and the hunting commences, a good run drives away for the time at least the memory of so unpropitious a season. ”

“ The season for otter hunting commences as soon as the water is warm enough, that is in March or April, and goes on till about the end of September. Of course May, June, July and August are the best months, as to hunt big rivers they must be low and the weather warm, to enable hounds and men to stand many hours of water work. ”

“ A fine field of hunters in their scarlet coats, rushing over forest, heath, fence or stream, on noble steeds, and with a pack of beautiful dogs in full cry, is a very picturesque and animating spectacle.
Through the winter, then, up to the very approach of spring, hunting offers whatever charms it possesses; pheasant, woodcock and snipe shooting, in the woods and by the streams, are in all their glory. It is the time for pursuing all manner of wild fowl, in fens and along the sea-coast ”

“ Hunting was not a mere ramble in pursuit of game, in which there was nothing of skill and calculation; on the contrary, the hunter, before he set out in the morning, was informed, by the state of the weather, in what situation he might reasonably expect to meet with his game; whether on the bottoms, sides or tops of the hills. In stormy weather, the deer always seek the most sheltered places, and the leeward side of the hills. In rainy weather, in which there is not much wind, they keep in the open woods on the highest ground. ”

“ The hunters rise from their sleeping bags, make a hasty meal of coffee and cakes, and long before the light of dawn sweeps the eastern sky, they must be on the trail. Silently and alert they enter the land of suspected deer. Taking advantage of every bit of cover, traveling into the wind where possible, looking at every shadow, every spot of moving color, they advance. Where trails exist they follow these, or if the ground be carpeted with soft pine needles, they flit between the deeper shades of the forest, watchful, and hearing every woodland sound. ”

“ The still hunting of the natives has all the romance and danger attending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow gets deep, many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and keep a place trodden down, which grows larger as they tramp down the snow in search of food. In time this refuge becomes a sort of “yard,” surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their way to this retreat on snowshoes, and from the top of the banks pick off the deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul them away to market, until the enclosure is pretty much emptied. ”

“ Trading over, the trappers disperse to their winter hunting-grounds, which the main body of hunters never leaves from October, when they go on the fall hunt, to June, when the long straggling brigades of canoes and keel boats and pack horses and jolting ox-carts come back to the fort with the harvest of winter furs. ”

“ Then there are the ineffable climate of summer, the sunrises, the sunsets, the Indians, the flowers, the sweet-singing birds, the rowing, in winter the snow-shoeing, the camping-out, and, alas! I must say it—the hunting.
Why man will hunt save for food is beyond me. I deem it that every living thing has as much right to its life as I have to mine, but I find I am in a large minority among a certain class that finds at Lake Tahoe its hunting Mecca. Deer abound, and grouse and quail are quite common, and in the summer of 1913 I knew of four bears being shot. ”

“ We were all actively engaged—some in cultivating a field of Indian corn, another of potatoes, and a kitchen garden in a sheltered spot near the fort. Our chief business, however, was hunting; for though some animals are killed in the winter, many more are shot in the spring and summer. We have a spring, though vegetation proceeds so rapidly, when once the winter has taken its departure, that it is a very short one, and rushes, as it were, rapidly into summer. ”

“ As we do not wish to encourage the wanton trapping of this noble creature, it would perhaps be well for us to devote also few words in describing the various modes of hunting the animal, Page 217 adopted by the "professional sportsmen" throughout the land. The most common method is that called "still hunting," most generally pursued in winter. ”

“ This trick is 30 characteristic of the deer and rabbit families.
The tracking of an animal in summer is naturally much more difficult than in winter, unless the footprints are on soft ground. The Indian hunter is then even keener in his observations; he looks for the displacement of leaves and blades of grass, or for broken dry sticks. These slight displacements will adjust themselves in a short time, to be sure; but in hunting, the fresh track is what is wanted. Other tracks are not much followed, except those of man or bear from whom danger is to be feared. ”

“ They have been exiled to the rocky hills, they are afflicted with madness in Indian summer, their pride has been taken from them, and all of the greater forest creatures treat them with contempt. They are driven from the game trails, and thus they have to do their hunting at any time that offers, early or late. ”

“ It pierces and levels the snow at one and the same time, and thus opens a passable road. Notwithstanding these difficulties, hunting has at all times been the great sport and exercise of that country, formerly abounding in fierce animals, and still in deer and most kinds of smaller game. Hunting is indeed an occupation which appears to be in a peculiar manner prescribed to the inhabitants by the shortness of the days and the length of the winters. ”

“ He knows so well how to conceal himself when roosting that he laughs at the possibility of being seen and captured by the marvelous hunters who have killed so many by moonlight! The arrival of man and gun in his forest is scented and signaled at once. The birds most exposed fly far in advance of the hunter, and those that feel safe keep still and are safe from observation.
The writer admits, after testing this mode of hunting after night, many times, many seasons, and with many persons, that he has never been [187] able to find a turkey on a tree while roosting. ”

“ This method of hunting, if it deserves the name, is sometimes so successful, that many families subsist by it without having occasion to move their tents above once or twice during the course of a whole winter; and when the Spring advances, both the deer and Indians draw out to the Eastward, on the ground which is entirely barren, or at least what is so called in those parts, as it neither produces trees or shrubs of any kind, so that moss and some little grass is all the herbage which is to be found on it. ”

“ The passage of the reindeer takes place twice a year: in spring, when the mosquito-swarms drive them to the sea-coast, where they feed on the moss of the tundra; and in autumn, when the increasing cold forces them to retire inland. The spring migration, which begins about the middle of May, is not very profitable; partly because the animals are then in poor condition, and partly because it is more difficult to kill them as they dash across the frozen rivers. The chief hunting takes place in August and September, when the herds, each numbering several thousand deer, return to the forests. ”