Page 134 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

112 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
passed his ambition: he could shoot partridges flying just the same as a white man, was a white man except for a trifling difference in color; and he could kill more birds, too, three times as many. It was merely a change from the old order to the new in which a dark-skinned "sportsman" had taken the place in plantation life of the dear old "Colonel" of loved memory. The negro had exacted his price for raising cotton and corn.
Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so in the matter of recreation. Hemayslouchaboutaloneandpotabevyortwoofquailwheninactual need of something to eat, or when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to shooting for fun he wants to be with the "gang." I have seen the darkies at Christmas time collect fifty in a drove with every man his dog, and spread out over the fields. Such a glorious time as he has then ! A single cottontail will draw a half-dozen shots and perhaps a couple of young bucks will pour loads into a bunny after he is dead out of pure deviltry and high spirits. I once witnessed the accidental killing of a young negro on this kind of a foray. His companions loaded him into a wagon, stuck a cigar in his mouth, and tried to pour whiskey down him every time they took a drink them- selvesastheyrodebacktotown. Thisarmyofblackhuntersandtheirdogscross field after field, combing the country with fine teeth that leave neither wild animal nor bird life behind.
There comes a time toward the spring of the year after the quail season is over when the average rural darky is "between hay and grass." The merchants on whom he has depended for suppHes make it a practice to refuse credit between January first and crop time. The black has spent his cotton money, his sweet potato pile has vanished, the sorghum barrel is empty, he has eaten the last of his winter's pork, and all that remains is a bit of meal and the meat his gun can secure. He is hunting in grim earnest now, using all the cunning and skill acquired by years of practice. He eats woodpeckers, jaybirds, hawks and skunks, drawing the line only at crows and buzzards. AtthisseasonoftheyearIhavecarriedchickenhawksuptothecabins for the sake of watching the delight of the piccaninnies who with glowing eyes would declare,"Them'smos'asgoodaschicken." Whathappenstotherobins,doves,larks, red birds, mocking birds and all songsters in this hungry season needs hardly to be stated.
It is also a time between hay and grass for the rabbits and the quail. The corn fields are bare and the weed seeds are exhausted. A spring cold spell pinches, they lose their vitality, become thin and quite lack their ordinary wariness. Then the figure-four trap springs up in the hedgerow and the sedge while the work of decimation goesmorerapidlyalong. Therabbitscannolongerescapethehalf-starveddogs,the thinning cover fails to hide the quail and the song birds betray themselves by singing of the coming spring.
With the growing scarcity of the game now comes the season of sedge and field burning. This is done ostensibly to prepare the land for spring plowing, but really to destroy the last refuge of the quail and rabbits so that they can be bagged witli cer- tainty. All the negroes of a neighborhood collect for one of these burnings, all their dogs,andofcoursealltheboysfromsixyearsoldup. Theysurroundthefieldand set it on fire in many places, leaving small openings for the game to dash out among the motley assembly. I have seen quail fly out of the burning grass with flaming particles still attached to them. They alight on the burnt ground too bewildered to flyagainandtheboysanddogspickthemup. Crazedrabbitstrythegauntletamidst thebarkingcurs,shoutingnegroesandpoppingguns,butdeathissureandquick. The few quail that may escape have no refuge from the hawks and nothing to eat, so every battue of this kind marks the absolute end of the birds in one vicinity; and the next day the darkies repeat the performance elsewhere.
At this season of the year, the first of May, the blacks are putting in some of their one hundred working days while the single breech-loader rusts in the chimney corner. Surely the few birds that have escaped the foray of the "gang," lived through the hungry days, and survived their burned homes can now call "Bob White" and mate inpeace. Butschoolisoutandthesummersunisputtingnewlifeintothebarefeet