“It certainly is,” he was informed. “For a good many years chasing deer with hounds, and using a jack-light at nights to get them, has been strictly forbidden. Time was when packs of hounds used to be met with in plenty. Men would start out and hunt deer that way. Then the papers took it up, and showed the cruelty of the so-called sport, and it was abolished.”
“According to the law anybody is allowed to shoot dogs caught in the act of running deer, especially in the summer time; isn’t that right, Tom?”
“Yes, that’s what we would have had a perfect right to do if we’d had a gun along. But I don’t believe that pack belonged to any one man. They are dogs that have gone wild, and having gathered together in the woods, live by hunting.”
“I’ve heard that dogs do go back to the old wolf strain sometimes,” Josh admitted; “and now that you mention it, Tom, there was a wild look about every one of the beasts. I even thought they had half a notion to attack us at one time; but the way Felix kept that paddle flashing through the air cowed them, I guess.”
The fishing was resumed, though all this racket seemed to have caused the bass to cease taking hold for some time. By skirting the more distant shores, close to where the water grass and reeds grew, they finally struck a good ground, and were amply rewarded for the efforts put forth.
“I think the bass must have their beds on this shoal here,” said Tom, when they paddled back over the place at which success had come to them. “It’s early in the season as yet, and a lot of them are still around here. They haven’t gone out into deep water with their newly-hatched young ones.”
“Is that what they do?” asked Felix, who was not as much of a fisherman as either of his chums.
“Well, not immediately after the eggs hatch,” Tom told him. “The mother bass is going to keep her swarm of little ones in shallow water, and guard them until they get to a certain size. Then she darts in among them, scatters the whole lot, after which she is done with them. They have reached an age when they must take their chances.”
When finally about noon the three came ashore, rather stiff from having straddled that log for such a length of time, they had a pretty fine string of fish, two of them in fact.
The talk as they ate their mid-day meal was along the subject of deer hunting, and Tom as well as Josh had to tell all about it, as far as they knew.