Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

by George Bird Grinnell

"No," said Hugh, "that's a puzzler, I'll confess. You remember how plenty the birds are about some of those little, shallow lakes we passed up in the northern country. There'd be quite a flock of geese and a great lot of ducks and all sorts of wading birds, big and little, living on them all summer, and when autumn came, the water would be nearly covered with the birds, showing, as it seems to me, that the breeding birds had all had pretty good luck in raising their young."

"Well, anyhow, Hugh, it was mighty good fun going around the edge of the lake there, and seeing all these birds, and one of the funniest sights I saw was a little mother rail and nine little chickens, each one of them hardly bigger than the end of your finger."

"What is this bird you call a rail, son?" asked Hugh. "I reckon I don't know it by that name."

"Why," replied Jack, "it's a pretty small bird that lives in the tall grass on the edge of the water. It's sort of greenish brown above, with some white marks, has long legs, a little bit of a tail, a short bill, and a body not much bigger than that of a blackbird."

"Why," said Hugh, after a moment's thought, "that must be one of those sacred birds that the Blackfeet Medicine Lodge women put on their sacred bonnets. You mean a little, short-winged bird, don't you, that when you see it, 'most always runs into the grass instead of flying away, and if you do make it fly, it flies very slowly for a short way and then drops down into the grass again?"

"Yes, Hugh," Jack answered; "that's the very bird. Back East they shoot them, and they're splendid eating."

"Well," said Hugh, "there isn't more than a mouthful of flesh on each one of them. I reckon it would take a good many to make a meal for me."

"That's so," said Jack; "they're pretty small, but they're awful good. The way people shoot them is like this. The birds in the autumn come down from the north and live in the tall grass and reeds along the edge of the bays and rivers. They pick up their food among the grass and on the muddy flats, but when the tide rises they are forced up from the ground, and walk among the reeds and grass on the floating vegetation. When the tide gets up nearly to the top, the gunners start out in flat-bottomed boats, two men to a boat. The shooter stands in the bow, and in the stern is a man with a long pole, who shoves the boat through the grass, and as it goes along it disturbs the rails, which have to get up and fly a little way to get out of the boat's road. When they rise out of the grass the gunner shoots at them. In old times they say that there used to be thousands of these rail in the marshes, and sometimes a man would get from a hundred to a hundred and fifty in a tide, that is, in two to three hours. As soon as the tide gets low enough so that the boat can no longer shove easily over the mud flats and through the grass, the rail can run faster than the boat can go, and the shooting is over."

"Well," said Hugh, "that seems to me mighty queer—killing these little bits of birds just for the fun of it. It must cost a man quite a lot to do shooting of that kind."

"Yes," said Jack. "Of course men do it for amusement, and not for what they make out of it. Why, I think they pay the shover a dollar and a half or two dollars a tide, and then, of course, the ammunition costs something, and perhaps a man has to go quite a long journey on the railroad to get to the rail grounds."