"Why?"
"He had the biggest rack I ever saw and I figured it'd be the biggest I ever would see. But the black buck beats him, and it ain't right for one person to kill two big deer. One's a trophy but two's hoggishness. If you get the buck you want, and the black buck is the one I want, leave the next big one for somebody else."
A fuzzy caterpillar, driven by some unseasonal urge, started crawling up the log on which they were sitting. Gramps pointed at the caterpillar, which was black at both ends and brown between.
"We're in for some early bad weather," he said.
"How do you know?" Bud asked.
"The longest black's on the fore end of that caterpillar, and that always means the fore end of the winter will be long and hard."
Bud pondered this piece of information. Gramps' lore had proved valid so often in the past that Bud knew better than to dismiss what the old man was saying about caterpillars as so much local superstition. Shortly after Bud had come to the farm, Gramps had told him that, when swallows flew near the ground, a storm was in the making. Bud hadn't taken much stock in that until he learned in school that the low-pressure area that precedes a storm drives insects down near the earth and so the swallows follow them. Therefore, when swallows fly close to the ground, a storm does usually follow.
"You aim to get yourself a couple of grouse?" Gramps asked.
"I don't think so," Bud said.
"Something is chewing on you," Gramps said. "What is it?"