The spell is broken; my own boy fetches his daddy out of his dream, and I am fairly caught in the act of making an old fool of myself. My youngsters are counting the days before May first when I have promised to take them trout-fishing, and the smallest boy found his first gun in his stocking last Christmas. But they can know nothing at all about the joys and excitement of pigeon shooting in the vanished days when these birds fairly darkened the sky above our old homestead. But I try to tell them what we used to do and my story sounds something like this:
"It is early in the spring, so early that a bunch of snow may yet be found on the north side of the largest of the fallen trees in the woods. Puddles that the melting snow left in the hollows of the clearing are fringed with ice this morning, and we look around and tell each other, 'There was a frost last night.' The mud in the road has stiffened, and the rutted cattle tracks are also streaked and barred with ice. Yet winter has gone and spring is here, for the buds are swelling on the twigs of the elms and the pussy willows show their dainty, silvery signals to tell us that the vernal equinox has come and gone.
"If the springtime is still young, so is the day. Light is breaking in the gray sky of dawn as we hurry along the slippery, sticky road. We must make haste to the point of woods, by John Winter's clearing, before full daybreak or the pigeons will be flying and we will miss the early flocks which always keep nearest the ground.
"You may be curious to know what we look like as we trudge along in Indian file, eagerly chatting about a kind of sport which this later generation knows nothing about. I am a chunk of a country lad, topped by a woolen cap with ear-tabs pulled down over my ears, a tippet around my neck, yarn mittens on my hands, which are sure to be badly skinned and chapped this time of year from playing 'knuckle-down-tight.'
"My 'every-day pants' are tucked into a pair of calf-skin boots with square pieces of red leather for the tops, an old-fashioned adornment dear to Young America of my day. My old Irish water spaniel 'Sport' is tagging behind or charging frantically ahead; my gun is a sixteen-gauge muzzle loader, stub and twist barrels, with dogs' heads for the hammers.
"Dangling from one shoulder is a leather shot pouch that cuts off one ounce of number eights for a load. The sides of this pouch are embossed, on the one a group of English woodcock, on the other a setter rampant. Hanging at my left side by a green cord with a tassel or two is my fluted copper powder flask, ready to measure out two and three-fourths drams of coarse Dupont or Curtis & Harvey powder.
"My pockets are full of Ely's black-edged wads, for I am a young nabob of sportsmen, let me tell you, and I scorn to use tow or bits of newspaper for wadding. My vest pocket holds the caps, G. D.'s or Ely's again, for didn't I tell you that I was a nabob. The pièce de résistance of this outfit is the game bag, the pride of my eye, for it was a Christmas present, and this is its maiden shooting trip. Suspended over the left shoulder so that it will hang well back of the right hip, the strap that carries it is broad and with many holes for the wondrous buckle which can be shifted to hang it in the most comfortable place, wherever that is, for when it is loaded with game it will choke me almost to death, no matter how I adjust it. This noble bag has two pockets, one of them for luncheon, and on the outside is a netted pocket, easy to get into and keeping the birds cool. I nearly forgot to mention its magnificent fringe, which hangs down from both sides and the bottom like the war-bags of an Indian chief.
"My companions are rigged out in much the same fashion. They are grown men, however, for I don't remember any other boys who shot pigeons with me. Holabird or khaki hunting suits are as yet unknown, and even corduroy coats are rare. The powder horn is seen as often as the copper flask, and one hunter has a shot belt with two compartments instead of the English pouch. Of guns the assortment is as varied as the number of hunters, but the old, hard-kicking army musket with its iron ramrod is more popular than any other arm.
"We reach the edge of the clearing not a minute too soon. Now and then a distant shot tells us that we are not the first hunters out afield this morning. The guns are cracking everywhere along the road that skirts the woodland, and back in, close to the 'chopping,' some better wing-shots are posted by the openings into the woods where the birds fly lower, but where the shooting is more difficult. It is largely of the 'pick your bird' style, for the flight of a pigeon is very swift, and when they are darting among the tree-tops of a small forest opening, rare skill is required to bag one's birds.
"I prefer to take the flocks, even though they offer me more distant targets, and soon my gun-barrels are as hot as those of the rest of the skirmishers. Sometimes two or three birds drop from a flock at a single discharge, and then several shots may not fetch from on high more than one or two of the long tail-feathers spinning and twisting to the ground. It is fascinating to watch the whirling, shining descent of one of these feathers, and I pick up one and stick it in my cap as a matter of habit.