FOR four years the game in Virginia, all undisturbed, increased and multiplied at an astonishing rate. There was no shot to be had in the Confederacy, and the only way an ardent sportsman, when home on furlough, could take a shy at the game, was to hammer out from a leaden bullet long, square blocks, and then cutting off the ends with a knife, to use a brick to roll these bits on the floor until each pellet became round enough for use. It would take a man a day, and exhaust all his patience, to make one pound of shot; and he would naturally be very chary about using his ammunition, and rarely pull a trigger except when certain of his game. In most sections of Virginia to fire a gun was a dangerous pastime, for what with raids, irruptions, incursions and forays, the people were in a state of siege, and the report of a firearm was as likely as not to be followed by a bullet from some traveling soldier, prowling bushwhacker, or passing cavalryman, thrown just for good luck in the direction of the sound. Then, if it should happen that a raid was in progress, the shot would attract the videttes and scouts, and the luckless gunner would find himself in hostile hands; and if too old or too young for military service, he might consider himself lucky if he were allowed to depart minus his fowling-piece and dog.
In the mountains of Virginia the wild turkeys were more numerous than they ever were before, the various bivouacs furnishing them in winter with an ample supply of food, while, best of all, they were allowed to feed unmolested. The water-fowl on the Potomac kept up their ratio of increase, for except the officers of the gunboats patrolling up and down the river, none dared to fire a gun. There were hunters of men in those times scattered along the banks, as well as floating on the bosom of the blue water. The explosion of a sportsman’s gun, and its smoke, might serve as an admirable target for the boatswain of an iron-clad with a crew nearly dead with listlessness and ennui, and glad to get an excuse to blaze away at anything.
In the fall of 1865, those Virginians who loved sporting, and had the good luck to return to the homes of their youth with their arms and legs intact, had a rare and royal time among the fur and feather, and a moderate shot would return in the evening and show such a bag as the result of the day’s sport as would last the family for a week. A couple of sportsmen living about ten miles from Culpeper Court House, Virginia, killed, in one day, eighty-four rabbits and fourteen wild turkeys. If a gunner can start even half a dozen cotton-tails now in a long day’s tramp he considers himself fortunate, and he won’t see a wild turkey in a season’s shooting. I well remember a hunt that I had in the autumn of 1865, just after the war ended. It was a perfect day in November, with the morning mists still hanging around the tree-tops. I had borrowed a double-barrel from one friend, and a good, staunch pointer named “Josh” from another. I climbed the fence of an orchard, and put the dog out in a huge field near Warrenton Junction, where portions of both armies had often encamped. Josh had not gone seventy-five yards before he came to a dead stand, and with beating heart I advanced and hied him on. As the birds rose I let fly both barrels, and—did not touch a feather! Loading up, I again sent Josh careering over the stubble. In ten minutes he had pointed a covey, and I again emptied the gun with the same result as before. If ever a dog’s face expressed contempt Josh’s was surely the one. His dewlaps curled up, and he absolutely showed his teeth, whether in anger or derision I never found out. The third time I approached a covey that Josh had cornered in a big patch of briers, and two more loads were sent harmless as Macbeth’s sword “cutting the intrenchant air.” This was enough for that disgusted dog. He sneaked off, and I never laid my eyes upon him again.
It was no great matter, the birds were so plentiful that I had merely to walk up and down the field, and I banged away most lustily. All in vain! I could not touch one. I fired with both eyes open, then with one shut, and still no partridge lingered on that account. I became superstitious and fired with both eyes shut. I doubled the charges, until I swept that meadow with leaden pellets, as a field is cleared by grape-shot. But there were no dead. At last, in my despair, I would shoot even if the bird was half a mile off. I went home that evening, after shooting away about ten pounds of shot, with one solitary partridge in my game-bag, and this bird, when I flushed him suddenly, was so scared that he flew from the edge of the field across a fence and against the trunk of a black-jack tree with such force as to knock himself silly, and before he could hustle himself away I had jumped the fence and wrung his neck.
SHOOTING OVER DECOYS.
There was apparently enough fur and feather in Virginia just after the war to supply the whole of America with small game, but in one decade the state of the case was completely altered. First came the invention of the breech-loader, which enables one to shoot all day without intermission. The game stood but little chance against these machines of perpetual destruction. But worse even than the breech-loader was the old army musket, loaded with a handful of shot, with a lately enfranchised freedman behind the big end of it. The darkey is a nocturnal prowler, as much so as a ’coon or ’possum, and his prowls through meadow, woods and fallow cause him frequently to stumble on the wary turkey that forgets his cunning as he struts around preparatory to flying to his roost, generally a dead limb on a lofty tree. He bags many a molly cotton-tail loping down the road to get his evening drink at the branch. But it is when “our friend and brother” catches sight, in the shades of the evening, of a flock of partridges settling in some field for their night’s rest, that he becomes dangerous. It is then that the old army musket is converted into a terror, and when its muzzle bears upon the whole covey squatted in a space that can be covered by a bandana handkerchief, and its contents are turned loose, every bird will be either killed or crippled.
RED-HEAD DUCKS AT HOME.