"The kangaroo ran very fast,
I ran faster.
The kangaroo was very fat,
I ate him.
Kangaroo! Kangaroo!"

This, the hunting-song of the Australian Bushman, is the best one I know. Without disguise or adornment, it embodies the primitive hunting instinct that is in every one of us, whether we hunt people or animals or things or ideas.

Jonathan and I do not habitually hunt kangaroos, and our hunting, or at any rate my share in it, is not as uniformly successful as the Bushman\'s seems to have been. For our own uses we should have to amend the song something as follows:—

"The partridge-bird flew very fast,
I missed him.
The partridge-bird was very fat,
I ate—chicken.
Partridge-bird! Partridge-bird!"

But we do not measure the success of our[Pg 184] hunting by the size of our bag. The chase, the day out of doors, two or three birds at the most out of the dozen we flush, this is all that we ask. But then, we have a chicken-yard to fall back upon, which the Bushman had not.

We sit before a blazing open fire, eating a hunter\'s breakfast—which means, nearly everything in the pantry. Coffee and toast are all very well for ordinary purposes, but they are poor things to carry you through a day\'s hunting, especially our kind of hunting. For a day\'s hunt with us is not an elaborate and well-planned affair. It does not mean a pre-arranged course over "preserved" territory, with a rendezvous at noon where the luncheon wagon comes, bringing out vast quantities of food, and taking home the morning\'s bag of game. It means a day\'s hunt that follows whither the birds lead, in a section of New England that is considered "hunted out," over ground sometimes familiar, sometimes wholly new, with no luncheon but a few crackers or a sandwich that has been stowed away in one of Jonathan\'s game pockets all the morning, and perhaps an apple or two, picked up in passing, from some old orchard[Pg 185] now submerged in the woods—a hunt ending only when it is too dark to shoot, with perhaps a long tramp home again after that. No, coffee and toast would never do!

As we turn out of the sheltered barnyard through the bars and up the farm lane, the keen wind flings at us, and our numb fingers recoil from the metal of our guns and take a careful grip on the wood. At once we fall to discussing the vital question— Where will the birds be to-day? For the partridges, as the New Englander calls our ruffed grouse, are very fastidious about where they spend their days. Sometimes they are all in the swamps, sometimes they are among the white birches of the hillsides, sometimes in the big woods, sometimes on the half-wooded rock ledges, sometimes among the scrub growth of lately cut timberland, and sometimes, in very cold weather, on the dry knolls where the cedars huddle—the warm little brooding cedars that give the birds shelter as a hen does her chicks.

When I first began to hunt with Jonathan, he knew so much more than I in these matters that I always accepted his judgment. If he[Pg 186] said, "To-day they will be in the swamps," I responded, "To the swamps let us go." But after a time I came to have opinions of my own, and then the era of discussion set in.

"To-day," begins Jonathan judicially, "the wind is north, and the birds will be on the south slopes close to the swamp bottoms to keep warm."

"Now, Jonathan, you know I don\'t a bit believe in going by the wind. The partridges don\'t mind wind, their feathers shed it. What they care about is the sun, and to-day the sun is hot,—at least," with a shiver, "it would be if we had feathers on instead of canvas. I believe we shall find them in the big woods."

I usually advocate the big woods, because I like them best for a tramp.

Jonathan, too well content at the prospect of a day\'s hunt to mind contradiction, says genially, "All right; I\'ll go wherever you say."

Which always reduces me to terms at once. Above all things, I dislike to make myself answerable for the success or failure of the day. I prefer irresponsible criticism beforehand—and[Pg 187] afterwards. So I say hastily, "Oh, no, no! Of course you know a great deal more than I do. We\'ll go wherever you think best."

"Well, perhaps it is too warm for the swamps to-day. Now, they might be in the birches."

"Oh, dear! Don\'t let\'s go to the birches! The birds can\'t be there. They never are."

"I thought we were going to go where I thought best."

"Yes—but only not to the birches. It\'s all a private myth of yours about their being there."

"Is it a private myth of mine that you shot those two woodcock in the birches of the upper farm last year? And how about that big gray partridge—"

"Well—of course—that was later in the season. I suppose the birds do eat birch buds when everything else gives out."

And so I criticize, having agreed not to. But it\'s good for Jonathan; it makes him careful.

"Well, shall it be the swamp?"

"No; if you really think they\'re in the birches, we\'ll go there. Besides, the swamp[Pg 188] seems a little—chilly—to begin with. Wait till I\'ve seen a bird. Then I shan\'t mind so."

"Then you do admit it\'s a cool morning?"

"To paddle in a swamp, yes. The birds don\'t have to paddle."

We try the birches, and the pretty things whip our faces with their slender twigs in their own inimitable fashion, peculiarly trying to my temper. I can never go through birches long without growing captious.

"Jonathan," I call, as I catch a glimpse of his hunting-coat through an opening, "I thought the birds were in the birches this morning. They don\'t seem really abundant."

Jonathan, unruffled, suggests that I go along on the edge of the woods while he beats out the middle with the dog, which magnanimous offer shames me into silent if not cheerful acquiescence. Suddenly— whr-r-r—something bursts away in the brush ahead of us. "Mark!" we both call, and, "Did you get his line?" My critical spirit is stilled, and I am suddenly fired with the instinct to follow, follow! It is indeed a primitive instinct, this of the chase. No matter how tired one is, the impulse of pursuit is there. At the close of[Pg 189] a long day\'s hunt, after fifteen miles or so of hard tramping,—equal to twice that of easy walking,—when my feet are heavy and my head dull, I have never seen a partridge fly without feeling ready, eager, to follow anywhere.

After we move the first bird, it is follow my leader! And a wild leader he is. Flushed in the birches, he makes straight for the swamp. The swamp it is, then, and down we go after him, and in we go—ugh! how shivery the first plunge is—straight to the puddly heart of it, carefully keeping our direction. We go fast at first, then, when we have nearly covered the distance a partridge usually flies, we begin to slow down, holding back the too eager dog, listening for the snap of a twig or the sound of wings, gripping our guns tighter at every blue jay or robin that flicks across our path. No bird yet; we must have passed him; perhaps we went too far to the left. But no—whr-r-r! Where is he? There! Out of the top of a tall swamp maple, off he goes, sailing over the swamp to the ridge beyond. No wonder the dog was at sea. Well—we know his line, we are off again after him in[Pg 190] spite of the swamp between, with its mud and its rotten tree trunks and its grapevines and its cat briers.

Up on the ridge at last, we hunt close, find him, get a shot, probably miss, and away we go again. Some hunters, used to a country where game is plenty, will not follow a bird if they miss him on the first rise. They prefer to keep on their predetermined course and find another. But for me there is little pleasure in that kind of sport. What I enjoy most is not shooting, but hunting. The chase is the thing—the chase after a particular bird once flushed, the setting of my wits against his in the endeavor to follow up his flight. We have now and then flushed the same bird nine or ten times before we got him—and we have not always got him then. For many and deep are the crafty ways of the old partridge, and we have not yet learned them all. That is why I like partridge-hunting better than quail or woodcock, though in these you get far more and better shooting. Quail start in a bunch, scatter, fly, and drop whe............