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In New England Fields and Woods

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<h2>XVIII</h2> FARMERS AND FIELD SPORTS <div class="inset14"> "Happy the man whose only care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air On his own ground." </div> Happier still is such a one who has a love for the rod and gun, and with them finds now and then a day's freedom from all cares by the side of the stream that borders his own acres and in the woods that crest his knolls or shade his swamp. As a rule none of our people take so few days of recreation as the farmer. Excepting Sundays, two or three days at the county fair, and perhaps as many more spent in the crowd and discomfort of a cheap railroad excursion, are all that are given by the ordinary farmer to anything but the affairs of the farm. It is true that his outdoor life makes it less necessary for him than for the man whose office or shop work keeps him[80] mostly indoors, to devote a month or a fortnight of each year to entire rest from labor. Indeed, he can hardly do this except in winter, when his own fireside is oftener the pleasantest place for rest. But he would be the better for more days of healthful pleasure, and many such he might have if he would so use those odd ones which fall within his year, when crops are sown and planted or harvested. A day in the woods or by the stream is better for body and mind than one spent in idle gossip at the village store, and nine times out of ten better for the pocket, though one come home without fin or feather to show for his day's outing. One who keeps his eyes and ears on duty while abroad in the field can hardly fail to see and hear something new, or, at least, more interesting and profitable than ordinary gossip, and the wear and tear of tackle and a few charges of ammunition wasted will cost less than the treats which are pretty apt to be part of a day's loafing. Barring the dearth of the objects of his pursuit, the farmer who goes a-fishing and a-hunting should not be unsuccessful[81] if he has fair skill with the rod and gun. For he who knows most of the habits of fish and game will succeed best in their capture, and no man, except the naturalist and the professional fisherman and hunter, has a better chance to gain this knowledge than the farmer, whose life brings him into everyday companionship with nature. His fields and woods are the homes and haunts of the birds and beasts of venery, from the beginning of the year to its end, and in his streams many of the fishes pass their lives. By his woodside the quail builds her nest, and when the foam of blossom has dried away on the buckwheat field she leads her young there to feed on the brown kernel stranded on the coral stems. If he chance to follow his wood road in early June, the ruffed grouse limps and flutters along it before him, while her callow chicks vanish as if by a conjurer's trick from beneath his very footfall. A month later, grown to the size of robins, they will scatter on the wing from his path with a vigor that foretells the bold whir and the swiftness of their flight in their grown-up days, when they will stir[82] the steadiest nerve, whether they hurtle from an October-painted thicket or from the blue shadows of untracked snow. No one is likelier to see and hear the strange wooing of the woodcock in the soft spring evenings, and to the farmer's ear first comes that assurance of spring, the wail of the Bartram's sandpiper returning from the South to breed in meadow and pasture, and then in hollow trees that overhang the river the wood ducks begin to spoil their holiday attire in the work and care of housekeeping. The fox burrows and breeds in the farmer's woods. The raccoon's den is there in ledge or hollow tree. The hare makes her form in the shadow of his evergreens, where she dons her dress of tawny or white to match the brown floor of the woods or its soft covering of snow. The bass comes to his river in May to spawn, the pike-perch for food, and the perch lives there, as perhaps the trout does in his brook. All these are his tenants, or his summer boarders, and if he knows not something of their lives, and when and where to find them at home or in their favorite[83] resorts, he is a careless landlord. His life will be the pleasanter for the interest he takes in theirs, and the skill he acquires in bringing them to bag and creel.[84] <hr class="chapter"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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