to pull up the sprouting corn around the margin of the field near the
stone walls. Armed with the old flint-lock musket, sometimes loaded with
a handful of hard peas, I used to haunt the edges of the cornfield,
watching for the little striped-backed culprits. How remorselessly I
used to kill them! In those days there were a dozen where there is
barely one now. The woods literally swarmed with them, and when
beechnuts and acorns were scarce they were compelled to poach upon the
farmer's crops. It was to reduce them and other pests that shooting
matches were held. Two men would choose sides as in the spelling
matches, seven or eight or more were on a side, and the side that
brought in the most trophies at the end of the week won and the losing
side had to pay for the supper at the village hotel for the whole crowd.
A chipmunk's tail counted one, a red squirrel's three, a gray squirrel's
still more. Hawks' heads and owls' heads counted as high as ten, I
think. Crows' heads also counted pretty high. One man who had little
time to hunt engaged me to help him, offering me so much per dozen
units. I remember that I found up in the sap bush a brood of young
screech owls just out of the nest and I killed them all. That man is
still owing me for those owls. What a lot of motley heads and tails were
brought in at the end of the week! I never saw them but wish I had.
Repeated shooting matches of this kind, in different parts of the state,
so reduced the small wild life, especially the chipmunks, that it has
not yet recovered, and probably never will. In those days the farmer's
hand was against nearly every wild thing. We used to shoot and trap
crows and hen hawks and small hawks as though they were our mortal
enemies. Farmers were wont to stand up poles in their meadows and set
steel traps on the top of them to catch the hen hawks that came for the
meadow mice which were damaging their meadows. The hen hawk is so named
because he rarely or never catches a hen or a chicken. He is a mouser.
We used to bait the hungry crows in spring with "deacon" legs and shoot