The Happy Hunting-Grounds

Part 1

The Happy Hunting-Grounds

The Happy Hunting-Grounds

Kermit Roosevelt

Author of “War in the Garden of Eden”

Illustrated from Photographs by the Author

London Hodder & Stoughton 1920

Copyright, 1912, 1920, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, for the United States of America

Printed by the Scribner Press New York, U. S. A.

TO THE MISTRESS OF SAGAMORE

Contents

PAGE I. THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 3

II. IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 53

III. THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 71

IV. AFTER MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 103

V. TWO BOOK-HUNTERS IN SOUTH AMERICA 123

VI. SETH BULLOCK--SHERIFF OF THE BLACK HILLS COUNTRY 151

Illustrations

Arab sheikhs who had ridden in, camel-back, from the desert to pay their respects Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Sir Alfred Pease’s sketch of our first giraffe hunt 24

Father and R. H. Munro Ferguson at the Elkhorn Ranch, after the return from a successful hunting trip 34

Facsimile of a picture letter by father 38

Putting the tape on a tusker 42

Launching a newly made dugout on the Dúvida 44

A relic of the Portuguese occupation; an old well beside the trail 56

The Death Dance of the Wa Nyika children in memory of the chieftain’s little son 58

Across the bay from Mombasa; the porters ready to shoulder loads and march 66

A desert camp in old Mexico 78

Part 2

Casares on his white mule 88

Making fast the sheep’s head 96

A noonday halt on the way down river, returning from the hunting country 106

Bringing out the trophies of the hunt 118

The Captain makes advances to a little Indian girl 152

A morning’s bag of prairie chicken in South Dakota 170

The Happy Hunting-Grounds

THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS

There is a universal saying to the effect that it is when men are off in the wilds that they show themselves as they really are. As is the case with the majority of proverbs there is much truth in it, for without the minor comforts of life to smooth things down, and with even the elemental necessities more or less problematical, the inner man has an unusual opportunity of showing himself--and he is not always attractive. A man may be a pleasant companion when you always meet him clad in dry clothes, and certain of substantial meals at regulated intervals, but the same cheery individual may seem a very different person when you are both on half rations, eaten cold, and have been drenched for three days--sleeping from utter exhaustion, cramped and wet.

My father had done much hunting with many and varied friends. I have often heard him say of some one whom I had thought an ideal hunting companion: “He’s a good fellow, but he was always fishing about in the pot for the best piece of meat, and if there was but one partridge shot, he would try to roast it for himself. If there was any delicacy he wanted more than his share.” Things assume such different proportions in the wilds; after two months living on palm-tree tops and monkeys, a ten-cent can of condensed milk bought for three dollars from a rubber explorer far exceeds in value the greatest delicacy of the season to the ordinary citizen who has a varied and sufficient menu at his command every day in the year.

Even as small children father held us responsible to the law of the jungle. He would take us out on camping trips to a neck of land four or five miles across the bay from home. We would row there in the afternoon, the boats laden with blankets and food. Then we would make a driftwood fire on which to fry our supper--usually bacon and chicken. I do not know whether it was the, to us, wild romance of our position, or the keen appetite from the row, but never since then have I eaten such bacon. Not even the smallest child was allowed to show a disposition to grab, or select his pieces of chicken--we were taught that that was an unpardonable offense out camping, and might cause the culprit to be left behind next time. And woe to any one who in clumsily walking about kicked sand into the frying-pan. After supper we would heap more driftwood on the fire, and drape ourselves in our blankets. Then we would stretch ourselves out in the sand while father would tell us ghost stories. The smallest of us lay within reach of father where we could touch him if the story became too vivid for our nerves and we needed the reassuring feel of his clothes to bring us back to reality. There was, however, a delicious danger in being too near him. In stories in which the “haunt” seized his victim, father generally illustrated the action by making a grab at the nearest child. After the stories were finished we rolled up in our blankets and, thoroughly permeated with sand, we slept until the first faint light of dawn. Then there was the fire to be built up, and the breakfast cooked, and the long row home. As we rowed we chanted a ballad, usually of a seafaring nature; it might be “The Rhyme of the Three Sealers,” or “The Galley Slave,” or “Simon Danz.” Father taught us these and many more, viva voce, when he was dressing for dinner. A child was not taken along on these “campings out” until he was six or seven. They took place three or four times a summer, and continued until after the African expedition. By that time we were most of us away at work, scattered far and wide.

Father always threw himself into our plays and romps when we were small as if he were no older than ourselves, and with all that he had seen and done and gone through, there was never any one with so fresh and enthusiastic an attitude. His wonderful versatility and his enormous power of concentration and absorption were unequalled. He could turn from the consideration of the most grave problems of state to romp with us children as if there were not a worry in the world. Equally could he bury himself in an exhaustive treatise on the History of the Mongols or in the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Until father sold his ranches in North Dakota he used to go out West each year for a month or so. Unfortunately, we were none of us old enough to be taken along, but we would wait eagerly for his letters, and the recipient of what we called a picture letter gloried in the envy of the rest until another mail placed a substitute upon the pedestal. In these picture letters father would sketch scenes and incidents about the ranch or on his short hunting trips. We read most of them to pieces, unluckily, but the other day I came across one of the non-picture letters that father wrote me:

August 30, ’96. Out on the prairie.

I must send my little son a letter too, for his father loves him very much. I have just ridden into camp on Muley, with a prongbuck strapped behind the saddle; I was out six hours before shooting it. Then we all sat down on the ground in the shade of the wagon and had dinner, and now I shall clean my gun, and then go and take a bath in a big pool nearby, where there is a large flat stone on the edge, so I don’t have to get my feet muddy. I sleep in the buffalo hide bag and I never take my clothes off when I go to bed!

By the time we were twelve or thirteen we were encouraged to plan hunting trips in the West. Father never had time to go with us, but we would be sent out to some friend of his, like Captain Seth Bullock, to spend two or three weeks in the Black Hills, or perhaps we would go after duck and prairie-chicken with Marvin Hewitt. Father would enter into all the plans and go down with us to the range to practise with rifle or shotgun, and when we came back we would go over every detail of the trip with him, revelling in his praise when he felt that we had acquitted ourselves well.

Father was ever careful to correct statements to the effect that he was a crack shot. He would explain how little being one had to do with success and achievement as a hunter. Perseverance, skill in tracking, quick vision, endurance, stamina, and a cool head, coupled with average ability as a marksman, produced far greater results than mere skill with a rifle--unaccompanied to any marked extent by the other attributes. It was the sum of all these qualities, each above the average, but none emphasized to an extraordinary degree, that accounted for father’s great success in the hunting-field. He would point out many an excellent shot at a target who was of no use against game. Sometimes this would be due to lack of nerve. Father himself was equally cool and unconcerned whether his quarry was a charging lion or a jack-rabbit; with, when it came to the question of scoring a hit, the resultant advantage in the size of the former as a target. In other instances a good man at the range was not so good in the field because he was accustomed to shooting under conventional and regulated conditions, and fell down when it came to shooting under disadvantageous circumstances--if he had been running and were winded, if he were hungry or wet, or tired, or feeling the sun, if he were uncertain of the wind or the range. Sometimes, of course, a crack shot possesses all the other qualities; such is the case with Stewart Edward White, whom Cuninghame classified as the best shot with whom he had hunted in all his twenty-five years in the wilds. Father shot on a par with Cuninghame, and a good deal better than I, though not as well as Tarleton.

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