single cottontail will draw a half-dozen shots and perhaps a couple
of young bucks will pour loads into a bunny after he is dead out of
pure deviltry and high spirits. I once witnessed the accidental
killing of a young negro on this kind of a foray. His companions
loaded him into a wagon, stuck a cigar in his mouth, and tried to
pour whiskey down him every time they took a drink themselves as
they rode back to town. This army of black hunters and their dogs
cross field after field, combing the country with fine teeth that
leave neither wild animal nor bird life behind.

There comes a time toward the spring of the year after the quail
season is over when the average rural darky is "between hay and
grass." The merchants on whom he has depended for supplies make it a
practice to refuse credit between January first and crop time. The
black has spent his cotton money, his sweet potato pile has
vanished, the sorghum barrel is empty, he has eaten the last of his
winter's pork, and all that remains is a bit of meal and the meat
his gun can secure. He is hunting in grim earnest now, using all the
cunning and skill acquired by years of practice. He eats
woodpeckers, jaybirds, hawks and skunks, drawing the line only at
crows and buzzards. At this season of the year I have carried
chicken hawks up to the cabins for the sake of watching the delight
of the piccaninnies who with glowing eyes would declare, "Them's
mos' as good as chicken." What happens to the robins, doves, larks,
red birds, mocking birds and all songsters in this hungry season
needs hardly to be stated.

It is also a time between hay and grass for the rabbits and the
quail. The corn fields are bare and the weed seeds are exhausted. A
spring cold spell pinches, they lose their vitality, become thin and