The Witchery of Archery; A Complete Manual of Archery. with Many Chapters of Adventures by Field and Flood, and an Appendix Containing Practical Directions for the Manufacture and Use of Archery Implements

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.comwhere you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. HARE, OR RABBIT SHOOTING. The hare has always been considered the most timid as well as the most tender of animals. My hare, was the very softest and sweetest phrase in the Roman language. In the days of the empire, mi lepus were the words of endearment breathed into the damsel's ear by the loving youth just ready to don the toga. The reason of this will be well understood by whomsoever has had the exquisite pleasure of devouring a broiled rabbit saddle, served with brown gravy, for breakfast. The rabbit, or, if we follow the naturalist, the hare, is found everywhere in the eastern part of the United States, from Florida to the great lakes of the north. With us, as a people, the name is rabbit, no matter what the zoologist may say, and no matter how many varieties may be found; but the hunter knows the gray rabbit from the brown hare as well as he knows a woodcock from a partridge; and the epicure is at once disgusted when he finds that his servant has purchased for his table a longlegged woods-hare (Lepus Americamis) instead of the delicately pencilled gray rabbit (L. sylvaticus) he ordered?the difference in flavor and the consistency of the flesh being quite marked. In the Southern States, where the forests are thickly grown with pine underbrush, rabbits are exceedingly numerous, their paths everywhere crossing and recrossing each other. Taking advantage of this habit of following well-defined trails, the negroes of the South trap and snare large numbers of them. I will wager you a good bow you miss your first hare, though you may find him crouched in his form not ten paces from you; in fact, while he is a good large mark, he is very difficult to hit before you have learned by experience just how to aim at him. In still hunting you will generall...