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Cooking the Kill
BYE-OH BABY BUNTING, daddy's gone a-hunting, to get a little rabbit skin to wrap his-But more than likely his thoughts are on potting a flock of jugged hares. His lips work, his trigger finger twitches; he's as rabbit-minded as the mutt at his heels and if he had a tail he'd wag it too. He's got game on the brain-he's spent the whole summer, when he wasn't fishing, dreaming about it in the office and now that he's actually out stalking you can be sure no snowshoe or cotton tail is going to escape him, unless he's one of those bally amateurs correctly pictured with the bunny hiding between his knocking knees, a wild pigeon perched on one shoulder, a chipmunk on the other and a broadbill just come to rest on his gun barrel. So keep your powder dry, boys, and don't shoot till you see the white of their tails.
Out in tangy rice marshes they're paddling their own canoes, anchoring decoys, limbering up the old duck caller, oiling the gun, blowing on frosty fingers as they lie in wait behind blinds or sit it out in meadow shooting boxes. Duck season's on. The green goose hangs high. You feel again the soft yielding body of a freshly killed duck, your hunting pockets begin to sag. But before you've bagged the limit you're hungry enough to gnaw the decoys. When night at last blots out the gun sight and the best flocks take advantage of your helplessness to drop down among the decoys and stuff noisily on wild celery and rice, back to kyak and kitchen the shooters go and it's duck soup all around.
It doesn't matter a beanshooter whether they're after horned game or speckled grouse, larks or snarks, caribou or Harz canaries, yak or plain possum, all hunters act exactly the same when hunger honks. They drag the kill to the nearest shack where a roaring fireplace hushes the growl of any Nor'-wester and there they go caveman-stripped to the undershirt, out comes the skinning knife from its sheath. The roasting spit and iron kettle get hot, for bandit's meat, poacher's stew or gypsy game goulash. But don't call it goulash if there are any Hungarians aroundjust say: