o78 Grinnell, Audubon Park. [july 



fuel the men found, almost in the center of the trunk, a cluster of 

 small round black objects which proved to be leaden bullets — rifle 

 balls. We boys were tremendously excited by the find and imag- 

 ined an Indian tragedy where the captive was tied to the tree 

 and tortured by being shot at, as was a common practice of the 

 savage, according to the dime novels of the day. When Mr. 

 John Audubon came up and saw the bullets and the wood, he 

 recalled that many years before his father, some visitors and he 

 had shot rifle at a target tacked upon this tree trunk, and here 

 were the balls revealed by the ax. 



When I was twelve or thirteen years old, some of us were given 

 guns and made weekly excursions — no longer secret ones — after 

 the robins, yellow hammers, and wild pigeons that during the fall 

 migration congregated in the berry-bearing trees that were so 

 abundant in the woods. At a somewhat later date the boys in 

 autumn used to go up on the roof of our house and shoot at the 

 wild pigeons passing over. Sometimes we killed several in a day, 

 though there was much waste of ammunition. 



With Jack Audubon, son of John Woodhouse, and the oldest 

 grandson of the naturalist, I often in winter and spring went over 

 to the Harlem River to lie in wait for muskrats on an arm of the 

 river, which, if it existed today, would cover the old Polo Grounds 

 — 155-1 57th Streets and 8th Avenue — and run back about to the 

 present 145th Street, west of 8th Avenue. 



In those days wild ducks were often seen in spring and fall 

 along the lower Hudson. Usually they were out of the reach of 

 small boys, though I remember that Jack Audubon killed a Blue- 

 winged Teal on the Hudson in the early 60's. Nevertheless, 

 when we made excursions up to Dyckman's Flats we occasionally 

 killed in the marshes there and along the Harlem River, a wood 

 duck, teal or black duck, but such great game was most unusual. 

 Almost always at the proper season of the year there were many 

 small shore birds on the Dyckman marshes, which the little boys 

 hunted faithfully. English Snipe were often started there, but 

 I do not know that any of us ever killed one. Sometimes we went 

 as far as "Bronson's" — now Van Cortland Park — where quail were 

 started and an osprey had its nest in a tall tree that no one could 

 climb. 



