82 The Life Worth Living 



And yet the vegetarians put on holy airs, 

 and say mean things about hunters and 

 meat-eaters. I've often wondered what the 

 cabbages, beets, turnips, peas and beans 

 whisper to one another about these people 

 in the still moonlit nights of the spring, 

 when they are struggling to reproduce their 

 kind. 



I reloaded 'my gun and lay for another 

 curlew. In about half an hour they began 

 to come. I found I had missed the spot they 

 had selected for their meeting by about three 

 hundred yards. They were going just be- 

 yond my blind, three hundred yards farther 

 up the marsh across a creek. But they were 

 leading so close to my decoys that by vigor- 

 ous whistling I enticed in a dozen large flocks 

 and scores of small groups. When the sun 

 sank I had bagged seventeen. I went home 

 with a song of victory. I felt I could look 

 my wife and children in the face once more. 

 Only once in ten years did I break this rec- 



