Young Hunters 



spring when the corn was planted, for they 

 learned to trace the rows and dig up and eat the 

 three or four seeds in each hill about as fast as 

 the poor farmers could cover them. And unless 

 great pains were taken to diminish the numbers 

 of the cunning little robbers, the fields had to 

 be planted two or three times over, and even 

 then large gaps in the rows would be found. 

 The loss of the grain they consumed after it 

 was ripe, together with the winter stores laid 

 up in their burrows, amounted to little as com- 

 pared with the loss of the seed on which the 

 whole crop depended. 



One evening about sundown, when my father 

 sent me out with the shotgun to hunt them in a 

 stubble field, I learned something curious and 

 interesting in connection with these mischiev- 

 ous gophers, though just then they were doing 

 no harm. As I strolled through the stubble 

 watching for a chance for a shot, a shrike flew 

 past me and alighted on an open spot at the 

 mouth of a burrow about thirty yards ahead of 

 me. Curious to see what he was up to, I stood 



