Manual for backwoodsmen, urban cowboys

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 24

Manual for backwoodsmen, urban cowboys

I thought I was on a winner when I picked up an old book at a country dump. Just down the road I’d passed a couple of amiable scarecrows and I was thinking about scarecrows and the column I had to write for today and how the hell was I going to fill it and was I going to find enough to say about scarecrows. Aha, I said. Here’s a goer. The cover was missing and so was the title page but clearly here was a mine of handy hints. Pity it wasn't a rainy day. A further search, using a stick for reasons of hygiene, through a pile of junk turned up the front cover, to which someone had conveniently taped the index pages. Only half the spine was there, so I still don’t know who published it, or when, only that it’s a "Cyclopedia of Valuable Receipts” for the household, and the garden, and the farmyard, and I’d say from the spelling and content that it’s American. Late nineteenth century, at a guess. Masses of information, of course. I learned how to file a square hole, solder iron to lead, make vanishing ink, cure nosebleeds (“The only reliable remedy for bleeding at the nose is to move the jaws rapidly ... If a person who is suffering from severe haemorrhage of this character will chew gum viciously for a minute or two, the bleeding will entirely cease ...”), and make pig’s-head cheese. But scarecrows? Not a skerrick. Not an altogether useless book, though; I also learned how to make a bird trap with bricks (bit tricky, that; if you don’t set it up just right you end up with a flat bird, not a trapped bird), how to snare birds with birdlime and how to make the birdlime; and I don’t need to watch the weather map on tele now because I know

Country Diary

Derrick Rooney

how to predict the weather. Here’s an example: if the moon changes its quarters exactly at midnight, or near enough to midnight, the weather for the next seven days will be fine. If trees suddenly start falling down or shedding big branches, a mighty storm is about to brew. If marigold flowers don’t open by seven in the morning, rain will fall during the day. If chickweed flowers open halfway, there will be showers; if they stay shut, rain will fall. Rain is also going to fall: • When cattle sniff the air and gather in a corner of their paddock with their heads to leeward; • When goats seek shelter; • When dogs lie about the fireside and appear drowsy; • When cats turn, their backs to the fire and wash their faces; • When pigs cover themselves more than usually with litter; • When roosters crow at unusual

hours and flap their wings, and hens chant;

• When pigeons wash themselves; • When sparrows chirp loudly, and clamorously congregate on the ground or in the hedge;

• When tame swan fly against the wind.

The moonspell works both ways; when the phase changes at or very near noon, the weather will be rotten for a week.

As for that trap, here’s how you do it: Lay two bricks parallel, on their narrow sides, and lay another across in front of them. The side bricks should be just far enough apart to allow the fourth brick to fit between them, with its leading end propped upon a support consisting of a peg driven into the ground, a forked twig, and a short slender stick, to be used as a prop. The forked twig sits horizontally on the peg, and the prop is set up with one end on the twig and the other supporting the brick. The idea is that when the bird flies in to get the bait which has been scattered inside the trap, it perches briefly on the twig, collapsing the whole arrangement and trapping itself. “In preparing the trap proper caution should be used in setting the upper brick, so that it does not fall between the two side bricks unsupported by the front brick, as in such a case the bird would be crushed.” So now you. know.

And the birdlime? Simple. Gather a supply of middle bark from a holly tree in midsummer, and boil it in water for six to eight hours, until it is tender.

Then drain the bark, and put it in a pit, layered with fern and surrounded with stones. Ferment for two to three weeks, until it forms a sort of mucilage, which must be pounded in a mortar and rubbed between the hands, in running water, until all the rubbish is worked out. Then put it in an earthenware vessel, and leave it another four or five days to ferment and purify itself.

Still with me? Here’s another recipe: boil up elder shoots, holly or slippery elm until the green bark separates from the grey; then lay the green bark “upon the stone of some outhouse,” and cover it with rushes. In about two weeks it will turn into “a kind of slime,” which can be beaten in a mortar with a few grains of wheat, then stored in earthenware. When needed, it should be melted with a little goose-grease and smeared on a branch. First catch your goose. “When the bough is well limed it must be fixed on a low, dead hedge near a rickyard, hemp or flax field, or in some other resort for small birds, and the sportsman having concealed himself as near to the bough as he can, must imitate, with his mouth or with a bird-call, the notes which birds make when they attack or call one another; but if he should not be expert at this, there is another mode called a stale. A hawk of any species, or a bat, make very good stales, but an owl makes the best of any. If an owl be fastened in some conspicious place at a short distance from the limed bough, the birds will collect around it in great

numbers, and will settle on the bough and be taken.

“When one bird is thus enticed and stuck fast, it must not be disengaged, but suffered to remain and attract others by its fluttering, so that many may be taken at once. A stuffed owl will do nearly as well as a live one.” Essentially similar methods are still used, I believe, to trap small birds in parts of Europe. I have certain reservations, though, about the use of the word "sportsman.” Finally, a handy device: Cyclists, protector for, against dogs.

“The experience of a Brooklyn druggist, who put to flight two burglars in his store by throwing ammonia in their faces, and who so badly crippled one of the fleeing wretches that he was finally overtaken by the police, recalls the fact that some genius has invented an ammoniacal protector for bicyclists against vicious dogs. "... The apparatus is so arranged that by the pressure of an air bulb a stream of ammonia is directed into the face of the pursuing canine. A bicycle rider who has used the remedy says that in more than one instance he has been able to knock a dog completely over by one straight whiff of the stuff directed into its open mouth.” Nowadays, the police may well frown upon any cyclist (or pedestrian, for that matter) who carried such a device. Maybe American dogs are more aggressive than Kiwi dogs. I have been around much of the South Island

by bicycle, and only once have I been nipped. On that occasion, I found a quick back heeler on the nose of the offender to be highly efficacious.

American cyclists traditionally have trouble with dogs. Not too long after what I’m guessing to be the date of publication of the “Cyclopedia of Receipts,” several arms companies marketed things called bicycle guns — longbarrelled pistols, in .22 calibre, which broke open at the breech for loading. Most had a skeleton stock that could be fitted to convert the weapon into a rifle. I don’t think any were made after about 1915, but a few are still in existence and occasionally turn up in auctions among collector’s firearms.

It is illegal, in New Zealand, to .possess most bicycle guns without a special permit, because their short barrels bring them within the definition of a pistol. The bicycle gun was advertised as a handy and convenient firearm to carry on the person for potting small game, but the prime targets were obviously dogs and muggers. Stevens, the best-known maker, was and still is a leading name in mass production of sporting firearms and its products were of consistently high quality. One of its models, the Favourite, was reputedly the most popular little rimfire rifle ever made. It was notable for its “swinging breech” action, invented by the firm’s founder, Joshua Stevens, and was manufactured in several

models over a period of some 46 years, from 1889 to 1935. I still have one in excellent working order and occasionally pot a rabbit or an opossum with it; the action is very strong and reliable and is perfectly safe even with high-powered modern ammunition, although I always use subsonics for preference.

The firm of Stevens was renowned for its rimfire rifles and some of its early models are keenly sought by collectors. You can get a rough idea of the age (and thus value) of some of its models from the name on the barrel. Joshua Stevens founded the firm in 1864 and initially called it J. Stevens and Company. In 1888 the name was changed to “J. Stevens A. and T. Company” and in 1916 the name changed again, to “J. Stevens Arms Company.”

I recall that I bought my Favourite at a police auction 11 or 12 years ago for $3O and thought that a fairly steep price at the time. Now, a collector tells me, you would be lucky to get one for six or seven times that price. To a collector, a bicycle gun is worth more.

•Like most of the other American small rimfire rifles — singleshot models — the Favourite was known as a “boy’s rifle”: safe, reliable, reasonably accurate. In fact, because of its relatively heavy barrel, the Favourite was more accurate than most. It came fitted with either peep sights (fitted on the tang, behind the receiver) or conventional open sights. Those were pre-

scope days as far as rimfire rifles were concerned.

In the later years the Favourite could be ordered with a factory-fitted, full-length telescopic sight which extended from behind the receiver to the muzzle; cumbersome, and probably ineffective but able now to command a premium price from collectors. I’ve never actually seen one.

Like other rimfire rifles of the time, the Favourite was marketed in three calibres — .22, .25, and .32. The latter two dropped out of favour in the 1930 s and no ammunition has been made for them for many years. Some examples of these calibres survive but few are in working order; mostly the barrels were “shot out” by the highly corrosive primers used in the early rimfire ammunition. Because of this, good ones in the odd calibres command a premium price nowadays.

The Stevens Favourite was in some ways inferior to its two main competitors, the Remington No. 4 and the Winchester singleshot, the former with the famous “rolling-block” action invented by Leonard M. Geiger (no connection with counters as far as I know) and the latter with the notable Winchester droppingbreech action. But it outlasted both of them. Production of the No. 4 Remington, begun in 1890, ceased in 1933, and the singleshot Winchester dipped out in 1920; it had been made since 1885. Like the Favourite, both were made in .25 and .32 as well as .22. All three were marketed in target-rifle versions too but these are pretty hard to come by nowadays.