Hunt Dinner

In Spraggs, Pa., last week, a doughty company of huntsmen sat down to a dinner of chicken pie. It was the banquet tendered by the losers to the winners of one of Greene County's immemorial varmint-hunts. Useful, unique, the latest Greene County hunt was last week described by one who knows Greene County (John H. Day of the Washington, Pa., Observer) as follows:

A hunt will be suggested and immediately the whole village is afire with enthusiasm. Two teams are chosen, captains are elected and the competition starts. Rats, mice, English sparrows, starlings, weasels, destructive hawks, owls, are fair game to the hunters. The total kill is tabulated in the final score sheets. The hunt is restricted to no given territory. All preserves are open to the competing teams and poaching is merely a part of the game.

The hunt usually lasts for a fortnight, may continue, for a month. At the end of the stated period the two teams foregather, producing evidence of their success. Judges are selected and the records told off. Each hunter brings in the tails of rats and mice he has slaughtered; the entire carcass of other varmints is required as evidence under the unwritten laws of this sport. Teams may combine efforts in ridding a certain property of rats. Guns, clubs and traps are variously used in their destruction. The rats will be brought from cover in an organized drive and as many as can be killed are mowed down by competing huntsmen. Village dumps and old grist mills are favorite rat rendezvous.

In killing sparrows, the hunters select a large roomy barn where they know these pestiferous birds spend the night. They climb up among the rafters, choosing a perch where they can have full use of their arms. Then lights are flashed and as the rudely-awakened, bewildered birds flutter blindly about they are struck down with brooms and clubs.

The latest rat hunt in this county held at Spraggs closed but a few days ago; one team was captained by Morris Strawn and the other by D. L. Hoy. The Strawn team dispatched 1,573 rats, 930 mice. 427 sparrows, 26 starlings, 30 weasels and 4 hawks. Hoy and his henchmen made away with 980 rats, 952 mice, 405 sparrows, 21 weasels, 6 starlings and 4 hawks.

When final scores are told off at the end of the hunting period the corpses of birds and the tails of rats and mice are heaped into a pyre, gasoline is thrown over the whole and the hunters dance a war dance about their kill as flames cremate the varmint carcasses. One enthusiastic rat hunter tells of a perfect day during which his party made away with 160 rats.

Oldtime campaigners when approached with the question as to whom they would nominate as champion hunter of Greene County usually designate Donald Henderson of Nineveh and Elza Shiver of Spraggs. There are no necessary qualifications for captaincy of competing teams except that the candidate must be one of the "gang" and a leader in affairs of the countryside.

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