I don't hunt or fish much now. Maybe it's because it's easier to buy things at the grocery store, maybe it's because we don't eat much meat. Maybe it's because I'm old and tired and hunting and fishing doesn't make me feel as masculine as it did once. But I do remember how it was.

Cotton-tail skin tears off easy, beginning with a couple cuts around the neck. Then you cut off the head and the feet, and remove the guts. So I did that. I took the pink carcass into the kitchen, gave it to Mom. and went out to the backyard to shoot a few hoops on the goal my dad had made.

Pretty quick he came out on the back step, said he needed to show me a little trick to finish up the job. So I went in.

"Look here," Dad said. He pointed, "You gotta split the bone down between the back legs." He did. Inside were three round rabbit turds.

"Don't wanna eat those," he said. He didn't make fun of me, just wanted to make sure I learned how to do the job right.

Mom fried that rabbit up along with a couple of others and we ate them for supper -- probably along with potatoes and milk-gravy and some vegetables she'd put up in Mason jars. Some parts of a cottontail are kind of bony, but we chewed loose what we could. The back legs have the most meat. I think we had bread pudding for dessert.

I got to considering all that a couple of weeks ago after a walk with Blackie. Maybe you remember me writing about him. He's got a good nose.

At the half-mile corner on the gravel road south of town, he led me to something in the ditch: the bodies of four beautiful cock pheasants in a heap -- just the sides of their breasts ripped out. It would be illegal not to take the carcasses, not leaving a foot with a spur attached to identify the sex of the birds, but that's not really what made me press my lips into a scowl..

At the corner we turned east onto the dirt road. Nobody travels it much, so that's where I usually turn Blackie loose to burn off some energy so he'll be a little calmer the rest of the day. And maybe he'll squat somewhere so I won't have to scoop droppings out of the lawn.

Like usual, he bounded ahead, sniffing here, pawing there. And then suddenly he disappeared into a deep ditch where a culvert drains water from south to north toward the South Solomon When I caught up, Blackie was still down there, looking it all over.

You couldn't see it from the road, but somebody had killed a whitetail buck and sawed off the head. That's all he wanted. He dumped the decapitated carcass in the ditch to rot. It was the week before Thanksgiving, before rifle season. It could have been an archery kill, but I doubt it.

There were a couple of pheasants there, too -- like the first four, with just the breasts carved out. As a statement of character, brave deerslayer tossed out an empty Bud Lite.

A week or so later, Blackie and I spooked a big coyote tearing meat off the bones, so I guess the buck served some purpose. Except for a wing and one leg, the pheasants had disappeared.

I could tell you what my dad would say about the guy or guys who left the buck and the pheasants the way they did, but you can probably guess. I don't know if he'd be madder or sadder. Probably both.