512 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
In the early days of the settlements game was killed 
for food, and not for sport. The arm carrying the 
single ball comes first into a new country, and the shot- 
gun follows at some distance of time. The musket or 
rifle is a necessity; the shotgun a luxury. The rifle 
protects life and property, supplies food for the family, 
destroys the wild beasts that would prey upon the 
settler’s stock. The shotgun is used in hours of leisure 
and recreation. Food captured by its aid is a delicacy. 
It is the implement of sport. In the settlement of 
America this has been everywhere the case. 
The hardy pioneer disdained to kill his game with 
more than a single ball, which it was his pride to plant 
wherever he chose, and in his expert hands the old 
crooked-stock pea-rifle was his dependence for support, 
as it was the terror of the savage tribes into whose ter- 
ritory he pushed his fearless way. Many, many years 
later, when the land had been cleared and waving fields 
of corn and wheat had taken the place of the wild 
grasses that once grew rank and thick along the valleys 
and over the prairie, when the large game had almost 
entirely disappeared, the children or the grandchildren 
of the rifleman began to use the shotgun. Geese and 
ducks, the noisy grouse, the brown quail, the whistling 
woodcock and the twisting snipe became the objects of 
pursuit to those whose fathers had killed the elk, the 
moose and the buffalo. The fathers hunted for meat. 
With them it was a fight for life. Each ball and each 
charge of powder was to be accounted for and must do 
its work. The sons and grandsons inherited the hunt- 
