GAME OF AMERI-CA. 



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sale and butcher-like fashion in which the former are slauglitered, 

 and the total absence of what I should deem sport in gallopping 

 alongside of a great unwieldly terrified mountain of flesh, pouring 

 broadsides into him, until he falls for loss of blood ; and looking 

 to the ferocious and noxious character of the latter. 



Nevertheless, in the West, i?(//a/o-hunting is regarded as 

 sport — therefore the Bison — for, be it observed, there is no such 

 animal known to this continent as the Buffalo — must take its 

 place among the game of North America ; and, in the south 

 and south-west, the bear is hunted sportsmanly and scientifically 

 with packs of highly-trained and highly-bred hounds. I cannot 

 therefore, deny him a place in the list of animals of game or 

 chase. 



The Antelope again, and, yet more, the Rocky Mountain 

 Sheep, are so rare, and so little pursued, except by the travellers 

 and trappers of those barren wilds, who kill them — when they 

 can — for their flesh, that they barely come within the sphere of 

 game. There is no mode of hunting or pursuing them practised, 

 except to crawl as near to them as you can, and shoot them if 

 you can ; still they are of species recognised as game elsewhere, 

 which doubtless would afford rare sport, if they were in situations 

 where they could be legitimately hunted ; and perhaps will yet af- 

 ford it, if they be not destroyed by the trappers and backwoods- 

 men, before increasing civilization and refinement brings up a 

 class capable of indulging in the expensive pursuit, and of cher- 

 ishing a fondness for sport, purely for sport's sake. 



The Moose, the Elk, the Cariboo, and the Common Deer, are 

 distinctly game in every sense of the word ; and are pursued as 

 such whenever they can be found. The black-tailed Deer is of 

 precisely the same order, and will doubtless afford as good sport, 

 when civilization shall have reached his haunts, which are on, 

 and to the westward of, the Rocky Mountains. 



The two varieties of Hare are likewise emphatically game ; 

 and it is with these two families only, and but with two or three 

 species of these, that nine-tenths of my readers will ever have 

 to do. 



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