ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 5 



So much for the ethics of Big Game Shooting ; as to the 

 practical side of it, let it be said at once that it is impossible 

 upon paper to teach any man to become a successful big 

 game hunter. Upon the hillside or in the forest, with an 

 expert to guide him, with the floating mists to teach him some- 

 thing of the way of the winds, with game tracks or the game 

 itself before him, each man has to learn for himself, and even 

 then he learns more from his own mistakes than from anyone 

 else. To be really successful a man wants so many things ; 

 he needs so many qualities combined in his own person. To 

 be a good shot means but little. The man who can win prizes 

 at Wimbledon may be a successful deer-stalker, but it by no 

 means follows that he will be. He has one good quality in his 

 favour, but even that quality varies with the varying conditions 

 under which he shoots. With his pulses steady, his heart 

 beating regularly, his wind sound, his digestion unimpaired, his 

 eyes free from moisture, with the distances measured off for 

 him, and with a bull's-eye to shoot at, he may make phenomenal 

 scores ; but when he has been living upon heavy dampers and 

 strong tea taken at irregular intervals, his digestion may become 

 impaired. When he has toiled all day and come fast up a steep 

 incline at the end of a long stalk, his pulse will not be steady, 

 his sides may be heaving like those of a blown horse, his eye 

 may be dimmed by a bead of sweat which will cling to his eye- 

 lash and fall salt and painful into his eye just when it should 

 be at its clearest. The distances are not marked for him, and the 

 atmosphere varies so much at different altitudes, that it is not 

 always easy to judge how far he is from his quarry, and that 

 quarry, instead of being marked in black and white for his con- 

 venience, has an awkward trick of being just the colour of the 

 hillside, with an outline which at 200 yards melts into the 

 background and becomes one with its surroundings. 



Many a man who shoots well at a mark is a poor shot in 

 the woods ; but luckily the converse of this proposition is also 

 true. Again, strength and endurance, steady nerve and quick 



