20 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



acquire for himself in the woods, since any essay upon it 

 would need more illustrations than words to make the mean- 

 ing plain. 



Fishing is said to require patience. Believe me, still hunting 

 requires more. Although you have toiled all day and seen 

 nothing ; although you are hot, 'played out,' and therefore 

 intensely irritable (perhaps you have even a touch of fever upon 

 you) ; although every log on your way home ' barks ' your shins, 

 and every tendril clings to your ankle you must keep your 

 temper ; and even when that thorny creeper hooks you by the 

 fleshy part of your nose, you must not swear at least, not 

 aloud. If you do, at the very moment that the words leave 

 your lips, the only beast you have seen all day will get up with 

 a contemptuous snort from the other side of the bush in front 

 of you. 



But when all is written that can be written upon ' still hunt- 

 ing,' there is still much which can only be taught in the woods 

 or, if on paper, then it has been done already, as well as man 

 could possibly do it, in the pages of the best book ever written by 

 an American, Van Dyke's ' Still Hunter.' I am glad to have 

 a chance of acknowledging my indebtedness to this author. 

 Whatever I know of still hunting I have learned from his book 

 and from experience, and have never yet known my two 

 teachers disagree. 



There is only one word which I would add here, but it is 

 the most important that I shall write. There is one danger in 

 still hunting in the woods more terrible than any other which 

 the big game hunter can encounter : the danger, I mean, of 

 accidentally shooting his fellow-man. 



Make a rule for yourself before you go into the woods, 

 and keep it as the first of sylvan commandments : Never, 

 under any pretence whatever, pull your trigger until you know 

 not only what you are shooting at, but also at what part of 

 your beast you are shooting. 



Once in a while the observance of this rule may lose you a 

 beast which you might have crippled, and eventually secured if you 



