BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 347 



Still, if the Americans would enforce their own laws as 

 rigidly against the native meat-hunter who makes a profit out 

 of shooting as against the alien who pays for his sport, I think 

 no one could justly complain. 



Of course the buffalo has disappeared, and the antelope 

 is not as plentiful as he was, while some of the old shooting 

 grounds dear to the memories of the fortunate hunters of 

 twenty years ago have been very much shot out. This is true ; 

 but it is also true that if the successors of the Williamsons, 

 Buxtons, Jamiesoris, and others of an earlier day would display 

 as much enterprise as those gentlemen did before them, they 

 would probably find fairly good sport still. 



The man who follows another to an old shooting ground, 

 getting there by a well-cut trail, or even by railway, to find 

 camps made and the country thoroughly surveyed, naturally 

 does not get as good sport as the ' first man in,' and does not 

 deserve it. 



An old friend, whose reputation as an Indian sportsman 

 stands as high as any man's, told me that, though the old 

 grounds were certainly a good deal shot out in India, he knew 

 that close to them were other grounds unvisited which were 

 almost as good (if not quite as good) as the old ones, and this 

 he proved by sending a subaltern nephew off an old route for 

 a very short distance into a country usually passed by, with 

 the result that he got almost as good sport in the nineties as his 

 uncle had had in the sixties. 



So it is in America to-day. One man follows another, as 

 sheep follow their leader, and if you trust to guides they will, 

 of course, take you to the places they know from experience, 

 an experience which has been obtained at considerable cost to 

 the game of the district. 



As I write I am reminded of an excellent example of that of 

 which I am writing. There is in British Columbia a certain Irish 

 baronet, a most excellent sportsman, who has probably had 

 better sport with cariboo and grizzly than anyone else in the 

 country. His two favourite grounds are now overrun by his 



