370 SPORT IN EUROPE 



than I do that the gun can be used properly and mercifully in the 

 hands of a good and true sportsman. 



As an instaPice of this, I happened last winter to stand beside 

 three gunners when a copse was being driven down to them for 

 pheasant shooting. I was a spectator. Certainly I had a gun — two, 

 by-the-by — but the wind kept all the birds from me, and I had 

 naught to do but watch. Every bird that flew over those guns and 

 was shot at fell stone dead, barring one hen that fell some hundred 

 or hundred and fifty yards down. Our host always counted the 

 slain at each stand, and over seventy pheasants were gathered there. 

 Certainly two of those gunners are about as good as could be found 

 in all the wide, wide world, and the third but little behind them. 



But what I wish to point out is this, that those pheasants never 

 suffered ; they never knew they had left the earth or air, barring 

 the one hen ; one out of seventy suffered. Truly, human beings 

 suffer in a greater ratio ! 



Deer- stalking, to my mind, stands out far ahead of all other 



British gun sports. The wild scenery, the short, crisp grass you 



tread, the air you breathe, the solitude of the moun- 

 Deer- 

 stalki Q- tarns, the searching of a glen with the telescope for the 



big stag that may or may not be there, fill the sports- 

 man with an exhilaration that nothing else can similarly impart. And 

 perhaps one of the great secrets of the fascination of stalking is 

 contained in the part that is played by the telescope. The telescope 

 is not an instrument that men can handle and use to any purpose 

 in a day. I have known men who have killed plenty of stags, and 

 who prided themselves on their knowledge of stalking, who never 



