CHAPTER XIII. 



THE PRESERVATION OF GAME. 



THIS is a subject which of late has come very much to the fore. Taking 

 warning from the sad destruction or utter extermination of game in many 

 parts of the world, there is a strong movement on foot to strictly preserve 

 the game still left. Whilst it is impossible to underestimate the value of this 

 movement, I cannot help thinking that some of its supporters go so much to the 

 anti-sporting extreme that they are in danger of defeating their own ends. 



For a really permanent movement to save game from extermination, the true 

 sportsman should be the most useful man to enlist. This is obvious, for his interests 

 lie in the same direction, and therefore afford a more permanent inducement for the 

 preservation of game than any wave of popular indignation or sentiment. Moreover, 

 no preservation can be strictly maintained without a certain expenditure of money, 

 and this money comes from the sportsman's pocket in the shape of the amounts paid 

 for licences. It is not the tax-payers, but the sportsmen of England who preserve 

 our game, aided, of course, by suitable laws. 



I cannot help thinking that the freely expressed opinions of many arm-chair 

 faddists and stay-at-home sentimentalists are more calculated to alienate the true 

 sportsman from their schemes than to draw him into them. The game-bird shooter 

 at home who kills thousands of birds in a season is allowed to enjoy his sport 

 in peace, but the big-game hunter who accounts for a few hardly-earned trophies 

 is, as often as not, classed with the man who kills hundreds of easily-shot animals 

 (usually slaughtered for their meat or hides), and is condemned as a butcher or 

 murderer. 



Some of the big-game animals in certain countries are as easy to bag as sheep, 

 but a collection of good trophies always means patience and skill in hunting, qualities 

 which are not much called into requisition when merely shooting at birds. Perhaps 

 the bird-shooter will be posted by the head gamekeeper, and, without further exertion, 

 knowledge of woodcraft, or trouble, may account for a few hundred lives, and be able to 

 pass through the fire of criticism with an unblemished character. The only requisite 

 is that he must be a good shot with a gun. He knows neither hunger, thirst, fatigue, 

 nor privations, or, at least, not in their reality. 



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