228 The game of rritiSh EASt africA. 



accounted for a whole family of lions, several hyenas, a few jackals and vultures, 

 besides a favourite dog. 



Some people think that their prowess will be judged by the number of heads 

 obtained in a shoot, or by the gross weight of horns amassed, and that the quality 

 of the heads and the species are quite minor points. To obtain numbers^ often 

 large quantities of females and immature animals are killed, and then they say, 

 " Oh, we got three hundred and six head on our trip ! " as if it had been a pheasant 

 drive I Sportsmen on short trips think that they ought to shoot up to the limit 

 allowed on the licence for each animal, or else that they are not having their 

 money's worth. 



A number of the points I have mentioned are so obviously unsporting that it 

 may hardly seem worth while pointing them out. Yet such unsporting acts are not 

 only frequently indulged in, but many sportsmen naively describe them in their 

 writings as if they were quite the right things to have done. There is one constantly 

 recurring phrase with which sportsmen often excuse themselves for making some big 

 battue, viz., " The meat was not wasted." The number of times this phrase is used 

 would lead anyone to suppose that sportsmen, as a rule, go out to kill animals for the 

 benefit of the hyaena and vulture. 



The question involved is, what is to be considered as waste ? If being left to rot 

 on the ground or being eaten by beasts of prey alone constitutes waste, whilst being 

 removed by human agency is not waste, then meat will practically never be wasted, 

 because almost always people may be found to eat it, whatever the quantity. I claim, 

 however, that if numbers of animals are shot in a day for their trophies or for sport, 

 and the meat goes to porters already overgorged, or is given gratis to villages of 

 grain-feeding Africans, that meat is as much wasted as if it had been left for the 

 hyasnas. Therefore the phrase by which sportsmen wish to whitewash themselves 

 after their battue is really valueless. 



As the true sportsman is one of the greatest supporters of game preservation, 

 so the bad sportsman is one of its greatest menaces. The latter offends chiefly 

 through ignorance and inexperience. If there was a proper code of big-game sporting 

 rules as definite as those of the partridge fields at home, it would go a long way 

 towards checking unsporting practices. Big-game shooting is a more or less solitary 

 pursuit, and so a sportsman guilty of unsporting practices seldom gets dropped on by 

 his brother sportsmen. A proper code of rules, however, would at least prevent men 

 bragging about gross breaches of sporting etiquette, as they now so often do. 



If we were to have the big game of Africa preserved for the sportsman 

 and the naturalist, and if we were to have both these parties concerned in its 



