4 _ BIG GAME SHOOTING 
sport would have no flavour and its prizes no value. The mere 
fact that a man can kill as many of any particular kind of animal 
as he pleases should be sufficient to make him let that beast 
alone, unless he wants it for food, as soon as he has secured 
(say) a couple of fine specimen heads. Finally, to look at this 
question from the lowest and most selfish standpoint, the 
wholesale slaughter-of wild game in foreign countries should 
be discouraged unanimously by all who love the rifle, since 
men who kill or boast of having killed exceptionally large bags 
of big game in any country are extremely likely to arouse the 
natural and proper indignation of local legislators, who have it 
in their power to close their happy hunting grounds to, all 
aliens for the fault of a few individuals, not by any means 
typical of, or in sympathy with, their class. 
On the other hand, it would be well if some of those of our 
own race, who should know better, would be less ready to call 
other men butchers merely because they have killed large 
quantities of game. Everything depends upon the circum- 
stances connected with the slaying. If a man needs and can 
. utilise a hundred antelope, surely he has as good a right to 
kill them as if he were killing a hundred sheep for market. 
There are occasions when not only does the hunter’s skill win 
the regard of savages who value nothing in friend or foe 
more than real manhood, but it is absolutely necessary to kill 
game in order to keep a native following in food. Without .— 
the hunter’s skill, food would have to be bought or looted 
from hostile natives, a feud engendered which might end in 
the shedding of other blood than that of the beasts, and a 
serious obstacle be thus raised in the path of the pioneers of 
civilisation and trade. ; 
Our big game sportsmen have made more friends than 
foes, have always contrived to feed their men, and the very 
greatest of them have never shed a drop of native blood. - 
Where gallant Oswell or Selous have been, there are no blood 
feuds against the English to hamper an expedition of their 
countrymen. 
