6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
eyes count for much, but they alone will not make a man suc- 
cessful. 
The strong young hunter is often the worst. Likely enough 
he does the work for the work’s sake, laughs at mountain-sides, 
and, like a friend of our own, starts at dawn, travels all day, tells 
us at night of peaks at fabulous distances on which he has 
stood, but comes back empty-handed, simply because he is too 
strong, too fast, and runs over ground leaving behind him, or 
‘jumping’ out of range, game which a feebler man might have 
seen when crawling slowly over the hillside or sitting down for 
a frequent rest. One really good Western sportsman we know 
advocates a very different system. ‘Camp,’ he says, ‘near where 
game is, look out for likely places, and then go and sit about 
near them all day long. If the game comes to you, you'll pro- 
bably get it ; if it don’t you won’t, and you wouldn’t any way. 
Somehows,’ he generally adds, ‘them bull elicks allus did have 
longer legs than mine, d—n ’em.’ 
Perhaps a knowledge of natural history is almost better than 
either great physical powers or exceptional skill with the rifle. 
If you watch a first-rate tennis-player, it will seem to you that 
tennis is a very easy game. The second-rate player performs 
prodigies of activity to get into the right place in time, but the 
first-rate man never seems to be obliged to exert himself at all. 
He always is where he ought to be. So it is with the good man 
to hounds. His place at the fence is the easiest, and yet he 
never seems to swerve or pick his place. In every case it is 
the same. Knowledge of the game helps all the men in the 
same way, and each in his own fashion picks his place ; but he 
picks it long beforehand. The tennis-player knows where the 
return must come, the hunting man sees the weak place by 
which he means to go out at the very moment that he comes 
in to a field, and in like manner the big game hunter gets to 
where the big game is because he has calculated beforehand 
where it ought to be, and experience and knowledge of the 
beasts’ habits, and a certain instinct which some men have, do 
not mislead him. 
