ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 17 
_ Stag was hit after all (far back, perhaps), and you may get 
_ him, although the shot hardly deserved such a prize. In 
_ any case it is your duty as an honest sportsman to do 
_ your utmost to find 
_ out whether you have 
wounded a beast, and, 
_ if so, to do all in your 
* power to secure him 
and put an end to his 
pain, rather than leave 
him to take a better 
_ chance which may offer. 
The greater part of 
_ what has been written 
so far applies either 
_ to shooting big game~- 
_ generally or to stalk- : 
ing : a word or two Interlaced antlers 
_ may well be devoted to 
_ still hunting—a form of the chase much practised in America 
and other well-wooded countries. 
Still Hunting 
Almost every fresh form of sport brings a fresh set of 
muscles, a hitherto little used sense or mental quality, into play, 
so that an all-round sportsman should be that very exceptional 
animal, a man in the full possession of all his faculties. 
On the mountains a man depends upon his feet and upon 
his eyes ; in the woods he has to place at least as much reliance 
upon his ears as upon his eyes ; whilst his feet in still hunting 
are to the beginner the very curse and bane of his existence. 
Except in wet weather or to a redskin, still hunting is an 
impossibility in any true sense of the term.. When for weeks 
© im Colorado there has not fallen one drop of rain, when sun 
_ and wind have parched the whole face of Nature, every twig 
‘and every fallen leaf upon the forest floor become absolutely 
ae Cc 
