20 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
acquire for himself in the woods, since any essay upon it 
would need more illustrations than words to make the mean- 
ing plain. 
Fishing is said to require patience. Believe me, still hunting 
requires more. Although you have toiled all day and seen 
nothing ; although you are hot, ‘played out,’ and therefore 
intensely irritable (perhaps you have even a touch of fever upon 
you) ; although every log on your way home ‘ barks’ your shins, 
and every tendril clings to your ankle—you must keep your 
temper ; and even when that thorny creeper hooks you by the 
fleshy part of your nose, you must not swear—at least, not 
aloud. Ifyou do, at the very moment that the words leave 
your lips, the only beast you have seen all day will get up with 
a contemptuous snort from ¢he other side of the bush in front 
of you. 
But when all is written that can be written upon ‘still hunt- 
ing,’ there is still much which can only be taught in the woods— 
or, if on paper, then it has been done already, as well as man 
could possibly do it, in the pages of the best book ever written by 
an American, Van Dyke’s ‘Still Hunter.’ I am glad to have 
a chance of acknowledging my indebtedness to this author. 
Whatever I know of still hunting I have learned from his book 
and from experience, and have never yet known my two 
teachers disagree. 
There is only one word which I would add here, but it is 
the most important that I shall write. There is one danger in 
still hunting in the woods more terrible than any other which 
the big game hunter can encounter: the danger, I mean, of 
accidentally shooting his fellow-man. 
Make a rule for yourself before you go into the woods, 
and keep it as the first of sylvan commandments: Neyer, 
under any pretence whatever, pull your trigger until you know 
not only zwa¢ you are shooting at, but also at what part of 
your beast you are shooting. 
Once in a while the observance of this rule may lose you a 
beast which you might have crippled, and eventually secured ifyou 
ee a a 
Te a ee en or 
Chin pag. ail ah iii se ls 
gE NN ee eT ee ee ae ee cata tea rat 
