512 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



In the early days of the settlements game was killed 

 for food, and not for sport. The arm carrying the 

 single ball comes first into a new country, and the shot- 

 gun follows at some distance of time. The musket or 

 rifle is a necessity; the shotgun a luxury. The rifle 

 protects life and property, supplies food for the family, 

 destroys the wild beasts that would prey upon the 

 settler's stock. The shotgun is used in hours of leisure 

 and recreation. Food captured by its aid is a delicacy. 

 It is the implement of sport. In the settlement of 

 America this has been everywhere the case. 



The hardy pioneer disdained to kill his game with 

 more than a single ball, which it was his pride to plant 

 wherever he chose, and in his expert hands the old 

 crooked-stock pea-rifle was his dependence for support, 

 as it was the terror of the savage tribes into whose ter- 

 ritory he pushed his fearless way. Many, many years 

 later, when the land had been cleared and waving fields 

 of corn and wheat had taken the place of the wild 

 grasses that once grew rank and thick along the valleys 

 and over the prairie, when the large game had almost 

 entirely disappeared, the children or the grandchildren 

 of the rifleman began to use the shotgun. Geese and 

 ducks, the noisy grouse, the brown quail, the whistling 

 woodcock and the twisting snipe became the objects of 

 pursuit to those whose fathers had killed the elk, the 

 moose and the buffalo. The fathers hunted for meat. 

 With them it was a fight for life. Each ball and each 

 charge of powder was to be accounted for and must do 

 its work. The sons and grandsons inherited the hunt- 



