WILD ANIMALS AND MEN 217 



them was more than fifty paces away. They were unusually 

 fine specimens and had the bulls been triplets they could not 

 have been more alike even to the detail of their antlers. The 

 cow paid little attention to us and went on feeding while the 

 bulls, with heads held much higher than usual, stood as though 

 in perfect pose for some sculptor. There wasn't a breath of 

 wind and the wondrous spell must have lasted from eight to ten 

 minutes; then a faint zephyr came and carried our tell-tale 

 scent to them and they wheeled round and trotted away. Yet 

 the head hunter from the city, who usually stands off at long 

 range and fires at the first sight of game, will argue that killing 

 is the greatest sport; when in truth it requires greater courage 

 and greater skill to approach, unarmed, so close to game that 

 one may touch it with a fish pole, and the reward is a much 

 greater and a more satisfactory thrill than the head hunter 

 ever gets from lying off at long range with a high-powered rifle 

 and utterly destroying life. Furthermore, think of how much 

 better one can study natural history by observing live animals 

 in action, rather than motionless ones in death ! An artist, in 

 his effort to render a perfect portrait of a human being, never 

 murders his sitter, as the so-called "sportsman-naturalist" 

 does. It seems to me that if sportsmen were more active, 

 more skilful, and more courageous, they would give up slaugh- 

 tering animals and birds for the sake of the unbounded pleasure 

 and adventure of observing wild game at closer quarters; but in 

 truth, long experience has taught me that the average hunter 

 from the city is something of a coward — never daring to 

 walk alone in the forest without his trusty, life-destroying 

 machines. 



But if those same hunters would only take a little more 

 interest in nature, pluck up a little more courage, and re- 

 member that the wild animals of the northern forest are less 

 vicious — when unmolested — than are many of the tame animals 

 of civilization, how much more sane they would be. Re- 



