THE ETHICS OF FIELD SPORTS. 



By John Dean Caton and "W. B. Leffingwell. 



LOYE to leave the noise and rush of city life, where 

 man is ever striving with his fellow-man, and set my 

 face toward the green wildwood, where Nature reigns 

 supreme. Not alone I go, but with one whose tastes 

 are congenial with my own. Aye, not with one only, but 

 with two or three, I love to make a journey to some old, 

 familiar camp-ground, or to some new and attractive one, 

 in the deepest forest we can find, there to pitch our tent 

 beside a fountain gushing from the living rock as if some 

 Moses in former times had touched it with his wand. The 

 music of its waters, as they leap from rock to rock on their 

 way to the greater stream below, has often soothed to sleep 

 when a hard day's chase has necessitated repose. 



In the morning, at the break of day, we have climbed 

 the bluff above to catch the music of the birds, whose mel- 

 ody told of happiness and love. Seated on an old moss- 

 clad log, I love to watch the nimble squirrels as they leap 

 from bough to bough, or chase each other up and down the 

 old pine-trees, or gather acorns from the oaks hard by. 

 ^Yhile thus absorbed in contemplation of these cheery little 

 strangers, I liave been startled by the great antlered buck, 

 as, in bounding leaps, he rushed madly through the brakes, 

 startled by the report of my friend's rifle, or in- pursuit of 

 the timid doe. Oh, how delightful are such scenes! Their 

 very remembrance is a joy renewed. 



But it is not alone the charms of solitude that lure us 

 from the haunts of men to the wild life of the woods; 

 such scenes are but episodes in the hunter's life. He seeks 

 the wilderness or the mountain in j^ursuit of game. When 



(5C7) 



