Trail and Camp-Fire 



"^ I 



*' Solitary Hunter," has given us the best description of 

 hunting in the far West, when it was still an untrodden 

 wilderness. Unfortunately, the old hunters themselves, 

 the men who had most experience in the life of the wil- 

 derness, were utterly unable to write about it; they could 

 not tell what they had seen or done. Occasional at- 

 tempts have been made to get noted hunters to write 

 books, either personally or by proxy, but these attempts 

 have not been successful. 



The first effort to get men of means and cultivation in 

 the northern and eastern States of the Union to look at 

 field sports in the right light was made by an English- 

 man who wrote over the signature of Frank Forrester. 

 He did a great deal for the shotgun men; but, unfor- 

 tunately, he was a true cockney, who cared little for really 

 wild sports, and he was afflicted with that dreadful 

 pedantry which pays more heed to ceremonial and ter- 

 minology than to the thing itself. He was sincerely dis- 

 tressed because the male of the ordinary American deer 

 was called a buck instead of a stag; and it seemed to 

 him to be a matter of moment whether one spoke of a 

 " gang " or a " herd " of elk. 



There are plenty of excellent books nowadays, how- 

 ever — Dodge's *' Hunting Grounds of the Great West," 

 Caton's ** Deer and Antelope of America," Van Dyke's 

 " Still Hunter," and the Century's " Sport with Gun and 

 Rod," for instance. Warburton Pike, Caspar Whitney, 

 and Frederick Schwatka have given a pretty full account 

 of boreal sports; and Pendarves Vivian and BaillieGroh- 

 man have written exceedingly interesting accounts of 

 hunting trips in the Rockies. A new departure, that of 

 photographing wild animals in their homes, was taken in 



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