BOB WHITE. 159 



not only by oflEering such rewards as they can afford to 

 pay, but by having side-hunts, in which the object shall 

 not be to disgrace themselves by striving to see who can 

 most worthily wear the title of game-butcher, but by 

 each endeavoring to be foremost in the destruction of 

 furred, feathered, and scaled pot-hunters. 



In the foregoing remarks, I have treated of the habits 

 of Bob Whites as I have found them, and as they have 

 been reported to me by intelligent, practical sportsmen, 

 but I have spoken only indirectly of the pursuit of them 

 as game birds, and the projjer means and methods for 

 doing so. The choice you will make here will depend 

 very largely upon the kind of man you are. I write this 

 for sportsmen, not for the game-butcher, whose idea of a 

 successful day's sport is the number of birds bagged, 

 whose gun is prized simply in proportion to its capacity 

 for exterminating game, and Avho esteems his dog merely 

 for the number of birds he can find, point, and retrieve, 

 regardless of the manner in which it is done. To this 

 miscalled sportsman I have nothing to say, but I address 

 the true sportsman, the one who enjoys a day's sport 

 not so much for the destruction of life as for the pleasure 

 he derives from each and every incident connected with 

 it. This is the kind of man one should select as a com- 

 panion for a day' s shooting on Bob Whites. Let him be 

 a man who observes closely, compares and analyzes the 

 habits and characteristics of game birds, and of every- 

 thing that pertains to sportsmanship; not a dull, dry 

 fellow, but one in whose nature there is something of the 

 poet; who is a mental, moral, and physical epicure; who 

 can enjoy the ranging of his dog, the clean execution of 

 his gun, the swift flight of the bird, its wondrous instincts 

 for self-preservation, his compahion's skill and success, 

 and everything connected with sportsmanship, with an 

 intense satisfaction, which he feels and appreciates at the 



