578 BIG GAME OP NORTH AMERICA. 



If you were my guest, my desire would be to make your 

 visit a pleasant one; it would make no difference whether 

 at home or afield. Were I to seat you at my table, then 

 help myself before offering you the choicest before us, you 

 would rightly consider me a boor. Yet some men, who pro- 

 fess to be sportsmen, and who would show no such ill- 

 breeding at their table, will, in their shooting, rob their 

 guest of his shots regardless of the birds' flight. Then, at 

 the close of the day' s sport, after having acted the part of 

 the swine in picking out the choicest ground for themselves, 

 and shooting birds that did not belong to them under the 

 rules of the field, and that they knew would have been 

 bagged by their guest, they will boast to some country 

 bumpkin of how they killed "twiced as many as the other 

 feller, who is considered a mighty good shot." 



I know of no one so despicable to hunt with as such a 

 man; and yet, linked to him in the closest alliance is the 

 one who fires at every bird, and constantly claims that he 

 kills each one that falls. There is nothing more disgusting 

 than this; and when a gentleman is unwittingly found in 

 the company of such a man, the day is spoiled for him. 

 He wonders what he has done that a punishment so hard to 

 endure should have been inflicted on him. 



The fields may be broad, the space unbounded wherein 

 to hunt, and yet there is neither breadth nor depth enough 

 to any field to justify a gentleman sportsman in shooting in 

 company with such a man. 



When a man claims the killing of a bird at which both 

 he and his companion have fired, the claimant not only 

 shows his selfishness, his lack of gentlemanly qualities, but 

 shows his lack of confidence in his own skill. The crack- 

 shot doesn't need to claim his bird, for when the trigger is 

 pulled, it seems to him that he intuitively sees the charge 

 of shot reach its intended mark, notes its effect, and knows 

 whether or not he has bagged the bird; therefore, the true 

 sportsman will not claim the bird under such circumstances, 

 and will say nothing; or, if with a younger and more inex- 

 perienced companion, will insist that his comrade made the 



