194 RECREATION. 
A CONVERTED GAME HOG OBJECTS. 
I want to express my approval of your 
efforts to suppress the game hog, and at 
the same time to enter my protest against 
another sort of game hog. I do not 
remember being a game hog but once and 
my conscience has always troubled me for 
that. I think it was 30 years ago next 
month that I left camp one afternoon with 
an old Spencer carbine. Conditions favor- 
ing, I got ahead and kept ahead of a herd 
of buffalo and in less than 2 hours I had 
killed more old bulls than I ought to have 
done. I dare not confess how many. I 
could have killed move but I saw my fault 
in time. In subsequent years I have often’ 
supped on a cup of “pinole’ and water 
when a buffalo or antelope steak would 
-have been easy to get and very much rel- 
ished, but I preferred the “pinole” rather 
than killing an antelope or buffalo, for a 
meal or 2 for one person, so I have par- 
partially atoned for my one fault. 
What is sport to one man is not so to 
another. Personally, I never could see 
a particle of sport in shooting birds over 
a dog or from a trap. But I have always 
been willing to help protect the interests 
of those men who did enjoy that sort of 
shooting. To pit my intelligence and my 
knowledge of the prairie against that of 
an old wolf'‘and follow it for a day or 
more as I have done is what I call sport. 
I remember an army officer who rather 
prided himself on the skill and daring nec- 
essary to hamstring a buffalo with a bowie 
knife. To me it always seemed about as 
brave a feat as cutting the head from an 
old rooster. I love to protect quail be- 
cause I love to see and hear them in the 
country. But there are some so-called 
sportsmen who want all the game laws 
so drawn as to provide for their particular 
form of sport. These are the selfish game 
hogs of the class I refer to. --For. in- 
stance, it is sport of the right kind for a 
farmer’s boy to take a bit of cabbage or 
sweet apple, and a string and arrange a 
snare for a rabbit. The boy uses skill, 
judgment and a knowledge of the animal’s 
habits. The. sportsmen have _ secured 
a law in this state that prohibits the boy 
from exercising his knowledge of nature 
and having his early winter sport. The 
sportsmen who advocate stich a law, to 
my thinking, are selfish game hogs. In 
one way it hits me personally. The only 
game I see around me is the fox. To go 
out with a pack of good hounds and a 
good horse is grand sport—better than 
bird shooting. And yet so-called sports- 
men secure the passage of laws prohibiting 
my sport. 
In February RECREATION, page 122, is 
a communication from a man in Smyr- 
na, N. Y. I hope he is a sportsman, but 

when he tells about blowing out or kill- 
ing in their holes our most royal game I 
feel that he needs talking to. Contrast his 
letter with that of Mr. J. H. Montagu, Jr., 
Richmond, Va., on page 125 of the same 
number. He knows what true sport is. 
This is a point I have never seen dis- 
cussed by sportsmen. True sportsmen 
are never selfish, The game hogs are. 
True sportsmen recognize others’ rights 
and do not try to oppress others. 
Wm. M. Baird, Warrington, N. J. 

‘EXPENSIVE RABBITS. 
Wakefield, Mass. 
Editor RECREATION: 
For 4 seasons I have been to New 
Hampshire rabbit hunting. In Novem- 
ber last I went to my usual hunting 
grounds, where 3 of us own a comfortable 
camp, taking a pair of well-bred beagle 
hounds with me. Being alone and for 
a change I boarded at a nearby farm in- 
stead of occupying the camp. Every day 
for a week “Gladsome,” “Hunter,” and I 
went into the woods close by for the big 
white hares and most every dayI brought 
some game to the bag, either hares or 
partridges. The hares had not gone into 
the swamps, so our hunting was done 
on the side hills. 
Three inches of snow came while I was 
there but it turned to rain, formed a crust 
and froze on the trees making beautiful 
scenery, but making it impossible for the 
dogs to do good work though they did 
as well as hounds could do. 
One Saturday a boy from the farm was 
allowed to go out with me. He was 
great on hedgehogs and found signs of 2 
which we traced to where they were 
working in maple trees. To please the 
boy and to help the farmers I shot them. 
On this trip I shot but 6 hares, 3 par- 
tridges and 2 hedgehogs, but the freedom 
of the woods, the pure air, the music of 
the hounds, with what game I got fully 
repaid me for car fare and time away 
from business, yet some of my friends 
said “they were costly rabbits.” Under 
more favorable: conditions I should have 
got more game, but such an outing is 
the best medicine I know of. 
Why do not some of your readers tell 
us about their rabbit hunts? A large 
number of RECREATION readers would be 
delighted to read accounts of such hunts. 
Hunting big game is all right, and I have 
done some of it outside of New England, 
but I enjoy hunting with dogs. 
RECREATION is “all right.’ It is not 
the sporting man’s magazine, it is the 
sportsman’s delight and that is better, for 
we all know the difference in those two 
kinds of humanity. 
Arthur S, Aborn, Wakefield, Mass. 

