i6o 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
Supplementing this income was what 
in those days was regarded as liberal 
pay, some two dollars a day, as guide 
for city merchants who came on hunt- 
ing trips to Colchester, Connecticut. 
Although I was an ardent sportsman 
yet I did not think of myself by that 
name because, with all the power I 
possessed, I hated the term “sports- 
men.” Sportsmen were the ones who 
I thought were interfering with my 
liberty. They were passing laws re- 
stricting the use of snares and an- 
nouncing the times of year when game 
might be shot. I defied all such laws 
and received a special price for game 
obtained out of season. I did not sup- 
pose that to be wrong but on the con- 
trary to be praiseworthy because skill 
was needed to accomplish it. 
What business had those city sports- 
men to restrict my liberty or to pre- 
vent me from shooting everything on 
my father’s farm and those of my 
neighbors who were kindly interested 
in my successes? I grew up hating the 
very word sportsman. In all that car- 
nage and reckless shooting there is 
just one bright, redeeming spark. It 
made me a naturalist and illumined 
the path forward that led me to the 
study of biology. But from an entirely 
different point of view than that I held 
in my boyhood I am still hostile to 
sportsmen. I cherished the delusion 
that I had cast away my savage, brutal 
hunting instincts and had become a de- 
cent member of human society. I had, 
as I thought, put aside the gun to take 
the camera and the fiel d glass. Instead 
of the game bag I had a notebook. But 
unfortunately I transferred into this 
new mental situation a good deal of the 
old spirit of superiority. The farms 
were ours. What right had any one to 
interfere? I was “It” in that region. 
What right had the sportsmen to come 
there to shoot or fish ? Later I thought, 
perhaps in the spirit of repentance for 
the slaughter of which I had been 
guilty in my boyhood, to keep pets of 
all kinds and to attend them with as- 
siduous and loving care. Here again 
came another anomaly in which things 
went contrary to what I anticipated. I 
so thoroughly loved these pets that I 
looked with horror upon any one who 
would use them for experimental pur- 
poses, but later I learned that the vivi- 
sectionist is humanity’s and the lower 
animal’s best friend. He does not limit 
his experiments to benefits to the hu- 
man race. But that is another question 
about which I shall hope sometime to 
have something further to say. 
To go back to the question of the 
sportsman. There is one consolation in 
reviewing my own boyhood. I was not 
so very bad a chap after all. I was 
only following the custom of a good 
many boys and men who get hold of a 
gun. They seem to believe that a thing 
worth doing at all is worth doing to an 
extreme. There was just one reason 
why I did not exterminate all the game 
in my neighborhood and all the song 
birds. The task was too great for one 
boy, and luckily for the animals there 
were in that region not many other 
boys or hunters with my bloodthirsty 
instincts. As I have grown older I have 
discovered that the only ones who had 
any thought for the preservation of the 
animal life of Colchester, Connecticut, 
and its vicinity were those city sports- 
men that I so hated as also did most 
of the farmers. 
I cannot recall a single farmer who 
had any regard for conserving wild life 
and game. Perhaps that was an ex- 
ceptional community and perhaps it 
was not. At any rate, recent years 
have brought the truth home to me 
that it is the sportsmen and the game 
association and the game wardens and 
the fish and game commissions of the 
cities that are the real lovers of wild 
life and its real protectors. We who 
love nature from the aesthetic and edu- 
cational points of view should hail with 
delight and get busy in cooperation 
with those who are doing real practi- 
cal work of conservation. The whole 
is greater than the part and the whole 
of wild life is tremendously benefited 
by the sportsmen who shoot a few. 
They know better than I knew that 
there should be a limit to killing, that 
it is not wise to kill the goose that lays 
the golden egg. Some of those who do 
a deal of talking about the lovely four- 
footed animals and the dear birds and 
kindness and gentleness to all of God’s 
creation would do well to affiliate 
themselves with the organizations for 
the protection of game and fish. Such 
societies are holding the restraining 
hand on the destructive imps like me 
and all of that ilk, young or grown-up. 
