1098 
pictures of the shambles, lest pleasures of the 
feast be spoiled and joy be marred by grewsome 
thought. We may praise the goodness of the 
juicy steak and tender fowl, but must stifle all 
reference to the painful tragedies of which they 
are the evidence. 
“All very well,” you say, my friend, '“but not 
to the point.” What, then, is the point? 
How do I justify the killing of a beautiful 
animal such as a deer, merely as a recreation—a 
sport? Is that it? Yes. 
Please bear in mind, my friend, that suscept¬ 
ibility to pain does not vary with symmetry of 
contour, color of eye or gracefulness of poise. 
The sting of the bullet that does not instantly 
kill is as poignant to the skunk as to the deer. 
The skunk is harmless if undisturbed and more 
useful than the deer, inasmuch as it is a de¬ 
stroyer of noxious vermin. The agency that 
created the one created the other; and if we ac¬ 
cept the religious view, for such use as man can 
make of them. If the skunk occasionally be¬ 
comes noxious as a depredator of the farmer’s 
fowl yard, the deer becomes more noxious as a 
depredator of his crops. If deer were domesti¬ 
cated, they would be done to death by the butch¬ 
er ; and you and I should feed upon their flesh 
with the same, smug complacency with which we 
now eat our slice of bacon, or roast of beef or 
mutton. 
Still evasive, am I? I shall try to be more 
specific. 
The deer of the woods is among the beasts of 
the field provided for man’s sustenance, by the 
Almighty. I know of no divine law, no rule of 
hygiene, that establishes a fleshless diet for the 
seeker after health or merely recreation among 
the few, natural retreats that the resistless prog¬ 
ress of civilization has left available for such use. 
I do not absolutely need the flesh of deer? 
Perhaps not. Neither do I absolutely need the 
flesh of the fowl I take from my yard, and the 
neck of which I wring without being called on 
to defend myself against a charge of cruelty. My 
sin, apparently, according to your views, lies in 
personally killing my own meat instead of allow¬ 
ing it to be killed for me. I may be a butcher 
in town and escape your abhorrence; but if, once 
a year I turn hunter in the woods and put a 
bullet through the heart of a deer, your ire and 
disgust are aroused. I am a worker of unneces¬ 
sary cruelty. 
I am a simple man, my friend, and have had no 
training in the subtleties of the logic whereby, 
perhaps, you still hold me guilty of the charge; 
but if I am a worker of unnecessary cruelty—a 
willful agent in needlessly causing the operation 
of the law of pain on a beast of the field pro¬ 
vided for man’s sustenance, what views do you 
hold with respect to the very Maker of such a 
law; and what motive do you attribute to His 
agency in its continuous operation on mankind? 
“You cannot fathom the mind of the Al¬ 
mighty,” you say. No more can I, though re¬ 
ligious dogmas are as plentiful as grass in the 
field. But what is the momentary suffering of 
the stricken deer, compared with the extended 
agonies of accident and disease one may see in 
any hospital or even in one’s own home? And 
recall, too, that only in recent times has the art 
of man found means to allay the horrors of the 
surgeon’s table. For countless ages the divinely 
created law has wrought on helpless humanity— 
FOREST AND STREAM 
on the upright as well as the unrighteous; on the 
innocent as well as the guilty—torture and un¬ 
allayed misery that only death could relieve. 
Existence for most animal life is comparative¬ 
ly short. What matters it to the soulless, mind¬ 
less beast, be it ugly or beautiful, whether its 
end is to-day or to-morrow? And when the end 
comes, how much more merciful the bullet of the 
hunter, than disease, the helplessness of old age, 
or even the knife of the butcher. Were a well 
directed bullet the cause of the ending of every 
human life, half, at least, of the physical suffer¬ 
ing of humanity would be precluded. 
Perhaps, my friend, there is the physiologist 
or the student who would blot out the law of 
pain. From the wonderful, awe-inspiring system 
that has governed the operations of nature from 
the beginning, he would extract that offending 
unit; and then, no doubt, appalled by the results 
of his supercilious boldness, would, if he could, 
restore it to its place. Perhaps, too, in his folly, 
he would modify the law of subsistence, so that 
to the love of existence it would not stand as 
a grim, menacing paradox. But from what 
source could he draw the wisdom to re-write it 
in harmony with the plan of creation? Can he 
improve the design of the human eye? Who 
dares even the task of re-writing the Book of 
Proverbs? 
I wish, my friend, you would go with me next 
autumn to that comfortable little camp on the 
Seville stream to which I have turned my steps 
for many years past. Together we shall tramp 
the woods from “Big Bog” to the summit of 
Matamiscontis, and from Big Silver ridge to Joe 
Mary’s waters; and if, when the trip is ended 
you still believe me a hypocrite, I am a poor 
judge of human nature. To season our city legs 
we shall tramp only lightly at first. The first 
day it will be sufficient to go round Robert’s 
ridge, by the tote road to the Davis camps; then 
across to the A. B. camps long since abandoned to 
the hedgehogs and the weather, and down the 
log road back to camp. Five miles the distance 
is—not the geography mile or the city mile; but 
the Maine woods mile; the generous mile; the 
mile that, after one has encompassed a “hell 
hole” of fifty acres in extent and worked back 
almost to the place of beginning, starts on where 
it left off, the distance round the “hell hole” not 
being considered. No matter how many alder 
swamps and hell holes are dodged, the Maine 
woods’ mile complacently ignores detours and 
deals only with bee lines 
The second day we may try the Lard Pond 
road. As we cross the Little Bog we may start 
a deer out of the bearded hackmatacks; and if 
you are quick with your camera you may catch 
a negative of it as it scurries over the spongy 
sud, tossing moss and pitcher plant from its 
agile heels. We shall go as far as the old Bart- 
less camps; and while we lunch you may play 
with the red squirrels there that are dodging in 
and out of the tangled roots. They will resent 
our invasion of their premises, growling and 
scolding as they defiantly hitch along the log we 
occupy, as though to drive us from our seats; 
but we may calm their rage and sweeten their 
tempers by carefully extending a twig and 
scratching their backs. 
On the way home we shall go round by the 
Davis camps again, and behind the deserted 
hovel may find the flock of spruce partridges 
that, for three years, I have found not far away. 
There were a dozen or more of them last year, 
and one can be spared if you would like a cock 
for mounting. I will kill him with a stick while 
you are at the spring drinking, and, therefore, 
cannot see what I am doing. His plumage, per¬ 
haps not so attractive as that of his cousin the 
birch partridge, is marked by a red bar either side 
of the head that sets him off well. 
Taking to the tote road straight over the ridge, 
we may stop to gather nuts in the grove of 
beeches; and as we sit quiet a while, may hear 
the rustling of a flock of ruffed grouse among 
the dried leaves, as they stalk into our line of 
vision seeking a meal of beech nuts. You may 
watch them till, undisturbed, they slip out of 
sight; for I am too poor a shot to pick off a bob¬ 
bing head with a rifle bullet, and it would shame 
me to strike the body and tear it into shreds. 
If fortune favors us we may see a fox stealth¬ 
ily sneaking from bush to bush in search of a 
meal of partridge breast; and if you are as lucky 
with a chance shot as I once was, can put a bul¬ 
let through his eager heart. You may then have 
his pelt made into a mat for your den. The next 
day, while one of the guides and I are thrashing 
the country round Endless Lake for moose, you 
may amuse yourself in fishing for pickerel in the 
cove a mile below camp. Were not the season 
too late, Roaring Brook would furnish you with 
such trout that you would take delight in telling 
your grandchildren of them in years to come; 
for by the time that generation arrives it is like¬ 
ly the trout will all be gone from the brook. 
Perhaps, too, by this time grown accustomed to 
the sight of dead game hanging on the pole—for 
I have but once seen it empty—and infected just 
a little, maybe, with the spirit of the hunt, you 
may slip the old camp shot gun into the canoe 
as you shove the frail craft into the water; and 
as you round the first bend, swallow your com¬ 
punctions and blaze away at the ducks you find 
there. You may not get them at the first shot; 
but you will have another chance, perhaps two, 
before you reach the cove where the pickerel lie; 
and if you bag a pair I shall not call you a hypo¬ 
crite. Maybe, then, you will venture to try at 
least one day with the guide in the woods; and 
with rifle in hand gain the experience that, if it 
does not entirely alter your views of an honest 
hunter’s character and motives, will at least per¬ 
mit you to give him the benefit of the doubt. 
If, the trip ended, “going out” with every film 
exposed, you slide into the canoe and sit with 
your feet on the carcass of a deer without look¬ 
ing to see if it be yours, I am but a false prophet- 
That was my own experience, and I, therefore, 
know whereof I speak. 
