No friend of mine.
It ill becomes Americans, with our own record behind us, to chide
other people for the senseless murder of wild things; and besides,
speaking personally, I have a reasonably open mind on the subject
of wild-game shooting. Myself, I shot a wild duck once. He was
not flying at the time. He was, as the stockword goes, setting.
I had no self-reproaches afterward however. As between that duck
and myself I regarded it as an even break - as fair for one as for
the other - because at the moment I myself was, as we say, setting
too. But if, in the interests of true sportsmanship, they must
have those annual massacres I certainly should admire to see what
execution a picked half dozen of American quail hunters, used to
snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of Georgia and
Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until such
time as their consciences mastered them and they desisted from
slaughter!
Be that as it may, pheasant shooting is the last word in the English
sporting calendar. It is a sport strictly for the gentry. Except
in the capacity of innocent bystanders the lower orders do not
share in it. It is much too good for them; besides, they could
not maintain the correct wardrobe for it. The classes derive one
substantial benefit from the institution however. The sporting
instinct of the landed Englishman has led to the enactment of laws
under which an ordinary person goes smack to jail if he is caught
sequestrating a clandestine pheasant bird; but it does not militate
against the landowner's peddling off his game after he has destroyed
it. British thrift comes in here. And so in carload lots it is
sold to the marketmen. The result is that in the fall of the year
pheasants are cheaper than chickens; and any person who can afford
poultry on his dinner table can afford pheasants.
The Continental hunter makes an even more spectacular appearance
than his British brother. No self-respecting German or French
sportsman would think of faring forth after the incarnate brown
hare or the ferocious wood pigeon unless he had on a green hat
with a feather in it; and a green suit to match the hat; and swung
about his neck with a cord a natty fur muff to keep his hands in
between shots; and a swivel chair to sit in while waiting for the
wild boar to come along and be bowled over.
Being hunted with a swivel chair is what makes the German wild
boar wild. On occasion, also, the hunter wears, suspended from
his belt, a cute little hanger like a sawed-off saber, with which
to cut the throats of his spoil. Then, when it has spoiled some
more, they will serve it at a French restaurant.
