Chapter V: Preface: 1 (4)

“Reformed poachers, if really reformed, make the best keepers,
but it is only when worn out as poachers that they think of
turning round and becoming keepers.”

It is worthy of remark that every writer on sport of any ability (as far as we are aware) feels himself constrained to say a good word of the poacher. We have just now at our elbow a well-known and standard work, entitled “The Moor and the Loch,” by John Colquhoun. Writing of poachers in bulk (so to speak) the author denounces them in unmeasured terms, but when he comes to speak of individual poachers whom he had known, his tone is altogether different. We quote from vol. ii., p. 146:

“When I first knew Gregor More, of Callander, his poaching days
were over, for he had a mortal disease from having lain out in
the fields one cold night. He still managed to saunter down the
river and give those beautiful sweeps with his line and salmon
fly which were the admiration of the whole clachan.… I looked
at him with some curiosity; a nobler specimen of manhood I
never beheld. Upwards of six feet high, of the finest herculean
proportions, and straight as an arrow, he seemed equally formed
for activity and strength. There was nothing mean or sneaking
about his manner. His face was open and manly, and, despite the
sad discipline to which he had exposed both mind and body, he
had not effaced the natural and sure marks of force and truth
from his countenance. Although wan and emaciated, there was a
coolness, a will to dare in his eye, backed by his tremendous
shoulders and still powerful frame, so that I could not look at
him without thinking of the words, ‘Majestic though in ruins.’

“Very unlike Gregor More was ----. Strange to say, he had once
been a placed minister of the Kirk (answering to a beneficed
clergyman), and although he often returned late on the Saturday
night, after being all the week poaching the deer, his sermons
were both clever and popular. I met him once when traversing a
wild range of hills, and was impressed both with his general
information and the courtesy of his address.”

SOME RESULTS OF GAME-PRESERVING.

Among the evils incidental to game-preserving, not the least is the destruction of rare and beautiful birds and beasts. I remember how there was on exhibition in the window of a Liverpool taxidermist a splendid specimen of the golden eagle, measuring 7 feet 2 inches from tip to tip of the wings, and 3 feet 2 inches from beak to tail. It had built its eyrie in a small cave in the face of a high cliff at Benula Forest, Glencannich, Beauly, N.B. It was watched by a keeper, who descended the face of the cliff after dark, killed the mother bird, and carried away the only eaglet from the nest.

In most preserves steel traps are set for the purpose of catching birds or beasts of prey. When they are caught they are often allowed to linger in agony for hours, or even days before being despatched. The writer has seen dozens of hares which had each lost a leg in these traps. When a fox is caught in this manner it will often gnaw the leg off.

The horrors of the battue have been described and denounced so often that little need be said about it here. It is simple butchery, often very clumsily performed. For days after a battue hares may be seen with broken backs, dragging their hind-quarters after them among the bushes, and pheasants may be seen running about with broken wings trailing the ground. Pigeon-shooting from traps is justly condemned, but the evils attending it are small compared with those inseparable from the battue. Mr. Frederick Gale, in “Modern English Sports,” says: “At the Gun Club Grounds and similar places, which are frequented by noblemen and gentlemen, the cruelty is comparatively _nil_ to that occasioned by the battue.” It is within our knowledge that the battue is condemned even by gamekeepers. They cannot be expected to speak their minds freely before their employers, but if questioned privately many will be found to condemn it as affording no test of marksmanship, no opportunity for exercise or excitement, and as being wasteful of the game. The animals that escape wounded often become emaciated, or even die of hunger before being found.

The game preservers are never tired of arguing that the preservation of game increases the food-supply of the people. To this there are two answers, either of which is crushing. In the first place, with the exception of rabbits, game is scarcely ever touched by the masses, for the very good reason that its price is far beyond their ability to pay. In the second place, that which they do buy occasionally, rabbit, in order to come within their reach has to be sold at a price far below its cost of production. This is equivalent to saying that the same amount of time, energy, capital, etc., employed in the production of any other sort of food, would increase the food-supply to a much greater extent.

It seems impossible to obtain an accurate estimate of the loss and damage occasioned by game-preserving. We know, however, that the Scottish deer forests alone cover an area of over two million acres, and the best authorities assure us that all land which will rear deer will rear sheep. The latter are vastly more profitable to the community, although not always so to the landowner. But all must be sacrificed to game-preserving. For this purpose are footpaths closed, and labourers compelled to walk long distances to their work. For this are children debarred from playing or picking flowers in the woods or the glens. For this is the factory-worker or the slum-dweller forbidden to breathe the pure air of the hills. For this are vast areas kept barren, whilst millions hunger for the produce which they might have yielded, and willing hands, only too anxious to till them, are driven to seek employment in the already overcrowded docks.

And we think ourselves a practical people!

FOOTNOTES:

[9] See the “Report of the Land Enquiry Committee,” vol. i. (1913), Ch. “Game.” Also, for some descriptions of Highland “Clearances,” the Rev. Donald Sage’s book, “Memorabilia Domestica,” and “Gloomy Memories,” by Donald McLeod.

THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD LIFE

BY E. B. LLOYD

There is one most regrettable result of killing for sport (and more especially of game-bird shooting) which, though important in itself, is yet frequently overlooked in discussing the question. This is the destruction of wild life involved, other than those forms directly slaughtered for pleasure. Sir Harry Johnston has written forcibly of the necessity of insisting on the æsthetic value of wild animals in our landscape, and the desirability of preserving the species that remain, because they are beautiful and intellectually stimulating;[10] and the ordinary Nature lover, not to mention the naturalist, cannot but regard with detestation the ceaseless war of extermination waged by the devotees of “shooting” on so many of our finest and most interesting birds and mammals. Indeed, numbers of so-called bird-lovers not actively opposed to shooting might change their views if they would but reflect seriously on the damage to our native fauna, and the consequent dulling of the charm of our country-side, which game-preserving inevitably brings in its train. For--putting on one side the moral issue--our British “game birds” cannot compare, for interest and beauty, with many of the species which are sacrificed on their behalf, or rather on behalf of the thoughtless folk who slaughter them for amusement. Moreover, it must be remembered that we do not even possess any great tract of natural country as a National Park or reserve, such as Yellowstone Park in the United States of America, or its Canadian equivalent, or the grand Swedish Wild Park in Lapland.

The gamekeeper, generally speaking, is the most ruthless of beasts of prey. If he is a good gamekeeper his great aim is to see that there is always a plentiful supply of partridges in his master’s fields, pheasants in his master’s coverts, or grouse on his master’s moors, as the case may be. With this object in view he endeavours to extirpate all wild life which either is, or is supposed by him to be, in any way inimical to the birds in his charge; and, unfortunately, owing to the abysmal ignorance of the average keeper in all that relates to Nature’s intricate interplay of what we choose to call useful, harmless, and harmful forms, the list of _supposed_ enemies is a long one.[11] Moreover, the special position occupied by the gamekeeper gives him the power (a power all too frequently exercised) of shooting, either for amusement or profit, any strange or rare bird that strikes his fancy, besides making it very difficult to restrain his murderous propensities even in the case of legally protected species. On the whole it may safely be said that gamekeepers as a class are just as unappreciative of the true beauty and interest of animal life as are their masters the sportsmen. To quote one who, among all living writers, is probably at once the most sympathetic and penetrating observer and the most delightful interpreter of wild bird life: “The gentleman, like the gamekeeper, cannot escape the reflex action of the gun in his hand. He, too, has grown incapable of pleasure in any rare or noble or beautiful form of life until he has it in his hand--until he has exercised his awful power and blotted out its existence.”[12]

SOME “VERMIN.”

To come now to the _species_ which are thus warred upon on the plea of facilitating “sport.” Taking the mammals first--and the list of our British mammals is at best a miserably scanty one--we find that, leaving out of consideration such exceedingly scarce ones as the wild cat, polecat, and pine-marten, and such admitted marauders as the stoat and rat, there still remain among those classed by gamekeepers as “vermin,” the badger, the weasel, and the hedgehog: the first perhaps the most interesting of all our wild quadrupeds, the two latter certainly not the least interesting and charming. Yet although the best authorities are agreed that the harm done by the badger to “game” is almost infinitesimal, the keeper is usually his sworn foe.[13] Badgers also suffer at the hands of the fox-hunting fraternity, being destroyed because they are said to be harmful to young foxes, and because they sometimes open up fox-earths which have been “stopped” in readiness for the hunt.[14] This, it may be noted, affords another example of the falseness of the argument so often advanced that fox-hunting is “fair” because the fox has every chance left him to escape. Fortunately the badger is a very shy, nocturnal animal, exceedingly wary and clever, and in some few districts the landlords are enlightened enough to see to it that he is left in peace.

The fiery little weasel--ruthlessly persecuted--is one of the farmers’ most trusty allies, for its food consists chiefly of voles, mice, and rats. As for the hedgehog, deadly enemy of slugs and snails and insects though it be, the fact that it will suck eggs if it gets the chance suffices to make its corpse a welcome addition to the gamekeeper’s museum--that collection of the rotting bodies of birds and small mammals nailed or hung on to a tree or fence, with which all who have rambled much in the woods and fields of our country-side must be familiar. What a motley company may often be seen thus strung up on one of these gibbets in some upland hedgerow or woodland glade: a selection of stoats, weasels, moles, hedgehogs, crows, jackdaws, magpies, jays, owls, sparrow-hawks, kestrels, merlins, and so forth, according to the locality. The writer has actually seen--and it is not an isolated instance--that delightful bird, the green woodpecker, occupying a place among these trophies of the keeper’s prowess; and with regard to another victim, the harmless nightjar (Wordsworth’s “buzzing dor-hawk, twirling his watchman’s rattle about”), whose strange, churning note is so pleasant a feature of an evening ramble in woody or heathy districts, one keeper told Mr. Hudson: “I don’t believe a word about their swallowing pheasants’ eggs, though many keepers think they do. I shoot them, it’s true, but only for pleasure.”[15] The kestrel again--the expressively named “windhover,” which hangs aloft poised so gracefully against the wind--

“As if let down from heaven there
By a viewless silken thread”--

a little hawk which preys almost exclusively on voles, mice, insects, etc., is a valuable friend to the farmer, and certainly no enemy to the gamekeeper. Yet large numbers are destroyed by the latter; for as Charles St. John, himself an ardent sportsman, wrote in his well-known “Wild Sports of the Highlands”:[16] “It is impossible to persuade a keeper that any bird called a hawk can be harmless; much less … that a hawk can be useful.” And much the same still applies, it is shameful to relate, to other extremely useful species, such as the barn-owl--which farmers ought to encourage--and the tawny-owl, etc. Worse than this: incredible as it may sound, there are several well-authenticated cases of _nightingales_ having been destroyed by keepers because their singing kept the pheasants awake at night! And Mr. Hudson, among other instances, records a case where a whole heronry was blotted out, the birds being shot on their nests after breeding had begun, because their cries disturbed the pheasants; and yet another, where a whole tract of woodland estate was denuded of doves, woodpeckers, nuthatches, blackbirds, missel and song thrushes, chaffinches, and many other smaller birds, all of which were shot, any nests found being also destroyed. The keeper said he was not going to have the place swarming with birds that were no good for anything, and were always eating the pheasants’ food.[17] Though these, of course, are extreme cases, they are notable as showing to what lengths this folly may be carried--what monstrous sacrifices are made to the insatiable Moloch of game-preserving.

Besides such striking birds as the brilliant, eager jay, the elvish magpie, the crows, the fierce sparrow-hawk, and the bold little merlin, which are still, relatively speaking, common, and the various beautiful birds of prey--the kite, the harriers, the peregrine falcon, and many others now almost exterminated--the British craze for game-preserving has led to the bitter persecution of two especially fine species, both of which have been almost extirpated in Southern England, at any rate--the raven and the absolutely innocent buzzard. The former, round which centres so much of myth, legend, and story, is now seldom met with, save in a few secluded mountainous districts, though less than forty years ago the head-keeper of Exmoor Forest was able to record the destruction of fifty-two of these grand birds in a single year;[18] while the Common Buzzard, which in virtue of its voice, appearance, large size, and grandeur of flight, is about the nearest approach to the eagle still left to us, is now, alas! exceedingly uncommon. Not long ago, while wandering near Dartmoor, I was fortunate enough to watch six buzzards floating high in the air together, circling round above one another in great spirals, and uttering from time to time their wild plaintive cry: an extremely rare sight in England to-day, and one the beauty and impressiveness of which I shall not soon forget. Any true nature-lover who has watched these splendid soaring birds on the wing will readily understand what an irreparable loss the gamekeeper’s ban on them is inflicting on our landscape, more especially in these days when, in spite of the trammels of modern civilisation, an ever-increasing number of people are learning to appreciate the joy of a more direct communion with wild nature, and, incidentally, are discovering the truth of the poet’s words:

“… that such beauty varying in the light
Of living Nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil’s silent skill;
But is the property of him alone
Who hath beheld it, noted it with care,
And in his mind recorded it with love.”

THE KILLING MANIA.

Next to the gamekeeper, who, after all, is but the instrument of the game-shooter, and the “collector” (whose crimes in respect of our rarer avifauna would fill a volume), the worst sinners are those gun-sportsmen whose amusement is the wanton destruction of wild life, without even the flimsy pretext that their victims are eatable. Nothing comes amiss to them--from seals,[19] and rare birds like the osprey and the great northern diver, to seagulls, shore-birds, and waders, and even poor little pipits and thrushes. These are the folk of whom Sir Harry Johnston has truly observed that “they are often not nearly so interesting, physically and mentally, as the creatures they destroy.” They are dingy-souled Philistines, to whom a dead bird in the hand is worth more than many living birds in the bush. Some even profess themselves bird-lovers.[20] A West Country farmer’s wife once observed to me: “My husband is a great lover of birds; he’s got several cases full of stuffed ones that he shot himself.” This is as though one should prefer an ancient Egyptian mummy to the chance of watching and studying a living breathing being of that race. Little wonder if, when thinking of this senseless and careless and callous destruction of so much feathered loveliness, we should feel inclined to echo Robert Burns’s angry words:

“Inhuman man, curse on thy barb’rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye.”

Moreover, the “deep-rooted instinct,” about which we hear so much, can easily be diverted to a far finer, more beautiful, and more useful pleasure than the absurd, antiquated, and useless one of _killing_ for sport. I can speak from my own personal experience in saying that the actual thrill and joy of tracking and watching wild creatures for study and observation is far superior to that which is derived from tracking and watching them for slaughter. In other words, hunting animals to see how they _live_ is finer sport than hunting them to see how they _die_.

It seems, therefore, that the real issue is between Natural History as opposed to _Unnatural_ History. On the one hand, grouse, pheasants (“semi-domesticated exotics”), and partridges (very likely imported), reared at immense cost for slaughter: on the other, all these infinitely more varied and natural and gracious creatures--the true sylphs and elves of our woodlands--whose glad, free beauty so thrilled Meredith, and drew from him that impassioned cry:

“For joy in the beating of wings on high,
…
My soul shoots into the breast of a bird,
As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.”

And all this wild, winged life possesses a twofold beauty: for it is beautiful both in itself, and--as poetry all down the ages has borne witness--in its influence on the mind of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] “British Mammals,” 1903.

[11] I can speak from a fairly extensive acquaintance with keepers in various districts; and (to quote impartial opinion) a pheasant-shooting friend lately observed to me, while discussing the absurd destruction of kestrels: “The English gamekeeper is a fool: there’s nothing to be said for him.” And Mr. J. G. Millais, another sportsman, in his great work on “British Mammals,” remarks that “gamekeepers are often among the most unobservant of men” (vol. ii., 1905). _Cf._ also, _e.g._, Seebohm’s “British Birds” (Falconidæ, _passim_).

[12] W. H. Hudson, “The Land’s End,” 1908.

[13] See, _e.g._, Sir A. Pease, “The Badger,” 1896.

[14] Similarly, one of the reasons often given for otter-hunting is that otters eat trout and salmon, and so lessen the angler’s chance of killing more of them.

[15] “Adventures among Birds,” 1912.

[16] Ninth edition, 1907.

[17] “Adventures among Birds,” 1912.

[18] W. H. Hudson, “Birds and Man,” 1901.

[19] Here is one instance selected from many. “During a yachting cruise in the summer of 1902, the suite accompanying ‘very distinguished persons’ gleefully took advantage of their proximity to little frequented Scotch islands, to shoot and leave, to kill uselessly without excuse, quite a large number of the seals which still remain in Scottish waters” (Sir H. H. Johnston, _op. cit._).

[20] Perhaps from similar causes to those which lead Sir Alfred Pease, in defending his hunting habits, to inform us, “I hunt, paradoxical as it seems, because I love the animals” (see “The Badger,” 1896).

THE CALLOUSNESS OF FOX-HUNTING[21]

BY H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON

Undoubtedly we are a complacent and unimaginative nation, which defects probably explain and excuse certain indictments brought against us by foreigners.

Complacency and practicality may have raised us commercially and politically, but they do not breed the finer graces, and they are apt to misrepresent us. No one, for example, would say that the English or British race was callous or cruel in comparison with other races. On the contrary, its reputation for kind-heartedness stands higher than that of its compeers and rivals. Yet this same race is engaged to-day in the practice and pursuit of the most brutal sport conceivable.

Of bull-baiting, of cock-fighting, of various barbarous pastimes of our fathers we know nothing now save by hearsay; but it is safe to say that whereas bull-baiting and cock-mains have long been prohibited by law, the most cruel sport remains unpenalised and undiscouraged; nay, even protected by the law. I can only attribute the continued existence of fox-hunting to that lack of imagination to which I have referred.

It is necessary for one making a desperate protest of this kind against an inhuman sport to dissociate himself at the outset from sentimentalism and the sentimentalist. Death is inevitable. We must look facts in the face. The law of life is Death, and Nature has ordained that the strong should prey on the weak throughout her serried ranks of organic life. The sentimentalist will shriek in vain against the destruction of animal life, simply because he is shrieking against an ultimate law of Nature. Nature destroys ruthlessly, and so does man, who is part of Nature. But what civilisation may and must demand, what humanitarianism should and does demand, is that this inevitable accomplishment of death should happen with the least possible pain.

Death, in short, is necessary, but torture is not. And fox-hunting is framed to produce the maximum of torture to the quarry. A fox is “vermin,” they say; then in Heaven’s name let it be classed as vermin, and destroyed as such. But what happens is precisely the reverse of this. Foxes are carefully preserved in order that they may be hounded to a hapless, miserable death, the conception of which transcends any ordinary imagination. Gamekeepers and farmers, to whom foxes are a grave nuisance, are paid _not_ to destroy them painlessly by gun or otherwise. Gamekeepers, indeed, receive so much for each fox found on their preserves.

The object, then, of the hunt is to keep foxes from being destroyed in the natural course of that warfare between item and item of human and feral life, and to preserve them for a more cruel fate. Let us see how cruel that is. The gamekeeper on land which is announced to be hunted on a certain day has carefully during the night earthed up a fox’s hole so that the beast cannot get back to it in the morning. At a certain hour pack and company arrive, and the master learns from the gamekeeper that he is likely to “find” in such and such a spinney. Thither all proceed, gay ladies and fresh-coloured men, and presently hounds give tongue and are in cry. They have “found.”

Immediately the field is in commotion. Gay ladies and fresh-faced men thunder off irregularly. The fun has begun; they are going to enjoy themselves. But what is the fun? To each of those amiable people it no doubt is involved in the music of the hounds, in the company, in the cross-country ride, in the excitements and hazards and humours of the run. To the master and his huntsmen it involves in addition the responsibility for keeping hounds in hand--a matter of considerable skill.

But what does it involve to the fox? This sleek, furry creature that steals chickens and ducks, and young pheasants and partridges, who is a nuisance to farmer and gamekeeper alike, but to preserve whom is made worth their while--this poor “vermin,” having no “earth” to hide in, is flying for his life before a pack of strong dogs, any one of which would be capable of answering for him.

THE DEATH.

He has (it may be) three or four hours’ run before him, with that terrible bell-tongued chorus behind him. One can conceive him towards the close, his strength failing, even his vulpine cunning, his eyes starting from his head and glassy with terror, his jaws dropping foam, his heart like a hammer that must break, straining--straining, helplessly, hopelessly towards some covert that he knows now is not. And upon that at last the more merciful rush, the feeble turn at bay of an exhausted creature, the mellay of hounds, and--Death. Is it possible to conceive that to a creature any greater torture could be applied?

Is it really necessary to deal with that fatuous argument--the argument of minds that are either wholly dishonest or ignobly unintelligent--that the fox is “vermin,” and that he enjoys the run? Surely it has only to be stated to glare at one in all its farcical absurdity. I know of a household in which it is considered cruel to allow the cat to play with the mouse she has caught, and yet this household--men and women--is engaged in hunting other “vermin”--the fox--three days a week during the season.

Is it credible? But it is true. Women, who I have no reason to suppose are not kind daughters and affectionate mothers, will gleefully boast how they were in at the death--to see, that is, one poor furry creature torn into pieces by a swarm of hounds while in the throes of exhaustion, of terror, and of despair. Is it lack of imagination, or is it worse?

And that time-worn defence of all sport is no defence here--I mean the plea that men are improved in health and certain lofty animal qualities by the pursuit of this savage sport. For, to speak plainly, the fox is wholly unnecessary. The essentials of hunting are the hounds, who enjoy themselves, the horses, who as a rule must be admitted to do likewise, unless over-ridden, and the hunters, to whom the gratification of the hunt is the ride through brisk air, the cross-country fences, the air of adventure surrounding the run.

All these essentials are found equally in a drag hunt. Those who have had experience of drag hunts (from which an animal quarry is eliminated) will admit that there is as much pleasure in them as in the fox-hunt. Nay, they are more advantageous, and for two reasons. In a “drag” you are sure of a run; you are not dependent on the accident of a “find.” And, secondly, you have the benefit of knowing when you may order your change to meet you, and thus avoid inflicting pain on your horse. The drag obviates all cruelty in a sport which is otherwise invigorating and virile. Therefore, in Heaven’s name, let the masters of hounds, who are also men of feeling, cease to preserve the fox, and cultivate the drag.

The abolition of the Royal Buckhounds did much to throw into disfavour the abominable sport of hunting a tame stag, and it is known that aristocratic circles do not look with favour on the atrocious sport of coursing. Is it impossible to enlist the sense of the upper classes in this country in the abolition of fox-hunting?

FOOTNOTES:

[21] This article originally appeared in the _Daily Mail_ of February 8, 1905.

BIG-GAME HUNTING

BY ERNEST BELL

“If asked why I had gone elephant-hunting at the age of
nineteen, I would say that it is simply because I am the lineal
descendant of a prehistoric man.”

F. C. SELOUS.

Apparently there is a considerable public who like reading books about the slaughter of what is called “big game,” or we should hardly have such a continuous supply of them issued from the press. As, however, vanity is apparently no small incentive to the deeds of the big-game hunters, it is perhaps a fair deduction that the same feeling may have something to do with the publication of their records, and that such books are in fact not always speculations on the part of publishers, but are sometimes printed by the authors themselves.

Certainly the unbiassed reader might be excused for agreeing with the sentiment expressed in the preface of one of the exponents of the art, when he writes: “I shall guard myself against the desire to make the reader be present at the death of my 500 victims, which would be very monotonous to him, for after all, though circumstances may vary, the result of a hunt after wild animals is always the same.”

A study of several books of the sort certainly confirms the impression that the subject is a very monotonous one. The illustrations also share the same want of variety, for almost all represent dead animals, varied only by the arrangement of guns and naked savages about them. They apparently illustrate nothing at all but the one fact--which one would think was neither surprising nor creditable--that the perpetrators, with the aid of Express double-barrelled rifles, Winchester six-shot repeaters, revolvers, explosive bullets, smokeless powder, rockets, the electric projector, Bengal lights, etc., and a band of natives to load and work the machinery, succeed in destroying the lives of some more beautiful animals. As it is expressed by one author: “At the very spot where a minute before there rose, in all its savage beauty, this majestic conception of Nature, the largest and the most powerful of the animals of the earth, nothing more than a mass of grey flesh appears in the blood-spattered grass.” The climax is reached when we see the “hero,” as sometimes happens, sitting with proud mien on the top of some huge animal, not apparently realizing that the same juxtaposition which brings out the size of the animal is apt to suggest also the _smallness_ of the man whose greatest pride and delight can be wantonly to destroy so grand a creature. We must beg to differ with this writer’s enthusiastic exclamation that elephant-hunting is certainly “the greatest and noblest sport in the world.” Rather we should be inclined to call it the meanest and most contemptible abuse of man’s superior powers.

EXPLOSIVE BULLETS.

Of the means employed to accomplish the hunters’ ends let us say a few words. Explosive bullets we know have been universally condemned in human warfare on account of their barbarity, but against defenceless animals they are still held to be legitimate by so-called sportsmen. Thus, we read: “The impact causes the bullet to expand. Often it breaks into pieces or else takes a mushroom shape, the head in its tremendous velocity dragging and catching with its edges the flesh and viscera; and it often happens in the case of delicate animals that upon leaving the body it makes a hole as big as the crown of a hat.” That a sportsman writing for other sportsmen should feel no shame in making such a statement shows only how we take our morality from our surroundings, and how demoralising in this case the surroundings must be. After this, we cannot expect to find much chivalry displayed in this “the greatest and noblest” of sports, and we cannot be surprised to find the author telling us with pleasure how in pure wantonness he hid behind a tree within 10 yards of a female elephant and lodged a bullet in her heart. This, however, is outdone by an incident in another volume we remember, where we were told that the finest stag was shot by a certain Grand Duke, “while it was asleep, at 20 yards.” In fact, most big-game hunters seem--perhaps not unnaturally--to suffer from a similar want of chivalry. We find Mr. Seton-Karr, an authority on the subject, relating how one of his party imitated the young fawn’s cry of distress, when, as he says: “The immediate result was to entice within range numbers of Virginian deer or blacktail, most of them does, and eight fell victims to this somewhat unsportsmanlike device.” Whether such treachery is to be considered “unsportsmanlike” must depend on what meaning we attach to the word, but if it means “unlike a sportsman,” we fear the word is misused here.

Of the impartiality of the big-game hunter in his slaughter we have many instances. Any creature that can be shot is fitting game for him, and he delights in shooting it. One well-known writer gives the following list of creatures killed by him during six weeks:

“Five elephants, 2 lions (male), 8 leopards, 2 wart hogs, 11
great spotted hyænas, 7 striped hyænas, 4 oryx beisa antelope,
10 awal antelope, 2 common gazelle, 2 bottlenose antelope,
2 gerenuk antelope, 1 lesser koodoo, 18 dig-dig antelope, 4
bustard, 2 small bustard, 2 sand grouse, 3 genet, 14 guinea
fowl, 22 partridge, 4 hares, 30 various.”

Thus 155 animals--mostly wholly unoffending creatures--were slaughtered by one man in six weeks. We are assured that on a second expedition much the same bag was made, but that he then got no elephants (which are rapidly being exterminated in that country). To further whet the appetite, the would-be young slaughterer is favoured with a view of a room in the mighty hunter’s house, which is decorated (or disfigured) apparently from floor to ceiling with the heads, skulls, and skins of these slaughtered animals--“trophies,” they are called--with a lavishness hardly inferior to that exhibited in a butcher’s or poulterer’s shop at the season when we commemorate the birth of Christ.

TEMPORARY REMORSE.

Of the actual cruelty involved in this kind of amusement--for it professes to be nothing more--we may give a few specimens:

“My victim, which I see only through a curtain of raindrops,
visibly suffers, her flank swelling out abnormally and then
subsiding; she is shot in the lungs. We pass round her in such
a way that she shall not see us approach, but she seems more
taken up with her sufferings than with us, and at the moment I
am going to fire she falls down on the grass, still breathing.
I draw near and give her the _coup de grâce_ behind the ear.
Around her is a large pool of blood, which the rain carries in
a red stream towards the bottom of the little valley.

“It is the male at which I fired first of all. As I afterwards
found, his shoulder was broken. Maddened by pain and his feeble
efforts, the animal roars with rage, and, blowing furiously
with his trunk, tears at everything within reach.… His cries
and groans become so terrible that they must be heard a mile
away.

“Poor beast!… Never have I been able to contemplate so near
the death of an elephant in all its details. She is lying eight
yards from us in the full sunlight at the edge of the water,
which is tinged with red, and we look on in silence while
life leaves the enormous body; her flank heaves, blood flows
from breast and shoulder, her mouth opens and shuts, her lip
trembles, tears flow from her eyes, her limbs quiver; with
her trunk hanging down, her head low, she sways to right and
left, then falls heavily on one side, shaking the ground and
spattering blood in every direction.… All is over!

“Such a spectacle is enough to make the most hardened hunter
feel remorse. It seemed to me that I had done a bad action.
Several times have I said to myself, upon seeing those splendid
animals suffer, that I ought to place my rifle in the gun-rack
for ever.”

That a man who has spent several years in little else but the destruction of animals for his own pleasure should feel even a temporary remorse is evidence of the brutality of this particular scene, but we do not know how to characterise the combination of easy sentiment, costing nothing, with the cruel selfishness which immediately turns to the account of fresh slaughter.

THE HUNTER’S JOY.

Or take the following bloody tale, told with evident pride:

“As I came round a bush, I saw at the bottom of a kind of
natural alley in the forest, framed in like a picture by the
trees, a massive old female rhinoceros. She was facing me,
and standing half in sunshine, half in shadow. From a bush
protruded the hind-quarters of another. The distance was about
seventy yards. I at once sat down and ‘drew a bead’ upon her
chest. However, she swerved off, and the two broke away across
the forest, crash after crash, dying away in the distance,
marking their course as they receded. I followed, and once
again caught sight of the animal standing motionless behind
a bush; I fired, and the shot was followed by a couple of
short, angry snorts, the stamp of heavy feet, and an appalling
crashing which advanced and then swept round toward the left.
A shot delivered standing, from the shoulder, was followed by
two shrill squeaks, as the animal tottered a few paces and
fell over on its side; I shall not easily forget that cry, a
sound most disproportionate to the size and bulk of so large
a creature, but which I instantly recognised, from Sir Samuel
Baker’s description, as the death-cry of the rhinoceros; and
the hearing of it filled me with a hunter’s joy!”

The hunter’s joy is in the death-cry of his victim, and he glories in the fact that he is the descendant of a line of prehistoric savages. What more evidence can we want of the barbarity of the whole proceeding?

Or, again, take and ponder the following extract from Ex-President Roosevelt’s recent book, “African Game Trails”:

“Right in front of me, thirty yards off, there appeared from
behind the bushes, which had first screened him from my eyes,
the tawny, galloping form of a big maneless lion. Crack! the
Winchester spoke; and as the soft-nosed bullet ploughed forward
through his flank the lion swerved so that I missed him with
the second shot; but my third bullet went through the spine
and forward into his chest. Down he came, sixty yards off,
his hind-quarters dragging, his head up, his ears back, his
jaws open, and lips drawn up in a prodigious snarl, as he
endeavoured to turn to face us. His back was broken, but of
this we could not at the moment be sure; and if it had merely
been grazed he might have recovered, and then, even though
dying, his charge might have done mischief. So Kermit, Sir
Alfred, and I fired, almost together, into his chest. His head
sank, and he died.”

Is it right, seriously speaking, that people who, by their own admission, are still under the influence of very primitive impulses, should be allowed to take their pleasure in this barbarous fashion without some voice being raised on behalf of the innocent victims?

“LIVE BAIT.”

It appears that there are various ways of hunting the lion. One is to track him to some thick part of the jungle, and having set fire to it at one end to wait at the other with several guns until the terrified beast rushes out and meets his fate.

Another method, which seems to us a specially dastardly one, is the tying up of some domestic animal--donkey, bullock, or goat--as a “live bait” for the larger carnivora, while the sportsman lies in wait, safely concealed, to shoot the “game” or afterwards to track him out to his lair. We read in one instance as follows:

“I woke up to find myself being vigorously shaken by the
watchman. A terrible struggle was going on between the donkey
and the lion, but a cloud of dust completely obscured them,
notwithstanding the brilliant light of a tropical moon. The
lion succeeded in breaking the ropes and carrying off the
struggling animal for some distance. The latter, however,
gaining his legs, emerged from the cloud of dust and made
slowly for the camp. Before he had gone many yards the lion had
got him again, and this time he killed him without giving me a
chance of aiming at all on account of the great cloud of dust.”

This practice is also mentioned in the Hon. J. Fortescue’s “Narrative of the Visit to India of Their Majesties King George V. and Queen Mary,” where we read:

“Overnight, or in the afternoon, bullocks are tied up in likely
places for a tiger, generally at the edge of thick jungle; and
in the morning the shikaris (or gamekeepers, as we should call
them) go round to see if any of these have been killed.”

Mr. Fortescue mentions that “the reports of the morning of December 26 set forth that, though sixty bullocks had been tethered in the jungle on the previous night, only one had been killed.” The paucity of the kills on this occasion is explained by the fact that many tigers had already been shot and the “game” was becoming scarce. It is not stated how many oxen in all were thus sacrificed.

Now we submit that, whatever may be said in defence of big-game shooting in general, this usage of domestic animals--animals towards whom in all civilised countries it is recognised that mankind has moral, and often legal, obligations--is a very shocking malpractice.

That the actual suffering witnessed and chronicled is a small part only of the whole is everywhere obvious. These books teem with cases in which the animals escape wounded, to linger for days, or perhaps weeks. We read, for instance: “I kill a big male (elephant). As to the other male and a female, I wound but lose them both after a day’s pursuit. However, as the male seemed to me to be doomed, I send four men in search of it. They return without result after passing the night out of doors. I found this elephant dead on the 26th”--that is, after seventeen days in a climate where bodies do not lie long on the ground. We can quite believe that this author does not overstate the case when he candidly admits: “A good hunter, however careful, adroit, or well seconded he may be, must count one out of every two animals which he pursues as lost, owing to the many difficulties of his profession. This is the minimum, for how many wound or miss three or four animals before killing one!”

PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS.

It remains only to say a few words about the morality of this form of amusement. It is often said amongst humane people that hunting is only a relic of more barbarous times, but it seems to us to be something more than this. It may have taken its origin with primitive man, but it has certainly made important developments of its own in recent times. There is little in common between the act of the primitive savage, who, for the sake of his food, pitted his strength and skill against an animal, and the wholesale and reckless slaughter, aided by the appliances of modern science, and carried on merely for the pleasure of killing. Acts otherwise disagreeable and disgusting may sometimes be justified by the motive, but a search through several volumes devoted to this sport has failed to reveal any more exalted motive than the desire for trophies--as they are called--to show to admiring friends, and the love of killing. “At daylight we start on the trail, on which there are spots of blood, followed by spurts and large clots. When we see that, ‘the heart laughs,’ as the natives say, and victory is almost certain.” We learn that “to bring down an animal as big as an omnibus horse with each barrel, to roll it over as though it were a rabbit, is a pleasure which one does not often experience”; and we are also told how the author had “the pleasure of looking at a magnificent maneless lion stretched in a pool of blood.”

Of the real motive there can unfortunately be little doubt, and the excuses that are made by the perpetrators for their murderous work are hardly worthy of serious consideration.

The moral defences for this kind of sport are of the same nature as the famous snakes in Iceland--there are none; and the flounderings of the big-game hunter, when he tries to defend himself, show that his ethics and theology are of the same primitive kind as are his other springs of action, handed down from barbarous ancestors.

One writer quoted above tells us, of course, that he gives place to no one in his “love of all dumb creatures collectively”--whatever that may mean--which he seems to think justifies his putting bullets into them _individually_ whenever he has a chance, and letting them crash through the forests, as he describes, in pain and terror, very likely to die in agonies days afterwards.

Another excuse urged is that the hunting instinct in us has been given us by God, and therefore should be followed. It apparently never occurred to the writer that pity for the unoffending animals “butchered to make a sportsman’s holiday” may also be a God-planted instinct, no less than the love of slaughtering them, though apparently he vastly prefers the latter.

That blood-sports develop and encourage a manly spirit, necessary for the progress of the race and especially of the British nation, is perhaps the most common. But here, surely, at the outset we need a definition of terms. If manliness is synonymous with indifference to the suffering of the weaker, and selfish gratification at the cost of others, if it is manly to blow a piece “as big as the crown of a hat” out of the side of a timid deer, just for amusement, then certainly this sport is eminently manly. If, on the other hand, the qualities which differentiate the civilised man from the barbarian are a greater regard for the rights of the weak and a deeper sympathy with the feelings of others, then without doubt these amateur butchers should be regarded as an anachronism in civilised communities.

The chocolate-coloured native, we read in one book, “would not and could not understand that we had not come to fight elephants and lions like gladiators in the arena, but to overcome them by superior tactics _without more risk than was necessary_, and by the judicious handling of arms of precision” (italics ours). Certainly we think the naked savage here shows a finer instinct for what may be noble and manly in warfare than his so-called civilised brother. For the gladiator who has the hardihood to meet his enemy in fair single combat, at mortal risk to himself, we can feel some admiration, even though the game is a barbarous one; but for the butcher who skulks behind a tree and slays his innocuous victim by mechanical contrivances with as little risk to himself as possible, we can feel nothing but contempt. “In a short time,” we are told by our hero, “four elephants were lying dead, shot through the head or heart, never having caught sight of us. The remainder of the herd decamped.” A glorious achievement in the estimation of the perpetrators apparently, but one to which we personally should be ashamed to see our name attached.

THE BLOOD LUST.

In the preface to one of the books from which we have quoted, we are told the story of a certain French hunter who, having been made an officer, was asked by a friend if he intended now to give up killing lions, to which he replied: “It is impossible; it seizes me like a fever, and then I absolutely must go and lie in wait.” This does seem in some cases to be the most charitable explanation of a strange mental condition, and in view of the harm which these so-called sportsmen are doing, it is becoming a question for the community, whether they should not be temporarily confined, like others suffering from dangerous and destructive mania. With shooting-galleries and a continuous series of tin elephants and antelopes they could be allowed to indulge their mania quite harmlessly, and in the evenings they could write up their diaries and chronicle their wonderful adventures without fear of contradiction.

Apart from the question of the cruelty involved, we have now the sad spectacle of the rapid extermination of many animals merely for the selfish gratification of a very small section of the public. The recent efforts of Governments to save them are not likely to have much effect. They are not based on any humane principles, of course, but are directed apparently to preventing the total extermination of certain animals, in order, at any rate partly, that a favoured few may still have the pleasure of killing them under game restrictions.

Thus _The Times_ drew attention to the fact that in Nyasaland for a £10 licence you may kill 6 buffaloes, 4 hippopotamus, 6 eland, and so on up to a total of 94 animals. For £10 you may buy the privilege to deprive the world of 1 elephant, while you may kill 4 for £60. The writer of the article from which we quote tries to show that the ivory of the tusks will pay expenses.

We may quote here the following from an article by Sir H. H. Johnston, on “The Protection of Fauna, Flora, and Scenery,” in the _Nineteenth Century_, of September, 1913:

“An agitation is again arising for leave to destroy the
big game of Africa--especially in Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and
East Africa--wherever there are possibilities of European
settlement. The plea advanced now is that the big game, more
than man or the smaller mammals and birds, serve as reservoirs
for trypanosomatous or bacillic disease-germs, which are then
conveyed by tsetse-flies or ticks to the blood of domestic
animals and man. This argument should be examined with
scientific impartiality, because so great is the blood-lust on
the part of young Englishmen or their Colonial-born cousins
that they are for ever trying to find some excuse to destroy
whatever is large or striking in the local fauna.”

The only method which would have any likelihood of really protecting the animals would be to make it penal for anyone to kill any of them, or to have in his possession any skin, skull, or other “souvenir.” Without their trophies and without the possibility of recounting their exploits to their admiring readers, the big-game hunters would lose their main stimulus, and might devote their time and energies to some more useful and less barbarous pursuit.

BLOOD-SPORTS AT SCHOOLS

THE ETON HARE-HUNT.

We are often told that the true way to teach kindness to animals is “to begin with the young.” Let us see how they begin with the young at the chief of English public schools.

“I have told the Master of the Beagles that he must not do
anything which is unlawful. I am sure that he would not do
anything cruel willingly. But until the common sense of the
nation expresses itself in the shape of a law forbidding the
hunting of wild animals, I cannot interfere with the Beagles,
which are here an old institution.”

Such were the terms in which Dr. Warre, when Headmaster of Eton, expressed his refusal--his first of many refusals--to substitute a drag-hunt for the hare-hunt now in favour at Eton College; and his argument has since been the subject of much humanitarian protest, and of not a few memorials to the Governing Body. But there is one point concerning Dr. Warre’s remarks which seems to have almost escaped attention--that the Eton Beagles are not, after all, so old an “institution” as his words would imply, in the sense of being recognised and encouraged by the school authorities, for, as a matter of fact, they have only been openly permitted since about sixty years ago, and they were not actually legalised until 1871. In the old Eton Statutes of Henry VI. it was ordained under the head of “Discipline” that “no one shall keep in the college any hounds, nets, ferrets, hawks, or falcons for sport,” and for this reason the authorities long refused to give official recognition to the Beagles. In the reign of Dr. Keate the hunt, according to Mr. Wasey Sterry’s book on Eton, was “unlawful, though winked at,” and this state of affairs continued until about the middle of the past century, when the Beagles began to be regarded as on a par with cricket and football. At last, under the revised Statutes framed by the new Governing Body, which was called into being by the Public Schools Act of 1868, all earlier regulations were repealed, and the Beagles became legalised, having thus passed through the three successive stages of being prohibited, winked at, and recognised as “an old Eton institution.”