ncestor of ours felt the same way in the same kind of a
place, and in us that instinct survives. That is the secret of the
wonderful strange charm of wild places, of the barren rocks of the
desert wilderness, of the great-walled lonely canyons. Something now in
our blood, in our bones once danced in men who lived then in similar
places. And lived by hunting!

The child is father to the man. In the light of this instinct how easy
to understand his boyish cruelty. He is true to nature. Unlimited and
infinite in his imagination when he hunts--whether with his toys or
with real weapons. If he flings a stone and kills a toad he is
instinctively killing meat for his home in the cave. How little
difference between the lad and the man! For a man the most poignantly
exciting, the most thrillingly wild is the chase when he is weaponless,
when he runs and kills his quarry with a club. Here we have the essence
of the matter. The hunter is proudest of his achievement in which he has
not had the help of deadly weapons. Unconsciously he will brag and glow
over that conquest wherein lay greatest peril to him--when he had
nothing but his naked hands. What a hot gush of blood bursts over him!
He goes back to his barbarian state when a man only felt. The savage
lived in his sensations. He saw, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, but
seldom thought. The earthy, the elemental of eye and ear and skin
surrounded him. When the man goes into the wilderness to change into a
hunter that surviving kinship with the savage revives in his being, and
all unconsciously dominates him with driving passion. Passion it is
because for long he has been restrained in the public haunts of men. His
real nature has been hidden. The hunting of game inhibits his thoughts.
He feels only. He forgets himself. He sees the track, he hears the
stealthy step, he smells the wild scent; and his blood dances with the
dance of the ages. Then he is a killer. Then the ages roll back. Then he
is brother to the savage. Then all unconsciously he lives the chase, the
fight, the death-dealing moment as they were lived by all his ancestors
down through the misty past.

What then should be the attitude of a thoughtful man toward this
liberation of an instinct--that is to say, toward the game or sport or
habit of hunting to kill? Not easily could I decide this for myself.
After all life is a battle. Eternally we are compelled to fight. If we
do not fight, if we do not keep our bodies st