ting is may also kill
something, each year. But in most of the American preserves with which I
am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big game" is
almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so attached to
his big game, and admires it so sincerely, he has not the heart to kill
it himself; and he finds no joy whatever in seeing it shot down by
others!

In this country the slaughter of game for the market is not considered a
gentlemanly pastime, even though there is a surplus of preserve-bred
game that must be reduced. To the average American, the slaughter of
half-tame elk, deer and birds that have been bred in a preserve does not
appeal in the least. He knows that in the protection of a preserve, the
wild creatures lose much of their fear of man, and become easy marks;
and shall a real sportsman go out with a gun and a bushel of cartridges,
on a pony, and without warning betray the confidence of the wild in
terms of fire and blood? Others may do it if they like; but as a rule
that is not what an American calls "sport." One wide-awake and
well-armed grizzly bear or mountain sheep outwitted on a mountain-side
is worth more as a sporting proposition than a quarter of a mile of deer
carcasses laid out side by side on a nice park lawn to be photographed
as "one day's kill."

In America, the shooting of driven game is something of which we know
little save by hearsay. In Europe, it is practiced on everything from
Scotch grouse to Italian ibex. The German Crown Prince, in his
fascinating little volume "From My Hunting Day-Book," very neatly fixes
the value of such shooting, as a real sportsman's proposition, in the
following sentence:

"The shooting of driven game is merely a question of marksmanship, and
is after all more in the nature of a shooting exercise than sport."

I have seen some shooting in preserves that was too tame to be called
sport; but on the other hand I can testify that in grouse shooting as it
is done behind the dogs on Mr. Carnegie's moor at Skibo, it is sport in
which the hunter earns every grouse that falls to his gun. At the same
time, also, I believe that the shooting of madly running ibex, as it is
done by the King of Italy in his three mountain preserves, is
sufficiently difficult to put the best big-game hunter to the test.
There are times when shooting driven game calls for far more dexterity
with the rifle than is ordinarily demanded in the still-hunt.

In Amer