There has developed in recent years a sentiment which has declared itself strongly in opposition to taking animal life for the sake of sport. The camera has been recommended as a substitute for the death-dealing firearm. A great many people have discussed this subject without possessing a clear idea of what constitutes real sport.

To obtain a better understanding of the subject we may classify those who hunt for the purpose of destroying wild life under three divisions: sportsmen, market hunters and butchers. The last expression I have employed in a peculiar sense as indicating a very objectionable class in itself. By a process of elimination one may arrive at the true conception of a sportsman after first grasping the meaning of the term market hunter and butcher, and then disabusing the mind of both of those conceptions. The term butcher is applicable to whomever engages in the wanton and wasteful destruction of animal life with no idea of utilizing the remains. To the mind of such persons a sportsman’s goal is a slaughter pen. The game butcher recognizes no rules, but prides himself on the amount of havoc he can produce in a flock of birds or a herd of wild animals, and speaks with glee of the quantity of game he has destroyed. The market hunter, as the name implies, is out for business. The rules of sport do not interest him; it is merely a question of dollars and cents; he kills when it pays to kill, and tries to make certain every shot, regarding any advantage he can take as perfectly legitimate. The worst qualities of the butcher and the market hunter combine in the person who hunts elk for the purpose of securing the teeth, allowing the antlers and carcass to remain unused. The sins of these two classes are indiscriminately laid on the shoulders of the sportsman by people who have a misty idea about real sport.

The desire to kill is instinctive, and, refined under civilizing influences, produces the sportsman. The mere love of killing for the sake of doing so soon palled on people who had any conception of sport. The true theory of sport, whether in playing games or in hunting, necessarily involves the idea of a contest or trial of skill wherein there is a certain element of chance. The rapid destruction of game, consequent upon the easy mastery of nature by man, led in quite early times to the establishment of game preserves and the enactment of laws for the preservation of game. The killing of game developed into a pastime, and rules regulating its enjoyment readily grew out of this method of recreation. In other words it came to be regarded as a sport or game wherein the hunted had rights or privileges which had to be respected the same as those of a contestant in any other game; the huntsman must exercise his ingenuity and sometimes his daring and endurance against the cunning and desperation of the wild beast. It is obvious from the foregoing explanation that no sportsman countenances killing, except for a purpose, and prefers to give the game a chance to exercise its cleverness and adroitness in making good its escape; if it fails, it has been outwitted. The observance of game laws for the preservation of game find no stronger advocates anywhere than among sportsmen, and it is to their interest to prevent the extermination of wild life, because if that should take place their pastime would be gone.

There are a number of enlightened people, however, who distinctly disapprove of a sportsman’s favorite amusement and regard hunting and killing game for recreation as altogether wrong. An examination into this state of feeling with a view of ascertaining whether it is based upon a clearly defined reason, or is merely a capricious sentiment, may be instructive. All animal life in one way or another exists or is sacrificed for the benefit of humanity. No one can reasonably combat this assertion. By the very instinct of his being, man assumes to have an unquestioned right to subject the lower order of created life to his use. This assertion of his authority dates from the beginning when the fiat was delivered—“Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth!” In what way shall this authority be exercised? Human necessity or convenience alone has determined that question without the brute creation being considered. The beast that is reduced to servitude, and compelled to work the balance of his existence, finds no advocate for his emancipation; no protest is made against the wholesale slaughter of cattle to supply the meat market. But when the sportsman goes forth to exercise his skill, allowing the hunted prey a chance for its life and freedom, the sentimentalist, who is generally someone who never took pleasure in that form of amusement, throws up his hands and exclaims, “How brutal!” It is easy to discriminate against a practice in which one does not participate. Self-denial, when you deny yourself nothing, is an easy and convenient morality. The brute creation is sacrificed for man’s enjoyment, and it is useless to offer capricious objections to a form of sacrifice which pleases another and which does not happen to appeal to one’s own idea of pleasure.

There is a great deal of inconsistency displayed by many who deprecate hunting with a rifle or shotgun, as the case may be. Cruelty to animals seems to include birds and quadrupeds, but not fish. I have heard people who are fond of angling expatiate upon the wickedness of destroying animal life; yet they saw no harm in catching fish with a light rod and play their quarry for a long time.

The huntsman endeavors to kill his game as soon as possible; he does not prolong its agony for his amusement. No protests are made against fishing as a sport so far as I have observed. The reason for this is not hard to discover. The fish is a cold-blooded creature to whom the heart does not seem to go out in sympathy to any extent; the slimy scales do not invite the contact of the fingers like the warm fur of a deer or the soft down of a duck; there is nothing in its “yellow orbs” to excite sentimental regard; it is not an object one would pet or fondle like a spotted fawn; wanting in qualities which appeal to the fancy, no plea is set up in its behalf. In further evidence of the inconsistency in question I have heard ladies almost melt with emotion while deprecating the destruction of animal life by the sportsman, who yet seem little affected by the recital of the lingering death agony of the poor creatures caught in traps to furnish the furs which minister to female vanity.

The universal custom of sacrificing animal life in some form or another makes it impossible for one to condemn the sportsman’s method of destroying it without the charge of inconsistency. Once concede that the right to take the life of dumb creatures exists, and the individual must decide in what way that right shall be exercised, with the limitations which civilization places upon the exercise of all natural rights.