Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1885-12-06

triumphant Win the gamo 70 the HAPPY
group in the little farmhouse.
You, my friend, had you gone with
your Richards, Scott, Colt, or whatever
other fifty-, hundred, or two-hundred-
dollar breech-loader, and your priceless
Irish setter, looking for partridgss in
his fathers woods behind the house,
and had you there seen his carefully
built fences and ready snsres, would
have broken them up in indignation.
Perhaps l would have done so, as l
have often done. do not dispute the
rightfulness Of doing so, but l suggest
to you to look from the boys side and
ask yourself how you would feel if you
were the boy in his fathers woods,
coming to find game for the family sup
per and finding broken snares.
You have dogs and guns and know
how to use them; but do you know
how to snare cartridges? OF course
not; the law forbids it. But do you
say it is not sportsmanlike? Pardon
me, but you cannot thus consign to the
catalogue Of bad books the grand old
literature of field sports in which we
delight. If you imagine that gun
powder is an essential to sport, and
that guns and explosives make neces-
sary constituent Of sportsman's out
fit, your education is limited to q
modern and very unheroic sporting age.
All history and tradition are against
you. Hurting through air at a
bird six-foot diameter shower
of shot is a modern, but not the
only way Of getting the bird in true
woodcraft. The boys error is in not
recognizing the artificial conditions Of
game, the existence of laws necessary
to its preservation for all the people.
Setting aside the law, there is more
skill, more knowledge of genuine wood
craft, required for his successful sharing
birds than for your successful shoot
ing them. Does this sound like heresy:
Then learn some more heresy. His
torically considered, the taking ofgame
birds by snares and nets and traps is as
gentlemanly and sportsman-like, skilled
art as shooting them with a gun can
ever become. The great writers on
sports have delighted to teach the
methods of making and using traps
and snares. Great artists have en-
graved superb illustrations of sports
men using traps and snares. That boy
had never heard Of such rare and great
old books as the Uccelliers OF Dina,
but his snares were made and set in the
precise manner taught in that book and
illustrated in the superb plates Of An
tonic Tempesta and francesca Villa
mena. His art as sportsman had
come down to him through generations of
sportsmen, not only two hundred years
from the days Of that and like books, but
thousands Of years, through all the
generations Of sportsmen in all the ages
before the invention of gunpowder. If
We call ourselves sportsmen let US rid
ourselves of the priggishneSs which
makes some shooters and fishers ridicu-
louS and "sport a word offensive to
educated men. heard an angler,
speaking of some one who had taken
trout with a worm bait, say "a man
who fishes with a worm is a snob."
Which was the snob, this sportsman
or lzaak Walton, who practiced and
taught fishing with worms?
Don't misunderstood me. am not
defending traps and snares in our time
and country. am DESTROYS Of showing
that in making game laws we are not
enforcing ancient and recognized laws
of the chase-that we are dealing with
new conditions, from which arise neces-
sites of new laws oyerruling old laws.
We are creating new and artificial
system Of regulations Of field and forest
sports. In perfecting system ofsuch
laws we err if we assume that our ideas
are the only ones held by sportsmen.
We need for the support Of efficient
laws a consenting public opinion,
which we must reach by reasonable
treatment. We shall never get that by
telling men who differ from us that we
are spcrtsmen and they are not-that
we know all about it and they know
nothing.
And before pursuing the subject in
another letter | wish to say that my
reason for discussing it is that in long
travel with my horses over many hun
dreds Of miles in the country, within
the past few months, have found the
country people more alive to the
subject than ever before. And what
is more important, | have found very
strong sentiment growing, openly
advocated in groups at country
inns and stores, in favor of re-
pealing all game and fish laws. have
heard it asserted that since the law for
bids the taking of fish with more than
one hook on line, it ought to forbid
shooting birds with more than one
piece Of lead in gun. Others assert
that instead of suppressing snares for
partridges the law ought to suppress all
use Of gunpowder. AS matter of fact
the country people are beginning to dis
cUss the subject, from their points Of
view, sometimes very unreasonably,
sometimes with good sense. reserve
for another letter some further consiie-
rations.