Duck Shooting on the Kankakee.

By EDWIN F. DANIEL.

Every man has, naturally, in his composition, a streak of the savage. It is more highly developed in some than in others, but it is universal. Whether it is hereditary, or whether it is assimilated through observation during childhood by watching the forces of nature and their workings, together with the natural instinct and inclination to know all possible of the nature and habits of birds and animals, may be a question, but the fact remains that when a boy gets to be old enough to know the meaning of a gun and the use of a fishing-rod, and more especially a boy bred in the country, he begins to long for their possession, and when that longing is satisfied, he is uneasy unless he has a place and objects upon which to use them, and, in using them, he cultivates the faculty of observation, thus becoming intimate with the habits of the wild things with which he comes in contact, until, as the seasons move, he begins to feel the longing to live in the woods and mountains when the first tints appear in the foliage of the trees in the autumn, and an undefinable unrest when the trout brooks begin to murmur in the spring. This longing to get into nature and enjoy the pleasures of an outdoor life is entirely reasonable, and the legitimate gratification of this natural inclination is elevating and effects the feelings and emotions in a healthful as well as a delightful manner.

Some who have lived all their lives in cities, and who have never enjoyed life among the green fields and forests, and along streams in the country, can not appreciate what these things mean to a lover of nature, and these same people are the ones who, at times, undertake to create a sentiment against the outdoor sports of shooting and

fishing on the ground that they are cruel. These are the people who have never felt the thrill of pleasure which possession of trophies secured by their skill with the gun gives, nor have they felt the tingling sensation of delight in which the playing of a trout culminates when it is safe in the landing net. Usually, one experience of this kind is enough to change the mind of any person who says that field sports are cruel, and the reason that they take such grounds is because they have been kept from the enjoyment of such sports; and the fact that only one such experience is enough to win them over from their former belief, is enough to confirm. the opinion that there is naturally a touch of the savage in every

man.

Take, for instance, wild fowl shooting, and, if you please, big game shooting. Is it more merciful or less cruel, as far as concerns the feelings of the victim, to have a turtle grasp the leg of a duck and begin eating it while it is yet alive? Or to have a hawk swoop down into a covey of quail and pick one up and carry it away to die at the pleasure of the marauder? Or to have a mountain lion lie in wait for a deer and spring on his back as he passes under some place of concealment, and slowly take his life away by drinking his blood? Are any of these examples less cruel than the sudden end of the life of the victim by the true aim of the true sportsman? Like human beings, birds and animals have to die some time, but, unlike human beings, they have no mission in life. When their time comes, they die, whether their death be a sudden and violent one, or a lingering and painful one alone in the woods and swamps, and it seems to me there can be no question in the mind of a fair thinking man as to whether the quick and painless death, resulting from the shock caused by the discharge of a gun, is less cruel than the lingering and horrible one of violence from the attack of a bird or beast of prey.

For the reason that sports of the field are elevating and restful and needful to a properly constructed man, they have devotees everywhere. Illustrious names in every walk and condition of life from the earliest up to the present time, could be given of men

who took delight in hunting and fishing, and thousands of the gentler sex have received immeasurable benefit from their contact with nature, brought about by the love of, and participation in, these sports. The number of people living in Chicago who enjoy outings, some of them many times a year, in which the rod and gun are their principal dependence for sport, is well up in the thousands, and this is true in a degree of every other city and small town in the country, and as this sport is rational and satisfying, and as it tends to make good citizens, it is the duty of every State in our Union to have such laws on its statute books, framed after wise and judicial consideration, as will afford its citizens, and the citizens of neighboring states, the best possible means of gratifying their natural tendencies in the direction of field sports.

Some states are pre-eminent in being the natural habitat of deer, moose, elk and other big game. Other States are so interspersed with lakes and streams that their territory is a paradise for sport with trout, muskallonge, bass and other species of fresh