HUNTING IS HORRIBLE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jan 24, 1906

HUNTING IS HORRIBLE.

SPORT is horrible. I say it advisedly. I speak with the matured knowledge of one who has seen and taken part in numberless forms thereof in many and varied parts of the world. I can handle a gun and rifle as well and as efficiently as most sporting folk, and few women and not many men have had experience of a tithe of the shooting and hunting in which I have been engaged both at home and during travels and expeditions in far-away lands.

Many a keen sportsman, searching his heart, will acknowledge that at times a feeling of self-reproach has shot through him as he stood by the dying victim of his skill. I know that it has ever confronted me as I have bent over my fallen game, the result of, alas! too good a shot. I have seen the terror-stricken orb of the red deer, dark, full of tears, glaring at me with mute reproach as it sobbed its life away, and that same look I have seen in the eyes of the glorious-orbed guanaco of Patagonia, the timid, gentle gazelle, the graceful and beautiful koodoo, springbok, etc., of South Africa, seemingly, as it were, reproaching me for thus lightly taking the life I could never bring back. So, too, I have witnessed the angry, defiant glare of the wild beast’s fading sight, as death, fast coming, deprived him of the power to wreak vengeance on the human aggressor before him. The memory of those scenes brings no pleasure to my mind. On the contrary, it haunts me with a huge reproach, and I fain I had never done those deeds of skill—and cruelty.

It is a remnant of barbarism in man’s nature that he should take pleasure in displaying his skill on living animals. Deer-stalking is no doubt a healthful and exhilarating exercise, requiring endurance, stamina, a clear sight, and a steady hand. Yet the last act in a successful stalk is, if we come to think about it, disgusting and horrible. In close proximity to us we see a lordly animal, happy, peaceful, and enjoying fully the gifts of life. We draw a trigger, and if we do not miss, we wound or kill. Happy, indeed, if it be the latter. More often than not it is the former, and then, if limbs are not broken, a fierce tracking ensues, resulting sometimes in its loss, and, as a consequence, many an hour of torture ere death closes its sufferings.

I wonder how many sportsmen who tramp turnips after partridges and heather after grouse have studied the happy ways and manners of these quiet, unpretentious, gray and brown birds? Both manifest the same characteristic affection for their young. It is a touching sight, when coming unexpectedly upon a young covey, to watch the frantic efforts of the cock and hen to simulate being badly wounded, so as to draw attention from their brood. It is a piteous sight to see a wounded grouse or partridge striving to escape some beater, who, with uplifted stick, pursues the poor, helpless, stricken bird, striking it amidst the laughter and evident amusement of his fellow beaters. It is a mere trivial incident, no doubt, and yet those who know and have studied the habits of these birds, their instinctive eagerness to be together, their sharp cry and outstretched necks when separated and calling for a reunion, can guess and feel what the agony of terror must be to a wounded bird situated as I have described, which, when caught, is often killed by having its brain beaten in or its breast pinched tightly till it dies of suffocation.

What more revolting sights does one anywhere see than at a covert shoot, where, driven before beaters into the jaws of death, thousands of tame, hand-reared pheasants are literally mown down by the rows of guns awaiting their advent? Let us watch some “warm corner” in one of these “shoots.” Falling pheasants, hardly risen from the ground, meet our view. Some fall dead, others dying, others legged, some winged. On one side we see disheveled heaps of struggling feathers—pheasants striving to wriggle back to the woods where hitherto they have been peaceful and happy. Now arises the piteous squeal of the wounded rabbit or the more human, childlike cry of terrified agony from the maimed and timid hare, striving, alas! in vain, to escape from the army of noisy beaters advancing their way, whose shouts must add to the pandemonium of horror which surrounds their last dying moments.

What more aggravated form of torture is to be found than, coursing with greyhounds, the awful terror of the hare depicting itself in the laid-back ears, convulsive doubles, and wild, starting eyes, which seem almost to burst from their sockets in the agony of tension which that piteous struggle for life entails? And what sadder sight is there to be found in the records of the hunted than that of a dead-beat fox, worn out, with lolling tongue, heaving sides, bedraggled brush, with the bay of the nearing pack every moment growing more distinct, struggling on in search of safety for his doomed life, dodging now here, now there, surrounded by a hostile field, the fiendish tallyho sounding in his ears, the cracking of whips which warn him against any further attempt to escape? Then the hounds rush in. For one brief moment he turns at bay—cui bono? The next all is worry, worry, worry, as the poor, weary, but gallant Tod is torn limb from limb, disemboweled, and reduced to a shapeless mass of bloody fur. A fitting death it is, indeed, following as a sequel on the hunted torture which the poor creature has suffered from find to finish.

None but those who have indulged largely in sport in its many and varied branches can realize the holocaust of animal suffering that is day after day offered up on its altar. Sometimes, as in my case, and in the cases of several men whom I have known as “mighty sportsmen,” reproach knocks at the heart’s door and finds inside a responsive echo.

Savagery still dominates us in a great degree. A higher education and civilization will teach us to despise amusements which are purchased at the expense of suffering to animals. Let youth find relaxation and pleasure in feats of skill and endurance and physical adroitness without the aid of blood and torture to make us skilled sons and daughters of the chase and the field. In our national schools, both high and low, kindness and our duty to animals should form part of the curriculum, while every effort that science and investigation can command should be put forth to secure for such as must be killed a speedy, painless death. The custom is a barbarous one; the pleasure derived therefrom is only such as a heart rendered callous by suffering often witnessed and little realized can indulge in. The day must dawn when that savage instinct will become eradicated and men will cease to find pleasure in destroying animal life.—Our Dumb Animals.