The well-known English writer Clive Philips-Wolley says that happily the old English sporting spirit is not dead; that the farthest and wildest hunting grounds of the world, a visit to which demands the greatest energy and courage, are still sought out by men of the English race, as in earlier days. England owes a great part of her colonies to men, eager for enterprise, who as hunters penetrated into unknown wildernesses; and the English hunter has, thanks to his courage and determination, always played a great part among strange peoples. The reckless conduct of travellers in far-off countries and among strange tribes is often sufficient to give a _whole nation_ a bad character in the eyes of these people, while a right bearing may make it appear worthy of their admiration. Philips-Wolley further points out that the taking of “big bags” of game in far-off hunting grounds[30] should not be considered merely from the point of view of stay-at-home people, but from the point of view of those who have special knowledge of the districts in question.
The time has passed when far-off lands were secured in this way. But I would wish for the German sportsman that he may, so far as is possible, visit the splendid hunting grounds that he can now find in the German colonies, and there become familiar with the chase in forms that our homeland can no longer offer to him. The more brethren of the green-coated guild go abroad nowadays, and bring us tidings of the fauna and of the hunting grounds of the German colonies, the more will our knowledge of this difficult subject be enlarged, and we shall be in a better position for working out practical protective regulations for the preservation of these splendid hunting grounds.
And what a deep charm for the hunter there is in pursuing the chase in such regions! It is true that circumstances have so greatly changed in a few decades of years that the old hunters--say those of fifty years ago--would probably not be able to take the same deep delight in the sport of to-day that they felt in their own time. It was quite a different matter to go out to meet the dangerous wild beasts of Africa with the simple weapons, the muzzle-loaders, of that time. True, the African hunters, whom Professor Fritsch made acquaintance with in Cape Colony about the time of the ‘sixties, already possessed long-range weapons. They used “small-bore rifles” firing an elongated bullet that carried up to 1,500 yards. These rifles were fitted with ivory sights and silver sighting-lines, for shooting at night. A hunter named Layard was at that time famous in Cape Colony for having brought down an ostrich at 1,750 yards!