The Motor Sportsman
A very disagreeable form of shooting has begun to grew common in sonic districts ; at least such is my experience. The sportsman, so called, goes forth in his car at night, taking it across country, and from this stalking-horse shoots rabbits and hares both dazed and disclosed by the glaring headlights. The method may have some virtues in the eyes of the farmer who desires to reduce the toll of rabbits; but it is a practice against nature. Birds are terrified by the light and noise combined, and will desert the immediate neighbourhood altogether. " They love not poison who do poison need " ; and some may reluctantly adopt similar tactics in order to clear a plantation being destroyed (as Mr. Jack Minor's Wood Sanctuary in Ontario) by immense hordes of roosting starlings. A few crackers or rockets set off on consecutive nights is almost the only effective remedy. It is a very different thing to scare the harmless inhabitants of a quiet farm, merely for the sake of shooting at half a dozen rabbits or so.
Previous page
