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NEEDS OF BIG GAME HUNTER Must Have WoodsSense Keen Mental Balance and Confidence Instinct til Shooting ami Knack of Sileiiee Are Valnahle DM you ever hear of hungry cougar tearing the Iinish to toothpicks when stalking his dinner V Or eliil you ever see a ca tlirusli about in the grass lik i Inheaded rooster when liunting for mice Xo you did not for the animal hunter possesses a natural woodssense an instinct to pussyfoot upon his jiry unawares writes F K Brimmer in Forest an1 Stream StreamTle Tle most exciting hunting I ever have enjoyed was with an old deer hunter who never allowed a word to bo spoken aloud from the time we got in sight of the hunting ground until the day was ended Almost the instant we left camp lie be ¬ came a crafty Indian Indeed sometimes it seemed as if he was walking in some sacred place where to break a twig or voice u sound would be to violate the sacred laws of the holy of holies holiesHe He would steal along stopping every few yards to Msten ever carrying his rifle poised for instant action None of his movements was sudden or jerkv lie never followed a track directly but was constantly circling about to come upon his game frou an unexpected quarter He must often stop and nutover his bald dome to test the direction ° Few hunters liked to hunt with Killdeer Jim l icause he scouted so thoroughly and slowly that thv soon lost patience But lie always got his shre of deer I have seen him shoot several as Ihev lav sleening in their beds with noses pointc to viiidward along their back trail The luinibi thit I have seen him shoot on the jump would be counted by dozens He was a thoroughbred hunter with n crafty woodssense and unlimited patience The roar of a gun seems to frighten wild animals liltle I have wondered if it might be from tlie fact that they mistook it for thunder which they mist be ome accustomed to from infancy But let a lef rustle a twig snap a stone roll a rotten log crunch under foot pressure clothes or rifle scrape against anything and they immediately take warning of danger dangerFINE FINE TBICK BAGGED A DEES DEESV V few years ago I was called lucky because I brought adeer within range by first shooting over him Reasoning that a deer was more afraid of the nois that a crashing bullet would make than the slight crack of smokeless powder I sent three ripping bullets into the brush behind the buck At the first shot he gave little sign of fear As the reccmd bullet clipped through the trees behind him lie became suspicious and the third frightened him so that he ran straight to me meWatch Watch tin man who gets his share of the game with the high power and you will see a man who steals through the woods almost as gently as a kitten He is constantly alert to choose the quietest wiv to go and always watches tin wind as carefully as a motorist the unknown road ahead of him Kither in the natural state or developed by patient practice that man lias one great element of a big ame hunters success And that is woodssense woodssenseTo To be a dependable shooter the hunter must use tliis sixth sense in shooting Did you ever get to wondering if you had heart trouble 2 Tlie more you thought about it the worse your little pump became Certainlv you have found that the more you thought of sleeping the longer it took you to get to sleep What I am shooting at is the fact that some of the functions of this wonderful human machine are hindered bv thinking about them This must mean that there is at work in the complicated mechanism of the human Iwdy a sixth sense Call it reflex action or the subsconseious self if you prefer llie fact remains that the brain does many things with ¬ out conscious voluntary direction directionVsk Vsk an old hunter how he holds his gun or if he takes a fine or coarse sight with the rifle and he will laugh at you Ask similar questions of the crack pistol shot and he will jeer you Think it over and you will decide that the best shooting you ever did was without a single thought about the sights upon your gun barrel barrelYou You were standing on a watch heard a shot from the fellow next along the line you stood in readi ¬ ness the deer bounded into view your rifle came to your shoulder Then what whatNO NO SUBSTITUTE FOB SIXTH SENSE The time you missed was when you saw your I sights You looked at them as carefully as an old maid frizzles her hair took the most careful aim and you mised misedBut But the time you hit Well how about that YOJU didnt need sights you trusted your sixtii sefise Itight there a great many shooters fail TlAey forget that some things are spoiled by put tUig thought upon them and thereby rob the sub onscioiis self of its function You trust this sixth sense to remind you about winding your watch everv night Why not let it help you shoot right J A good many i eople are like the Irishman who said that he didnt have the least bit of trouble about aiming his gun but just as he was about to slioot the game wasnt there Thats just it You squint and aim and wonder if you can pull at just the right instant and the result is that when you do pull you know you will not hit because just at that moment you were aiming about a rod to the northwest northwestA A friend who is an expert typist says that his finger is ashamed when it hits the wrong key and pains him What really happens is that his sub ¬ conscious self stands guard over his conscious self warning him of mistikes You can feel when you ought to pull if you trust yourself yourselfHow How do you like to hunt with the fellow who goes through the brush with gun at full cock or safety off He gets right on your nerves with both feet now doesnt he You feel that he lacks something and that he could easily become so excited as to be dangerous Look at tlie other hunter who never gets too excited He automatically shifts the safety as he throws the rifle to his shoulder When his cheek presses tlie stock his sights are aligned distance calculated lead decided on all done quicker than he could possibly think it out This hunter believes in using all there is in his physical and mental makeup when he shoots He uses his sixth sense sensePerhaps Perhaps you may think that I am a crazy ad ¬ vocate of unpreparedness Never That fellow with the poise and selfconfidence is not a prodigy Fact is he loves his gun so well that he would rather practice than eat He often seizes it from the comer or cabinet and swings it upon an imaginary bird In his mind he sees that target distinctly upon the walls of his den and mentally registers the time to pull pullVALUE VALUE OF SHOOTING CONFIDENCE CONFIDENCEOr Or it may be that he has five minutes to spare and picks up his high power puts a piece of wood behind the rigger which he keeps handy for that purpose and mentally covers his game first in one part of the room and then in the other Ihe trigger is fastened stationary because he wants to iill harder than absolutely necessary in order to make sure that tlie trigger does not spoil his aim when shooting shootingHe He goes through the whole performance in pan ¬ tomime from start to finish until his act is auto ¬ matic Muscles eyes nerves working as a unit so that it all becomes second nature to him He is prepared When he gets that snapshot and wins it is Itecause his trained sixtii sense does it quicker than he can even comprehend it itThen Then is still another qualification that I believe every successful big game hunter must possess and I am going to name that quality confidence I have seen a great many shooters who seemed always to believe they were going to miss They excused their failures on the pretext of socalled buck fever but every one of them knew inwardly that excitement pure and unadulterated had robbed them of their confidence confidenceNever Never a day passes but some new and unexpected crisis comes across the path of a mans life One man frets constantly for fear that he cannot grapple with the new problem successfully while the other believes inwardly that he can settle the unlocked for difficulty OUR man has confidence and his mental and physical poise shows it tae other is a worried coward and his poor success is the evidence Which mail do you enjoy hunting with withSuccess Success is not spelled by the letters 1uck in big game hunting any more than business The hunter who wins against his sagacious quarry must possess at least three sterling qualifications qualificationsJirst Jirst he must have woodssense which enables him to outwit the clever nose ears and eyes of the hunted Second he must use his sixtii sense which means a trained coordination of all his motive and mental faculties And third he must possess shooting confidence which means to believe In Liuiself
