Death in the Long Grass
The other day I started reading “Death in the Long Grass” by Peter Hathaway Capstick. This book is a hunting classic, and also – supposedly one of the best when it comes to Africa. No doubt, it will only fuel my desire to some day hunt “the Dark Continent”. This book was on my Christmas list last year, and Mrs Desert Rat came through! I’m only a couple dozen pages in, but so far it is awesome.
What struck me though, was something I read in the Foreword. That in itself is unusual, as I rarely read Forewords, Introductions, Epilogues, etc. Anyway, Capstick talks about why people hunt, and puts it as well as I’ve ever read:
“Let’s try a domestic example. How about quail hunting? The nonhunter, if asked the purpose of quail hunting, would usually reply that it is to kill quail. Actually, it’s not. If the object was dead quail for the table, logically the cheapest, easiest, most practical method of achieving this end would be to buy a box of commercially raised, professionally cleaned, pan-ready birds for about $1.75 apiece. This saves one the bother of such matters as keeping and training bird dogs, securing licenses, risking snakebite, laying out for guns and shells, breaking teeth from biting into pellets, and paying for the hundred fringe items that probably cost the quail hunter an amortized average of at least $15 per bird, per season, and possibly as much as $25. Yet, he chooses to spend the money, walk the miles, train and care for his dogs, all for possibly taking his limit while refusing to murder a bird on the ground, which, from a meat standpoint, would be many times more rewarding than wing shooting if the objective was merely dead quail.
So it is with elephants. Or lions. Or brown trout on the dry fly.
[...] Death in the Long Grass [...]
June 20th, 2009 at 8:21 am