It is, indeed, the most noticeable effect of the
sportsman's activity to keep nature in a state of chronic
desolation by killing off all living thing whose destruction he
can compass.
Still, there is ground for the sportsman's claim that under the
existing conventionalities his need of recreation and of contact
with nature can best be satisfied by the course which he takes.
Certain canons of good breeding have been imposed by the
prescriptive example of a predatory leisure class in the past and
have been somewhat painstakingly conserved by the usage of the
latter-day representatives of that class; and these canons will
not permit him, without blame, to seek contact with nature on
other terms. From being an honorable employment handed down from
the predatory culture as the highest form of everyday leisure,
sports have come to be the only form of outdoor activity that has
the full sanction of decorum. Among the proximate incentives to
shooting and angling, then, may be the need of recreation and
outdoor life. The remoter cause which imposes the necessity of
seeking these objects under the cover of systematic slaughter is
a prescription that can not be violated except at the risk of
disrepute and consequent lesion to one's self-respect.
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