Mr. William Long in his very interesting book, called "Beasts of the Field," describes how he once called a moose. The moose is a very huge kind of stag with a ugly, bulging kind of nose. He lives in the forests of North America and Canada, and is very hard to get near; and is pretty dangerous when he is angry.
Indian Gipsy calling Jackals.
Mr. Long was in a canoe fishing when he heard a moose bull calling in the forest—so just for fun he went ashore and cut a strip of bark of a birch tree and rolled it up into a cone or trumpet shape so as to make a kind of megaphone (about fifteen inches long, five inches wide at the larger end, and about an inch or two at the mouth-piece). With this he proceeded to imitate the roaring grunt of the bull-moose. The effect was tremendous; the old moose came tearing down and even came into the water and tried to get at him—and it was only by hard paddling that in the end he got away.
One of the best things in scouting is the hunting of big game—that is going after elephants, lions, rhino, wild boar, deer, and those kind of animals; and a fellow has to be a pretty good scout if he hopes to succeed at it.
You get plenty of excitement and plenty of danger too; and all that I have told you about observation and tracking and hiding yourself comes in here. And in addition to these you must know all about animals and their habits and ways if you want to be successful.
I have said the "hunting" or "going after big game is one of the best things in scouting." I did not say shooting or killing the game was the best part; for as you get to study animals you get to like them more and more, and you will soon find that you don't want to kill them for the mere sake of killing, and that the more you see of them the more you see the wonderful work of God in them.
All the fun of hunting lies in the adventurous life in the jungle, the chance in many cases of the animal hunting you instead of you hunting the animal, the interest of tracking him up, stalking him and watching all that he does and learning his habits. The actual shooting the animal that follows is only a very small part of the fun.
No scout should ever kill an animal unless there is some real reason for doing so, and in that case he should kill it quickly and effectively, so as to give it as little pain as possible.
In fact many big-game hunters nowadays prefer to shoot their game with the camera instead of with the rifle—which gives just as interesting results—except when you and your natives are hungry, then you must, of course, kill your game.