[Illustration: KNOT]
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KILLING FISH.
The Scout Law says that you should not kill God's creatures without good reason. It is allowable when you need them for food. In the case of fishing you often catch them when practising, but you need not kill every fish you catch; you can take them carefully off the hook and put them back into the water.
The hook as a rule catches them in the lip, which with them is not the tender flesh that it is with us, but merely a lot of bones held together by gristle, so they do not suffer pain as we should—and this is shown by the way the same fish will come on again after having been already caught.
When you want to keep a fish that you have caught, you should kill him at once and put him out of his misery, and this you can do either by hitting him on the head with a stick, or by driving your knife into his brain, or by putting your finger down his throat and then bending his head backwards and breaking his neck.
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CLEANING A FISH.
Then when you have killed your fish you will want to cook him.
First of all you must clean him—that is, take his insides out. The stomach and guts of the fish are carried rather far forward in his chest, so with your knife you cut across the narrow bit of skin which joins his chest to his chin, and with the point of the knife underneath the skin slit the skin of his chest and belly open as far as the fin near his tail. Then cut through the gut in his throat and the whole of his insides will be let loose to fall out.