MYSELF AS SPORTSMAN

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    THE NEW YORKER FI by Doris Lessing January 21, 1956

    Nowadays, when I meet types who flush grouse or work salmon (I think these are the correct terms), I  more often than not be heard saving, “All the same, food,  spive me a flock of guinea fowl in open try.” From there, I pass on to casual mention of the higher fauna—deer and lions, and so on—and in no time the most hardened sportsmen are oozing envy of what sounds like a girlhood spent oual safari. I keep the truth to myself.

    Not that I haven’t seen lions. I have entered them, and other iing animals, in the London Zoo, where I go to look at them from time to time. And on my home ground, which is Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia, fauna of every kind used to flourish and, for all I know, flourish yet. I do not care. I never did.

    Along with my indiffereoward big and little game goes the fact that this whole plex is linked irretrievably with my sibling rivalry (for my brother) and my mase protest (against practically everything). It all started very, early, when my brother was given a .22 rifle— But perhaps it would be best to go even further back, to his bicycle, which he rode perfectly at the first attempt, whereas I could only look at it and shudder with fear. I decided it was not being firl to ride a boy’s bicycle, and stuck out for one of my own, knowing full well that the state of the family’s finances would put off the evil hour indefinitely.

    In the light of this discreditable and evasive behavior, it is easy to uand what happened when the .22 rifle appeared, during one of my brother’s holidays from school. He picked it up, took aim at a small bird sitting on a twig a hundred yards away, judiciously pressed the trigger, and the bird fell dead. I remember he felt bad because the shot had not gohrough the eye. To him, therefore, sport immediately took on its proper colors; to fire at a sitting bird was altogether beh him, and unless he could get in a good oblique shot at a bird h widdershins a hundred and fifty yards off, with a strong wiween him and it, he would not shoot. As for duikerbok—small antelope, which are not only plentiful in our parts but very good to eat—he would not kill one unless he had first arranged an exhausting cr<mark></mark>awl through thick bush, preferably in heavy mud.

    When, one day, he hahe rifle to me, I said I did not care for it. Why I did not stick to this simple truth I agine. I did point out that even people like Hunter Jim and Elephant Bill used shotguns for birds on the wing and deer on the run, and that it would never have eheir heads to use a .22 rifle, but my brother was not moved. I did not expect him to be.

    After he had gone back to school, I crept to his room and took the .22 from the bed of oiled waste in which he had laid it away for the duration of the term. I spent a week or mingerly opening and shutting the thing, and putting bullets in and taking them out. When I could do this without fling, I went out into the bush with it.

    There was a lot of bush all around our house—in fact, miles of it in every dire, wild, uninhabited, a perfect paradise for sportsmen. I remember clearly how, that first day, I mooned along, thinking about Guinevere and Anne of Green Gables, until a fine kudu bull (fauna of the most covetable sort, antelope the size of a horse) that had apparently been scrutinizing me from an anthill took to its hoofs and fled. I watched it go. (My brother, needless to say, had already shot half a dozen kudu through the eye under impossible handicaps.)

    appeared a duiker, and I put the gun to my shoulder and fired repeatedly but without result, sihe creature had vanished before I could mao sight it.

    That was a discing day, and those that followed it were er. One day, I was sitting on a ro a clearing when a guinea fowl trotted past, followed soon by about twenty uinea fowl, in single file. I lifted my gun and shot at each of them. It was exactly like shooting in a fun fair, with rabbits, or what you like, moving before you on a band. I missed all twenty of the guinea fowl, and thought how much easier it would be if only they were prepared to keep still. From this thought my success was born, and si was based entirely on the habits of guinea fowl, I shall now describe them—from a sportsman’s, not a naturalist’s, point of view.

    Guinea fowl move in flocks of anywhere from ten to two huhey  be heard a long way off, because of a k, k, king sound they make, like stones rubbing together under water. When disturbed, which they regularly are, si藏书网his king advertises their preseo every enemy for miles around, they set up a raucous plaint and ruremely fast in all dires. If they stuck to doing this, they would be practically invulnerable, but, no—curiosity is their downfall. More often than not, before they have run any distahey fly up into trees to see what is going on. Their wings are weak, and on the trees they are relut to launch themselves into space.

    Having sidered these facts and all their implications, I set out one day with the rifle and wandered around until I heard the “k, k.” I crept toward it. Then I heaved a large sto it. There was a scurrying, and presently seventy-fuinea fowl flew up into trees all around me. I khere were seventy-four because I sat on a log ting them and deg which looked the you and fattest. I then carefully aimed at this one and fired. The bird started perceptibly, aled bad watched a leaf that had been dislodged from a frond three feet above its head float down to my feet. I tried again. How difficult it is to keep a gun barrel still became apparent to me only now that I had all the time in the world to practice it. I walked to a nearby tree and laid the barrel against its trunk for support.

    The bird I had chosen was about four yards away. I kept the rifle steady long enough to shoot it in the crop. It fell, and I dispatched it with another shot, in the eye, a home with it. The family, naturally, assumed it had been shot on the wing, and in the eye at that—the first shot going unnoticed—and a letter with this news was at once sent to my brother.

    Thereafter, my teique, while remaining substantially the same, developed small refis. For instahough a properly trained dog would have been useless to me, we did have a dog perfey purposes. I took him along. He went full pelt toward the “k, k” as soon as he heard it, and by the time I arrived, dozens of guinea fowl were already perched oree, watg the dog, who was boung and yelling below them, satisfactorily distrag their attention from me while I arranged myself and y bird at leisure.

    A guinea fowl beset by a yapping dog tends to show uneasiness by turning slowly around and around on its perch, but it turns on its own axis and so presents a more or less stable target. There was one occasion when a bird sitting on a low bush was so fasated by the dog that I was able to lean over and pluck it off the branch by the legs. Then I wrung its neck. I have never before revealed this deplorable io a soul. When I took the fowl home, I explaihat the bullet had struck its beak a<mark></mark>nd stu, and said carelessly that it sounded very like one of my brother’s more tortuous feats.

    I knew very well that when my brother came home, that would be the end of me. And, in fact, on the evening of his arrival my brother took me into the bush, saying, “Now, let’s see you do it.”

    The dog went yapping off after a flock of guinea fowl. I shot negligently at a bird rising into a tree, shrugged, and said self-critically, “Damned bad shot.” My brother, of course, saw at ohat all sport with that flock was at an end, but the dog tio whine pointedly under various plump birds while my brother and I walked off in search of airborargets.

    This happened several times. My mother plaihat the larder was empty. Then, luckily, my brot a duiker that had presented a long shot downhill in bad light. We ate the duiker for a whole week (the main disadvantage of living in a sportsman’s paradise is the tedium of the diet) and I was able to say that it was altogether unsp to kill things while we were in no need of meat. But then there were ten days more of my brother’s holidays to get through, and my exposure was clearly immi. I tried to defer it by saying that I was incapable, for psychological reasons, of shooting anything while watched. I went off into the bush by myself, and my brother secretly followed and caught me i of shooting a sitting bird at four or five yards. I told him his behavior was sneaking and caddish, but he was too shocked to listen. He felt the blow to the family honor so profoundly that he said nothing that evening at supper. I think he was w how to break it to my father in the least traumatic way.

    That night, my brother went out spot-shooting—hunting with a light. Spot-shooting the way he did it was not unsp, because he saw to it that the ces were substantially oher side.９9liｂ? Only crude types use the headlights of cars; my brother fixed a weak bicycle lamp to his forehead a forth into the night like a quixotic Cyclops. The usual practice is to fix the eyes of an animal with the light, then walk as close as possible to the hypnotized creature and shoot it. My brother’s method meant that the creature would be ied but not fixed. It would have plenty of opportunity to run away.

    He returned from that expedition severely depressed. Apparently, he had seen two green eyes fifty yards off. They had not moved. He had shouted, but nothing had happened. He’d switched off his head lamp and fired between the eyes. They had not moved. He had fired again. It was obviously impossible that he could have missed, but he had fired three times more. Then he had walked up to his target vihat he would find five corpses piled up there. He had found, instead, two glow-worms on a log. The i was such a blow to his pride that he fot to discuss my case with my parents. This was, on the whole, lucky for the household, which, after my brother went back to school, I tio supply with meat until one happy day when I was able to leave for the city and the delights of civilization.

    My talents as hunter were useful oher occasion. It happehat while iy I became engaged, or attached—the precise word for this relationship evades me—to a young man who was in every ortsman. His ceptions of honor were intricate, and caused me hours of introspe, as a result of which I cluded we were ill-matched. He, however, did not think so, and tried to persuade me that my reluce to join my fate eternally to his was the result of tender age; I was sixteen at the time.

    Among other virtues, he had ideas about hunting, shooting, and fishing that  be described only as classic. He had a large number of gold and silver medals for marksmanship, and was, naturally, eager to visit our farm, where he could prove himself. Since leaving Scotland ten years before, never once had he set foot on any shooting ground but a target range.

    For a while, I made excuses, but at last they ran out, and we went home for a weekend visit. I took him guinea-fowl shooting, since I was famed for this, but, of course, I pressed the rifle into his hand with the self-denial proper to a good hostess. At once, he showed the correess of his upbringing by saying that no one had ever heard of shooting birds with a rifle. But he tried. He missed a good many guinea fowl running along the ground, which was hardly surprising, seeing the speed they get up. Then he missed a lot more flying up into the trees. He hit none. By that time, he was in a bad temper. He pushed the rifle bato my hand and said, “Well, then, you show me how to do it.”

    The guinea fowl were by now all safely up irees. We threw sto them, and even shook the trees, but they wouldn’t budge. I could not shoot. We began walking home along a track through the bush while I prayed that no sed flock of birds would annouself. I planned, if I heard the “k, k,” to talk very loudly and drown it. Suddenly he shouted, “Look! Now’s your ce!”

    Hundreds of feet away, a partridge dodged among the ruts of the road. I doubt whether even my brother could have hit it. A small puff of wind raised the dust. I saw my ce, and, muttering, “Damn this dust,” I fired at random into it.

    The dust subsided. The partridge lay dead, shot through the head—a running shot, from behind, at a hundred ay yards. I ejected the cartridge in an effit sort of way, and my panion paced the distawice. I said nothing, of course; one does not boast.

    He then began plaining that he was not used to the gun, that it was ten years since he had shot at a moving target, and so on. He tio excuse himself thus at supper. My father was silent. I imagihis was for the usual reason—that he was thinking of something else—but at last it came home to me that it was because his sense of decy was being ed.

    A good sportsman, I remembered, never puts the blame for his failures on the weather, or luck, or anything but himself. I have never uood why, but then it’s a man’s world.  day, my father said darkly that there was nothing like sport t out the ots in a man’s character, and, thus supported, I was able to break off the e, or attat, in the most honorable way. Soon after this, I acquired an inflexible principle—namely, that it is wrong to shoot f藏书网auna of any kind—and with that I laid down my gun. ?

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