Just where the Sport comes in.

Otago Witness, Issue 2805, 18 December 1907, Page 26 (Supplement)

Just where the Sport comes in.

By E. D'Esterre.

Bang ! Bang ! and the echo ringing back from the purple hills on the frosty air early in the morning, and the water shining clear in the lagoons and the emell of the swamps coming up to you, and the wag of the tail of your dog ! Oh, but there's poetry in it, there's glorious sport, there's the tingle of the air in your lungs as pure as spring water and strong a 6 wine. What is there on earth to equal that moment, after hours and hours of patient stalking through tangled fern and a jungle of undergrowth, when the noble antlered head stands out against the skyline on a ridge and the rifle is trained true for the heart ? The first kiss on some moonlight night by a silver sea, the run in to the death where the tails of the worrying pack are going like clockwork, the leap of a big brown trout, — no, none of these compare : they are as water to wine. And then there is the stealthy float down some almost unknown river where at any bend the wild duck may rise, the listening by the reeded stream at twilight for the honk! honk! of the big gander coming over with his flock from the lagoons hidden away in the trackless forest, or the first baying of the big pigdogs when you know they have bailed up a mighty boar ! If you haven't known these moments, you haven't li\ed.

As I write here in Rotorua. in the heart of the wonderland of the North, the moon is hanging like a golden globe over the hills by Rotokawa, whence Hinemoa swam to her lover at Mokoia, and 1 know that over there, by Roto-iti and the Ohau channel, the grey duck quacks and dives, and my gun sulks reproachfully in a corner

)f the room and sarcastically, if mutch, quotes " that lot about the pen being mightier than the sword." Up here in this northern country is the sportsman's paradise and if I tell you about it in m\ own way the process may wean ni\ thoughts from those ducks. Oh ! but 1 can hear the beggars calling me, and that confounded gun looks so clean and ready '. And Spot (that's the dog) is asleep by the fireside dreaming of millions of ducks and rabbits and pheasants.