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Game and Tame

Between game and tame meats there can never be a choice, for they're as opposite in character as a saltily piquant Dan Boone in a coonskin cap and your insipid sit-bythe-campfire sissy who dresses up in mail-order shooting togs that may be jodhpurs for all you care, waits till the real hunter of the party, usually the guide, lugs in a thirty-two point buck, then heaves it over his own shoulder and has his picture took. And when we say hunter we don't mean fox hunter either, those unspeakable "unbeatables in pursuit of the uneatable." Going after something you can't eat seems a criminal waste of time to the all-around sportsman who's run around all day like a dog and raised an appetite equal to raw meat by dusk when he limps in on his own legs plastered with mud and burrs in his beard, but partridges instead of cartridges in his kick. The regular guy who knows what it's all about and hence values his paunch and venison haunch as much as he does his large bore .30-06 or deadly .22. He's the lad who can get the wind on furred or feathered game, conceal his own scent without using anything under the armpits, correctly stalk all prey, draw a deadly bead, bag the kill, hang it properly, dress and truss it and then-hold your breath-cook it even better than Oscar could at the Waldorf. He may take home a rare trophy to have it mounted or stuffed, but taxidermy is nothing to him compared to gastronomy.