Of course the buffalo has disappeared, and the antelope is not as plentiful as he was, while some of the old shooting grounds dear to the memories of the fortunate hunters of twenty years ago have been very much shot out. This is true; but it is also true that if the successors of the Williamsons, Buxtons, Jamiesons, and others of an earlier day would display as much enterprise as those gentlemen did before them, they would probably find fairly good sport still. The man who follows another to an old shooting ground, getting there by a well-cut trail, or even by railway, to find camps made and the country thoroughly surveyed, naturally does not get as good sport as the ‘first man in,’ and does not deserve it. An old friend, whose reputation as an Indian sportsman stands as high as any man’s, told me that, though the old grounds were certainly a good deal shot out in India, he knew that close to them were other grounds unvisited which were almost as good (if not quite as good) as the old ones, and this he proved by sending a subaltern nephew off an old route for a very short distance into a country usually passed by, with the result that he got almost as good sport in the nineties as his uncle had had in the sixties. So it is in America to-day. One man follows another, as sheep follow their leader, and if you trust to guides they will, of course, take you to the places they know from experience, an experience which has been obtained at considerable cost to the game of the district. As I write I am reminded of an excellent example of that of which I am writing. There is in British Columbia a certain Irish baronet, a most excellent sportsman, who has probably had better sport with cariboo and grizzly than anyone else in the country. His two favourite grounds are now overrun by his followers, but in the year that _he cut the trail to his_ cariboo ground (it took him several days) he had excellent sport, and in Alaska he did so well with bear that next year a friend and myself found that all the skin-hunters in the country were on Sir Richard’s tracks. Of course we went elsewhere. So it is always. On the grounds which you find for yourself you may get excellent sport: on the grounds found for you by other people you have hardly a right to expect it. Before dealing then with the game list of North America in detail, let me say to the intending sportsman, Don’t be discouraged by every evil report: go and see for yourself: if possible get a hint as to where game is likely to be and then look for a country yourself, not slavishly following your predecessors or entirely depending upon men whom perhaps you don’t know very well to present a stranger with an accurate chart of the best hunting grounds they are acquainted with, the way to which they have discovered by their own hard work. As in everything else in life, so it is in sport: if you want to get anything worth having, you have got to earn it yourself in one way or another.