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1As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse
2of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize
3and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however,
4while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment,
5seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes
6had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named,
7spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love
8the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like
9sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and
10to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery
11with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others,
12spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more
13favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her
14with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on
15the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a
16traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science
17reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human
18experience. They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and
19men and boys do not play so many games as they do in England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of
20hunting fishing and the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England boy among my
21contemporaries shouldered a fowling piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were
22not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder,
23then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an
24increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals
25hunted, not excepting the Humane Society. Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for
26variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might
27conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only
28now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less
29humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms.
30This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying
31ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way
32of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that
33reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am
34compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me
35anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes,--remembering that it was one of the
36best parts of my education,--make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so
37that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness,--hunters as well as fishers of
38men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who "yave not of the text a pulled hen That saith that hunters ben
39not holy men." There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men,"
40as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his
41education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit,
42trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any
43creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you,
44mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions. Such is oftenest the young man's
45introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher,
46until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist
47it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some
48countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the
49Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or
50the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens,
51whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they
52were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of
53seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing would sink to the
54bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all the while. The
55governor and his council faintly remember the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now they are
56too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at
57last. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used there; but they know
58nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even
59in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
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