From Recollections of My Fifty Years Hunting and Fishing

There are several reasons why I have written this book. I have hesitated to undertake it for a long time.

- William B. Mershon

Introductory

I am aware that I cannot paint in glowing colors commonplace events. I know I have very little literary talent, but I have had such a glorious time afield with rod and gun for half a century, I feel that others should enjoy some of these memories with me.

The better reason mayhap why I have undertaken to tell these stories is that in the years to come comparison can be made with the past and future, and even the contrast of today with those days I have written about is so great that the younger sportsman will marvel …

Some of the pictures and size of the bags will at once suggest “game hoggishness” and would be unpardonable, even if today they were possible, but in the old days they were not so regarded, and I very much doubt if the bag of the sportsman of old was any cause for the diminishing supply of wildlife. Environment, and not the gun of the sportsman — I will not exempt the market hunter entirely — must be the explanation. The buffalo had to go. Had no wild pigeons been killed where could they feed in numbers now?