The same feeling has equally checked my hand in legitimate shooting: time after time I have flushed partridges without firing, and have let the hare bound over the furrow free.
I have entered many woods just for the pleasure of creeping through the brake and the thickets.

Destruction in itself was not the motive; it was an overpowering instinct for woods and fields.

Yet woods and fields lose half their interest without a gun--I like the power to shoot, even though I may not use it.

The very perfection of our modern guns is to me one of their drawbacks: the use of them is so easy and so certain of effect that it takes away the romance of sport.
There could be no greater pleasure to me than to wander with a matchlock through one of the great forests or wild tracts that still remain in England.

A hare a day, a brace of partridges, or a wild duck would be ample in the way of actual shooting.