really dangerous game. Only the actual trial will show. This is
not a question of courage at all, but of purely involuntary
reaction of the nerves. Very few men are physical cowards. They
will and do face anything. But a great many men are rendered
inefficient by the way their nervous systems act under stress. It
is not a matter for control by will power in the slightest
degree. So the big game hunter must determine by actual trial
whether it so happens that the great excitement of danger renders
his hand shaky or steady. The excitement in either case is the
same. No man is ever "cool" in the sense that personal danger is of
the same kind of indifference to him as clambering aboard a
street car. He must always be lifted above himself, must enter an
extra normal condition to meet extra normal circumstances. He can
always control his conduct; but he can by no means always
determine the way the inevitable excitement will affect his
coordinations. And unfortunately, in the final result it does not
matter how brave a man is, but how closely he can hold. If he
finds that his nervous excitement renders him unsteady, he has no
business ever to tackle dangerous game alone. If, on the other
hand, he discovers that IDENTICALLY THE SAME nervous excitement
happens to steady his front sight to rocklike rigidity-a
rigidity he could not possibly attain in normal conditions-then
he will probably keep out of trouble.

To amplify this further by a specific instance: I hunted for a
short time in Africa with a man who was always eager for exciting
encounters, whose pluck was admirable in every way, but whose
nervous reaction so manifested itself that he was utterly unable
to do even decent shooting at any range. Furthermore, his very
judgment and power of observation were so obscured that he could