the man has the right stuff in him, his will grows stronger and stronger
with each exercise of it--and if he has not the right stuff in him he
had better keep clear of dangerous game hunting, or indeed of any other
form of sport or work in which there is bodily peril.

After he has achieved the ability to exercise wariness and judgment and
the control over his nerves _which will make him shoot as well at the
game as at a target_, he can begin his essays at dangerous game hunting,
and he will then find that it does not demand such abnormal prowess as
the outsider is apt to imagine. A man who can hit a soda-water bottle at
the distance of a few yards can brain a lion or a bear or an elephant at
that distance, and if he cannot brain it when it charges he can at least
bring it to a standstill. All he has to do is to shoot as accurately as
he would at a soda-water bottle; and to do this requires nerve, at least
as much as it does physical address. Having reached this point, the
hunter must not imagine that he is warranted in taking desperate
chances. There are degrees in proficiency; and what is a warrantable and
legitimate risk for a man to take when he has reached a certain grade of
efficiency may be a foolish risk for him to take before he has reached
that grade. A man who has reached the degree of proficiency indicated
above is quite warranted in walking in at a lion at bay, in an open
plain, to, say, within a hundred yards. If the lion has not charged, the
man ought at that distance to knock him over and prevent his charging;
and if the lion is already charging, the man ought at that distance to
be able to stop him. But the amount of prowess which warrants a man
in relying on his ability to perform this feat does not by any means
justify him in thinking that, for instance, he can crawl after a wounded
lion into thick cover. I have known men of indifferent prowess to
perform this latter feat successfully, but at least as often they have
been unsuccessful, and in these cases the result has been unpleasant.