It may affect a man the first time he
has to speak to a large audience just as it affects him the first time
he sees a buck or goes into battle. What such a man needs is not courage
but nerve control, cool-headedness. This he can get only by actual
practice. He must, by custom and repeated exercise of self-mastery, get
his nerves thoroughly under control. This is largely a matter of habit,
in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of will power. If
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.
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