[HarryT]

"Big game" hunting was a popular subject for children's books certainly as late as the early decades of the 20th century. The original "Tom Swift" series of teenage adventure stories, for example, contained a title called "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle", published in 1911, (the book's title, purely as a side-note of possible interest, subsequently formed the basis of the word "Taser", the electric stun-gun used by police forces today) in which the eponymous hero commits mass slaughter of elephants, rhinos, etc, for the pleasure of the activity. Social attitudes to hunting were very different then to what they are today, and hunters at the time took a positive pride in killing the last members of what would today be called "endangered species".