THE INDIAN BISON. 305 



yoa, and you should always carry the rifle yourself. The rest with 

 your horse will follow on the tracks on their own account 3 or 400 

 yards behind. The water man, however, I keep within 100 yards, as 

 you constantly want to have a suck at the water. It is impossible to 

 know when you will come up with the bison, even when the tracks 

 are quite fresh, and they are apparently not more than a few 

 minutes or half an hour ahead ; they may keep walking on for hours 

 as fast or faster than you track ; on the other hand, although the 

 signs on the spot you have reached show that it must be some 

 hours since they passed, they may have lain down a short distance 

 in front, and may be close at hand. Every two or three hours it is 

 pleasant to sit down for a few minutes in the shade and have a 

 smoke, but the ardour of the chase soon drives you on, till suddenly 

 a loud snort and a rush announces that the bison have seen you 

 first and are off. If you can make out a good bull, and he is broad- 

 side on, take him running, and if he is within a 100 yards you ought 

 to kill him. If his stern is to you do not fire. Unless the jungle 

 is pretty open, it is not easy to mak6 out the bull, Never fire a chance 

 shot, which can only result in some wretched rubbish of a young- 

 bull or worse still a cow being hit. If you do not fire you continue 

 tracking, and you may be sure as a rule two or three hours will elapse 

 before you see them again. The tracking will be easy for a mile or 

 two while the herd has been galloping. They then pull up and go 

 on a steady walk for miles, and your chances of a shot are much less 

 now than when you began, as they are on the look out and difficult 

 to approach. They sometimes sit down again if the day is 

 very hot; on a cloudy day they go much further. A solitary 

 bull when disturbed by seeing you does not go so far as a herd 

 will before stopping; he too will sit down again on a hot day. 

 If bison have not seen you but only winded you, they stop 

 sooner. If you fire at them it is no use going after them any more, 

 as they will usually go many miles before stopping, and the day is 

 too short to come up to them again. If, however, the bison are 

 not lying in long grass, you ought to see them first : a herd will be 

 found sometimes standing, sometimes lying down ; your attention 

 most likely is first attracted to them by the flap of a ear or the moving 

 of a tail. It is astonishing how the least thing moving in the jungle 

 attracts the eye. They will probably be about 200 or 300 yards off, 

 as you cannot see very much further in jungle. I have generally 

 found them easy to stalk, the only difficulty being to find the bull 



