DIFFICULTIES OF SPYING 187 



more difficult to make certain of getting a good roe 

 head in China than any other trophy. But then 

 the head you want most is sure to be the one to 

 elude you ! To start with, the corries which they 

 frequent are most difficult to spy, covered as they 

 are with long dry grass. I am speaking, of course, of 

 winter hunting in October and November ; in the 

 summer, when the grass is long, roe-stalking must 

 be pretty well an impossibility, for no spying, how- 

 ever careful, would reveal the game in such thick 

 cover. The roe are very small, and the corries are 

 very large. I shall never forget one evening when 

 Lao-Wei and I were coming back to camp. He 

 suddenly stopped and said " Pao-Zoo / "—the native 

 name for roe. I looked and looked, but could see 

 nothing. At last, four or five hundred yards off, I 

 saw what, even through the glass, looked like a 

 little patch of grey fur ; it was only after some 

 minutes, when he moved, that I distinguished a 

 buck, so completely dwarfed was he by his sur- 

 roundings. 



A great difficulty to contend with when spying, 

 and one which is practically insurmountable, is the 

 steepness of the sides of the gullies. This, coupled 

 with the long grass, renders it impossible to spy the 

 bottom of the slope on which you stand. The 

 only place from whicli to get a clear spy is from 

 the opposite ridge. 



In winter the valleys are in shadow comparatively 

 early in the afternoon, and this again makes spying 

 no easy matter from the sunlit tops. The great 

 essential when after roe-deer in Kansu, or anywhere 

 else for that matter, is careful spying. 



We saw deer nearly every day, but in the sixteen 



