CHAPTER XIII 



A morning's stalk after black buck 



stalking black buck- — Glorious scenery — Description and habits of black 

 buck — ^Methods of stalking — Experiences with buck — The villager 

 shows the way — A disappointment — A difficult stalk — The lord of 

 the herd — The alarm — A patient wait — Move forward again— Fire at 

 the buck — A marvellous performance— The buck drops — A fine head. 



I LAY ventre d, terre on the grassy plain barely 

 hidden by a small patch of the thorny ber plant. 

 Behind me the havildah was similarly extended some 

 hundred paces away. 

 The sun had been above the horizon about an hour, but 

 the dew lay heavy upon bush and grass, sparkling and 

 scintillating like pearls in the low slanting rays. To the 

 north the hills stood up in bold relief, their bases enveloped 

 here and there in filmy masses of mist. Stretching away 

 from the foot of the hills lay a dark green belt of forest 

 land, the famous Terai jungles towards which my camp 

 had been slowly journeying for some days. In that direction 

 my hopes of good sport were centred. For with moderate 

 luck I expected to be able to bag at least one tiger and 

 perhaps more. 



I had left the camp that morning at dawn with the object 

 of stalking a herd of black buck which contained a buck 

 with a fine pair of horns, fine that is for this part of India. 



The black buck is one of the most beautiful and dainty 

 of the Indian antelopes, as unlike its great clumsy heavily 

 built cousin the nilgai or blue bull, which resembles a pony 

 more than anything else, as it would be possible to conceive. 

 The old black buck males are black on the back and white 

 beneath, and possess a pair of beautiful spiral blackish 

 horns which are hollow and are not shed as are the antlers 

 of deer. 



The antelope live out on the great plains of India and 



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