Game Animals of India, etc. 



sometimes a European sportsman gets to closer quarters 

 than is pleasant. This, however, is generally owing 

 to the practice of shooting uphill at a bear ; the rule 

 being to get above the animal on the hill-side, and 

 shoot downwards, when, after being hit, it will roll 

 away from the sportsman. When two bears are feed- 

 ing peaceably side by side, and one is wounded by a 

 bullet, it will generally, with a loud grunt of rage, turn 

 furiously on its companion, which it evidently con- 

 siders the aggressor, and the pair can then in most 

 cases be bagged by the sportsman. 



Thirty years ago bears were extraordinarily numer- 

 ous in Tilel, and the writer is almost afraid to say how 

 many he has seen in a day ; but at the present day 

 their numbers are greatly diminished. To the beginner 

 bear-shooting is exciting enough, but it soon begins to 

 pall, since, with due precautions to prevent them from 

 winding the sportsman, these animals can be approached 

 to within a short distance, and killed outright at the 

 first shot. Near the upper end of the Tilel valley I 

 once succeeded in getting within about 20 yards of a 

 brown bear, and killing it stone-dead with a smooth-bore 

 bullet, which broke one of the vertebrae of the neck. 

 When after ibex, Kashmiri shikaris are much put out 

 if their masters turn aside for the sake of a bear. 



General Macintyre gives the following account of 

 the behaviour of a pair of cubs whose mother he shot. 

 " As I considered," he writes, " the youngsters quite 

 big enough to take care of themselves, I aimed deliber- 

 ately at the old lady and let drive ; she rolled a short 

 distance down the hill, and, after a few struggles and 

 groans, expired. The two cubs at first merely stood up 

 on their hind-legs and gazed about them with much 

 apparent astonishment ; but on seeing their mother 

 lying motionless below, they at once ran down to her, 

 when their behaviour was such that 1 felt quite sorry 

 I had shot her. The anxiety they plainly evinced, as 

 they ran grunting and sniffing about their defunct 



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