Big Game Shooting 



waited silent for a time, hoping for the best and 

 talking in whispers till the dawn broke. A large 

 object, evidently alive and some one hundred yards 

 away, immediately attracted our attention, but its 

 huge bulk in the shadow gradually dwindled in 

 the light of day to the ungainly form of the 

 humble wildebeest. We were so annoyed with 

 him on finding that he was not the object of our 

 search, that he went off, galloping and wildly 

 whirling his tail, into oblivion for all we cared. 



On we trekked for some distance, marching 

 parallel about two miles apart, each with our 

 small posse of gun-bearers and porters, so as to 

 give greater scope for our eyes and to cover more 

 ground in which to find game. 



At last I sighted a cock ostrich, then two, then 

 two more, hens. Taking liberties as usual, to see 

 how near one can get by walking casually by 

 oneself, I found myself about four hundred yards 

 off, and at once thought of a stalk. Another 

 hundred yards in a crouching position, with a 

 fifty yards' crawl on my stomach, brought me 

 close enough, as there was little or no more cover, 

 and I should only have pumped myself worse than 

 I was already, and therefore should have been too 

 shaky to shoot. A breather for five minutes — 

 during which time the ostriches seemed to have 

 an idea something was up — enabled me to recover 

 my breath enough to draw a fairly steady bead on 

 one of the cocks ; but it only shows what a lot 



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