MY SOMALI BOOK 201 



pure fluke, while the energy of the little bullet would 

 be so far diminished as to render its killing power 

 extremely uncertain, even if well placed. And the 

 springbok, mind you, as Mr. J. G. Millais writes, " for 

 their size are probably the toughest animals in the 

 world, and are said to have been known to carry away 

 as many as four Martini bullets when not absolutely 

 placed in a vital spot " — the Martini bullet weighing 

 exactly four times as much as that of the '310, besides 

 having a slightly higher velocity ! How many animals 

 were wounded in addition to the five killed with the 

 •310 we are not told. In some cases, the " sportsman " 

 could not have known whether he had hit or not. To 

 performances of this kind there is only one word to be 

 applied — criminal. 



But even with high-power rifles there is far too 

 much indiscriminate long-range shooting. In these 

 cases, men seem to think it is purely a matter of 

 trajectory, and that if they can judge the distance 

 with sufficient accuracy to obtain, with the low tra- 

 jectory of their rifles, a fairly correct elevation, they 

 are justified in shooting The matter of eyesight is 

 not considered. To go back to our bull's-eye target ; 

 when the rifleman on the range increases his distance 

 from the target he increases the size of his bull's-eye 

 so that at 500 yards we find the normal bull's-eye is 

 no less than two feet in diameter. Why ? Surely 

 the smaller " bull " would afford a greater test of 

 marksmanship ? So it would, but the test would be 

 too severe, for the simple reason that the 12-inch bull 

 at this distance affords far too small and indisthict a 

 mark to admit of accurate aim being taken by the 



