INTRODUCTORY. 5 



unsporting. So it may serve to whitewash the character of true sportsmen to 

 state the grounds on which I consider the hunting of the animals I have selected, as 

 sport and not butchery. 



To begin with, all these animals — elephant, lion, buffalo, the kudus, the bongo, 

 and a few others — give you a lot of fun for your money. That is to say, whereas 

 one might go and shoot ten of the plain-dwelling buck in a morning, should one 

 be so evilly disposed, the chances are that one may hunt many days after each of 

 the others without getting a single animal. Indeed, every animal brought to bag has 

 had a very good sporting chance of escape, which can hardly be said of the 

 plain-folk. This alone should remove the sport beyond the criticism of a race whose 

 boast it is that they like to see fair play. 



It would have been interesting if I had kept a record of the many miles I have 

 tramped after elephant. Very seldom have I had to walk less than a hundred miles 

 to bag one elephant, and often I have been very considerably farther. With lion I 

 have estimated that I have had seven to eight blanks to every one success. This is, 

 of course, hunting on foot. 



I count as a blank either an excursion of several days, made without success to 

 a place in which lions have been reported, or an occasion on which I have found a 

 fresh kill and sat over it, or seen lion and been unable to get close, or when I have 

 had some other very good reason for imagining I might get one. 



I will now take these animals selected in turn and endeavour to offer my 

 justification for wanting to shoot them. 



Elephant-shooting is a kingly sport ; there is nothing on earth to touch it. 

 Once one has tasted of its excitement he can never return to the shooting even of a 

 lion or buffalo with the same zest. 



The elephant nowadays is almost invariably found in the most atrocious country, 

 so thick that you can seldom see him till you are close on him, and even then you 

 will hardly ever be able to see what size his tusks are till you have watched him from 

 close quarters for some time and seen him throw up his head. Even then you get 

 but a momentary glimpse. Hunting him takes you through thick grass reaching 

 far over your head, and through which a way has to be broken in a blazing sun 

 without a breath of air to cool you. It takes you through thick, tangled, and 

 matted bush, through swamps waist-deep, through virgin forests choked with 

 creepers and undergrowth, up steep hills to chilly heights of 10,000 feet and over, 

 and through every conceivable kind of bad country. It is prodigiously hard work, 

 includes tracking, most careful and minute attention to wind, and compels one to be 

 constantly on the ijui vive, with eyes, ears, and even nose to catch sight, sound, or 



