VEHSUS " SHOOTING." 71 



require, it will not be long before you are able to detect its spoor if that part of the 

 bush is one of its haunts. A single old spoor-mark on the banks of a stream, at a 

 drinking-place, or on a soft patch of earth, provided that you can recognise it, is easily 

 seen and gives the needed information. You then know that the animal in question 

 is or has been in the locality, and you may assume it is so still, unless, indeed, by 

 knowledge of its habits you know that something has occurred to change the state of 

 affairs since it was there, such as the drying up of water or the absence of some 

 particular food supply. A case in point might be the coming of animals to eat the pods 

 of certain trees when they fell to the ground, which when the season was over the 

 animals lelt for other pastures. This is but one instance of the use a knowledge of 

 the habits of animals may be put to. 



When I see that some place is now deserted, whereas some time before animals 

 have visited it in numbers, I always try to find the reason. Copious old spoor and 

 no fresh spoor is a sign of this condition of things. I have often seen a place devoid 

 of game, but pounded all over with tracks made during the wet season. It is obvious 

 then that some chauije produced by this season accounts for their presence or 

 absence. Perhaps it is some herbage which grows only during the rains or is at its 

 best about that period. Or it may be that the animals have been driven to the spot 

 by the worse conditions of their usually drier resorts. 



It must be remembered that spoor made towards the end of the rains is very 

 permanent in its nature and out of all proportion to the tracks made at other seasons. 

 Thus, game may have been only a day or two in some place where the ground is 

 muddy and yet have left it covered with tracks which remain to the year's end to 

 testify to their presence. Subsequently, during the dry weather, they may have been 

 much longt^r in some other place and yet nearly all signs of their tracks be 

 obliterated by sand, dust, showers, growing of grass, and various other causes. 



But to return to the spoor-mark which I am supposing you have discovered. It 

 tells you that this spot is, or has been, the habitat of the animal wanted. If the 

 spoor is fresh you know then that in all likelihood the quarry is close, but in any 

 case that it cannot be very far away. It now becomes necessary to evolve a plan of 

 campaign, for the game you want is presumably somewhere in the forest or piece of 

 bush near. In it he must be found, but found in such a way that neither by scenting, 

 hearing, nor seeing he may get warning of your presence. 



The great points are, to avoid all undue hurry and to think out the situation 

 carefully. You take note of the direction the wind is blowing at the time and also 

 the direction of the prevailing wind, the latter discovered by the various signs 

 and traces it has left, such as bent grasses, moss on trees, and a multitude 



