SHEEP AND GOATS 253 



This working for a good bag is much to be depre- 

 cated, and now I believe game laws have been made 

 in Kashmir, limiting each sportsman to so many head 

 of the same sort. 



The thar is a species of wild goat, and is to be 

 found on the same sort of ground as the markhor. 

 He is just as difficult to find and stalk as his habits are 

 very similar. Early in the morning and late in the 

 evening he emerges from some densely wooded shelf 

 on the crags, and grazes on the steep grass slopes in 

 the vicinity. It takes a very steady head to hunt the 

 thar : one slip, and away would you go into eternity. 

 You must be careful, withal, where you shoot your 

 thar, for although, if he does roll a thousand feet or 

 so down the cud, or hill slope, his horns, from their 

 shape and size, are not so liable to smash as those of 

 the markhor, still it may happen that when you get 

 to your quarry he is smashed up into a pulp. 



Some years ago I had been hunting for a markhor 

 in the Pir Punjal range without success for some time. 

 I had been out for a week without shooting my rifle 

 at anything but a bear, which I had bagged. I had 

 certainly come across one of those solitary beasts 

 called serow, a sort of goat-antelope. But although 

 he was proceeding in quite a leisurely fashion in 

 front of me, ascending an opposite spur, he per- 

 sistently got behind a tree whenever I covered him 

 with my rifle, so that eventually he topped the spur 

 without giving me a chance. Saddik, who was, and 

 is, if still alive, the oldest and best shikari in the 

 Pir Punjal, took me to a camp a few miles below on 



