SWAMP DEER 299 



flashed on me in a moment: Aim low under the chin. 

 I did so, and pulled off. There was a stampede, and 

 the herd made off, uttering their notes of alarm as 

 they went. The smoke cleared in front of me. 

 Where was my stag ? I pushed on to where I saw 

 him last. There he lay, stone dead, with a bullet- 

 hole in the middle of the neck. Death must have 

 been instantaneous. Puddoo came rushing up, and 

 danced a war dance round him. He certainly was 

 a beauty, and held the record for some time in Ward's 

 Book of Death, but since then one has been shot half 

 an inch longer in length of beam from burr to tip. 

 I cut off the head, and covering the carcass with 

 branches to keep off the vultures, I went home to 

 breakfast quite a happy man. I shot as many more 

 of these stags as I wanted before I left the district, 

 one or two of them with very handsome heads. I 

 have also met with these stags in the sub-Himalayan 

 regions, but nowhere have I seen anything like the 

 heads shot in the Central Provinces. 



When hunting buffalo in Assam I have come 

 across a good many, but I never saw one that I 

 thought worth killing, taking the standard from 

 what I had seen in Mundla. 



MITHAN OR GAUR OF ASSAM 



In the month of February, not long ago, I lay 

 in camp on the Dehong, a tributary stream of the 

 Bramapootra river. My tents were pitched on a 

 sand flat, and jungle surrounded me. The country 



VOL. II X 



