A Day on the German Boundary 



stalking takes out of one when I say that the 

 shot of my life followed on the press of the trigger, 

 and I found on reaching him (he had sprung high 

 into the air and fallen plumb on the spot) that 

 I had hit him bang in the head. I need hardly 

 say that a two-inch bull at 250 yards is Bisley 

 marksmanship, but that, when one is aiming at his 

 body some three feet underneath, is little short of 

 a monstrous and shocking fluke. However, all's 

 well that ends well, and my sister-in-law says she 

 admires his feathers very much ! 



After a couple of porters had tied him on to 

 a stout pole and shouldered him back to camp, 

 on we went, and the next thing I struck was a 

 solitary black-tailed gnu the wildebeest of com- 

 merce. They seem to have a certain sense of 

 humour, do these curious brutes, as they allow one 

 to get within some three hundred yards, staring hard 

 all the time, before they bolt off at a hard gallop, 

 whirling their tails round and round like a catha- 

 rine-wheel. This performance repeated often is 

 quite enough to break one's heart, and means that 

 it will be just as well to give up the chase and leave 

 him alone, as there is no getting near him for hours 

 afterwards that day. On the other hand, view him 

 in the distance tail-on, and give up all other ideas 

 but the bagging of him, take infinite pains, and 

 stalk until you are blue in the face and "sweating 

 blood" from every pore, get behind any decent 

 semblance of a bush, wait and whistle from some 



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