202 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



a rifle poked over would have sent them off, and 

 among so many on the move, what chance of 

 bagging the "head of heads"? For he was 

 there, that forty-incher ; in fact, there were two 

 or three of whom I could confidently say, " I 

 shall not look upon his like again." Yet I would 

 willingly have foregone my chance of a head for 

 a good photograph of the whole herd. 1 



As for the shikari, Mahommed, he wanted me 

 to take the shot then and there. " Won't your 

 rifle carry so far?" he asked. This apparently 

 is the question asked themselves by some sports- 

 men, and being answered in the affirmative, the 

 shot is taken forthwith. Considering, however, 

 the enormous drop a bullet has between 250 and 

 500 yards, even from the most modern rifle the 

 drop of the Mannlicher bullet is something like 



1 Photography of wild animals on the plains of Africa has been 

 extremely successful, and the question suggests itself why a similar 

 measure of success should not attend the snap-shotting of hill game 

 elsewhere. It might be possible with modern apparatus, but one 

 would require unlimited time. Game is so much scarcer in a hill 

 country that the number of plates one could expose in a reasonable 

 time would be extremely small. The odds against any single plate 

 turning out a success are enormous, for granting a successful stalk 

 within fifty or sixty yards of a herd, one generally sees them against 

 a background of a hillside, when their " obliterative " colouring 

 would render a photo quite useless from a pictorial point of view. 

 A photo against the sky would very rarely be obtained, and would 

 then most probably only result in a black silhouette. I hope, how- 

 ever, the experiment will be tried by some very leisured person. 



