24 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



to make me more depressed, and consequently homesick, 

 during my first year in India than any other experience to 

 which the youngster is subjected. But sleep and sunlight 

 next morn quickly dispelled such fits of the blues, and my 

 dislike of these beasts did not prevent my endeavouring to 

 shoot them whenever I met them in the jungles. Hyenas 

 I only saw in beats, on no occasion in that district did I 

 ever meet one face to face. 



Wild dog were fairly plentiful, and they gradually in- 

 creased in such numbers in neigh- 

 bouring districts in parts of the 

 Central Provinces as to seriously 

 threaten the game of those areas. 

 Whole blocks of forest would be 

 entirely deserted by deer and 

 such-like once a pack of wild 

 dogs commenced hunting in them. 

 Next to bison I suppose I 

 devoted most hours at that time 

 to the fascinating sport of tracking down sambhar on 

 foot. The miles I must have footed it with Bishu in this 

 pursuit ! 



We used to start out long before dawn and make for some 

 more or less lightly tree-clad, stony hill-side, and be some- 

 where high up on this just before dawn. A careful survey 

 of the neighbourhood as the light became strong enough 

 would often disclose a number of sambhar feeding at various 

 elevations on the hill-side. When I look back at those 

 excursions I am lost in amazement at the number of good 

 heads, even large heads, we sometimes saw in this fashion. 

 There was usually little difficulty in so arranging the stalk 

 that one got a shot at a good stag. Of course, the doe 

 sambhar with their " sentry-go " propensities gave trouble 

 when the stags were with the hinds. But in those days of 

 pick and choose we paid much more attention to the solitary 

 old stags, often possessing record heads, which would be 

 found feeding alone. 



Another good place for a find was the broad, cleared, 

 fire traces or lines which ran round or through the forests 

 for miles. Here, when the young grass was coming up over 

 the burnt area the traces were cleaned and burnt in the 

 cold weather after the first rains of the " chota bursat," 

 in the early morn or just before dark, you might, by quietly 



