54 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



a fresh trail be picked up it may be late afternoon before 

 one comes up to the quarry. All will then probably depend 

 on one shot. If the sportsman is so tired out that he cannot 

 hold the heavy rifle straight and steady he will have had 

 his trouble for nothing. And this is by no means a rare 

 ending to many hours' strenuous exertion. For these hours 

 of tramping over rocky hills under a hot sun are terrifically 

 arduous work. One must be abstemious I do not mean 

 teetotal and reduce the smoking allowance whilst engaged 

 on this kind of work or success need not be expected. 



One of the fascinations of bison shooting on foot resides 

 in the fact that it is not possible to anticipate how an 

 animal will act once he is wounded. The gaur is amongst 

 the shyest and most timid of animals. He is endowed with a 

 most wonderful sense of hearing and smell, and the slightest 

 taint of man's presence in the air or the snap of a small, dry 

 twig breaking the great midday silence of the jungle will 

 send him crashing blindly away on a trek during which he 

 may cover, if seriously alarmed, thirty miles or more 

 before he stops to browse and take matters easy once again. 

 It is a knowledge of these characteristics which necessitates 

 that slow, cautious and absolutely silent approach which 

 is imperative when on a hot trail, if the stalker wishes to 

 obtain a result from his hard work. It is this timidity also 

 added to the natural wildness and constitutional inability 

 to remain anywhere in the neighbourhood of civilization or 

 man, allied to the bulk of the animal and his roaming pro- 

 pensities, which necessitates the maintenance of large 

 tracts of untouched primeval jungle, if the species is to be 

 preserved from extinction. 



When wounded this instinct for self-preservation and 

 solitude may prove uppermost in the animal's mind and 

 lead to a blind rush for safety dead away from the direction 

 in which he imagines the danger to be. He may act thus. 

 In many cases he does. On the other hand, in numbers of 

 recorded instances he has exhibited a very different spirit. 

 The wound appears to have roused in him a blind fury, 

 under which all his usual instincts of timidity, fear and 

 cravings for flight to a safe solitude, seem to be overpowered 

 by an overmastering passion for revenge ; and to that 

 consuming fury he often adds a cunning which is of the 

 jungle and commonly found in all jungle folk when they 

 turn to bay against their enemies. It is now that the bison 



