2 90 ACCIDENTS DURING NIGHT-SHOOTING. 



canoe and sportsman for a flight of duck, floating on 

 the water; * so does his more modern colleague Mr. 

 Folkard, in his work on Wildfowling. f A similar 

 case of a fatal accident quite recently came under our 

 own notice while in Australia, one man shooting a 

 comrade dead, who was fishing upon the river bank, 

 through mistaking his head for a duck ; full details of 

 this accident appeared in all the Australian papers at 

 the time. 



We mention these matters, as accidents might occur 

 through companions imprudently going to see " how 

 their friend was getting on in his hole," and so getting 

 taken for wild animals. Mr. Gordon Gumming for 

 instance, among others, distinguished himself at the 

 outset of his career as an African hunter, by shooting 

 the horses of a Boer settler, in the dark mistaking 

 them for some quaggas he had been in chase of.* 51 



Before closing the subject of night-shooting \ve 

 ought to say a few words upon the East Indian prac- 

 tice of shooting from a platform, usually constructed 

 in a tree (known in India as " machan "), generally 

 either " at a tie " over a live bullock or other animal, 

 tied up as a bait; or else over a "kill" or bullock 

 already killed and partially devoured by a tiger. Full 

 descriptions of this sort of sport may be found in most 

 of the leading works on Indian shooting. " For a man 

 to expose himself to a savage, night-seeing animal" 

 (on the ground) " when his own vision fails, is fool- 



* Instructions to Sportsmen, by Colonel Peter Hawker, originally 

 published 1816. 



f Wildfowling, by H. C. Folkard, 1875. 



See The Sydney Morning Herald, of March 25, 1895, and otner 

 papers of same and following days. 



** Five Years of a Htmter's Life in South Africa (1843 1848), 

 by Mr. Gordon Gumming of Altyre, 1850, Vol. i., pp. 80 and 81. 



