54 WILD DOGS. 



villagers often use them for hunting down jurrow, especially 

 during winter, after severe snowstorms, when these heavy 

 deer, from being unable to travel fast in the deep snow, are 

 easily driven down to the foot of some deep gorge, and there 

 mobbed by their pursuers, who despatch them wholesale, regard- 

 less of sex or size, with axes, sticks, and stones, in default 

 of better weapons. Although the hill villager never loses an 

 opportunity of killing jurrow in defence of his crops as well 

 as for food, they have an equally inveterate foe, in common 

 with most Himalayan game-animals, in the wild dog, Cuon 

 rutilans of natural history. The " bhowsa," as it is here called, 

 usually hunts in smaller or larger companies, and will follow 

 its prey with most deadly pertinacity and cunning manoeuvr- 

 ing, until the whole pack closes round its devoted quarry, of 

 which it makes short work. Even the striped king of the 

 forest is said to dread the presence of the bhowsa on his 

 domain. Should the hunter find that a pack of wild dogs 

 has been sharing the sport in the same locality with him, he 

 may as well strike his tent and make for other ground. But 

 we shall now see what the more domestic members of the 

 canine family can do in the same line of business. 



Having mustered our small army of bipeds and quadrupeds, 

 we started for the wood, which soon rang with shouts and 

 whistles as the line beat through it. On getting about half- 

 way down, it was evident, from the increased uproar of the 

 beaters and the barking of the dogs near the centre of the 

 wood, that something was afoot there. On reaching the spot, 

 we found the wounded deer lying in a pool of water in the 

 steep rocky bed of a stream, with the curs baying around it. 

 The defenceless creature, a big milk-hind, was unable to rise, 

 for, in addition to a smashed leg from the bullet, she had 

 broken another among the slippery wet rocks, in her endeav- 

 ours to escape from the dogs. I was stricken with remorse 

 at seeing the poor animal lying helplessly there, with her 

 large mild eyes turned reproachfully, as it were, on her per- 



