CHAPTER XI 



i 



BUFFALO SHOOTING 



BY M. L. WILKINS 



MY experience of buffalo shooting is not great, having been 

 in at the death of only ten, seven of which were bagged by 

 myself. These were either stalked in the open park or 

 swamp country, or surprised in a mud puddle in the depths 

 of the forest, but this latter method is rather a tame per- 

 formance, as the close range renders a shot with a heavy 

 weapon almost a certainty ; still, this is preferable to pump- 

 ing lead into an animal at long range and merely wounding 

 it. It was at a forest water-hole I surprised and bagged 

 the bull which carried my best trophy. It was a huge 

 animal, and I have never seen another approaching it in 

 size. The horns are not extra long, but are very massive, 

 and measure from tip to tip round the curve and across 

 the forehead 82 inches. The widest span is 40 inches, and 

 the girth at the base is 1 5f inches. 



The head, the skin of which I took, was well set up by 

 a native taxidermist in Kandy, and in 1 900 it was borrowed 

 by the Ceylon Government to send, along with other 

 Ceylon trophies, to the Paris Exhibition, where it was quite 

 the largest of the heads there shown. The photograph of 

 this head, along with two ordinary ones, will give some idea 

 of its proportions. 



My best sport with these animals was in 1901, in com- 

 pany with my friend H. D. Garrick of Ukuwela. We first 

 found a herd of thirty-one in an open park, but the wind 



150 



