HUNTING & SHOOTING IN CEYLON 



tection " of which every man in that village shoots game 

 throughout the season as a matter of business or trade. 



Another thing which may account for the official 

 apathy to a great extent, and which certainly prevents an 

 outsider like myself from taking action, is that our 

 game laws are so wonderfully perfect in their protection 

 of the poacher that, unless you actually see a man who 

 has no licence fire a shot and kill a deer, you cannot 

 possibly secure a conviction ! 



In the close season you might run in a man for being 

 in possession of deer-meat if you caught him red-handed, 

 otherwise the meat, once dried, can be sworn to as years 

 old, and there is no means of disproving it. 



However, I am getting off the track, and if I once 

 get on the " protection " question and let myself go, this 

 book would not contain a tithe of the matter I could 

 pour into it ! 



To return to our game, and my own limited experience 

 of elk shooting, I remember, some years ago whilst on 

 a trip in my favourite Tamankaduwa district, an old 

 " tracker " conducted me one morning from camp, just 

 after my 1 1 o'clock breakfast, to a remote park I had 

 never visited before. After a tramp of 3 miles through 

 forest and jungle, along an almost imperceptible track, 

 we came out into a small patch of grass interspersed with 

 big trees and clumps of scrub and jungle, looking most 

 attractive after our tramp through the dark forest, and 

 the first thing that met my eyes, after a glance round, 

 was a fine young " spike " buck elk that is to say, a 

 buck with his first year's horns, or at any rate a very 

 early pair of horns, a long way removed from the future 

 antlers of the mature buck. This was a trophy quite 

 worth securing as a bit of a curiosity, so I made up my 



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