SPOTTED DEER 



Soon after this I was pleased to see two nice bucks stalk 

 out of the forest on the far side of the tank, and come 

 walking along across my left front. Hastily throwing up 

 my loo-yard sight I sat up and fired at the leading buck, 

 which dropped at once, the other bolting across the tank. 

 I paced the distance to be 128 yards, and the bullet had 

 taken it rather far back, probably through the kidneys. 

 This was a good long shot for the " Paradox," and spoke 

 well for its accuracy. 



Tom did not get his crocodile. The success of the 

 shot gave me a bit of a surprise, as I was not accustomed to 

 finding the mark at that range in those days, for I have the 

 most painful recollections of a trip by myself into deer 

 country not very long before this occurrence, during which, 

 with the " Paradox," I fired sixteen shots, and only had 

 four deer to show for it ! This was in my " transition " 

 days, when I was gradually deserting elephant shooting for 

 the more fascinating sport of deer stalking, and was begin- 

 ning to think I had better take up rifle practice. 



I bagged a very pretty buck not long ago by quite a 

 "gallery" shot. It was during my visit with H. S. 

 Cameron to the land I had taken up in Tamankaduwa 

 for experimental planting, referred to in the chapter on 

 buffaloes. 



The land in question is an island of some 600 odd 

 acres in extent in the Mahaweliganga, about 50 miles up 

 river from Kottiyar Bay at Trincomalee. The river forms 

 a channel about 150 yards wide on each side of it. Most 

 of the land is forest or jungle, and we were making a tour 

 of inspection, which was fairly full of incident, our party 

 consisting of ourselves, the Mudaliyar, and a number of 

 Moormen. 



Arrived at the extreme lower end of the island, we 



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