BEARS & WATER-HOLE SHOOTING 



occurred during the rest of the night, and I did a bit of 

 sleeping until daybreak, when, as soon as it was light 

 enough, I got down frem the stage and went to look for 

 the wounded female first shot at. A short search in the 

 forest soon found her lying under a hollow tree breathing 

 heavily, so I went up close and fired into her, and at my 

 shot she got up, ran violently about 30 yards and fell 

 dead. Examination revealed that my first shot, fired from 

 above, had entered behind the right shoulder, traversed the 

 chest, gone down the whole length of the left fore- leg 

 under the skin, and out at the wrist or ankle a most 

 extraordinary course for a 12-bore ball to take, and how 

 the poor animal lived so long with such a wound seems in- 

 credible. When skinning this bear the youngster appeared, 

 and we tried to catch him ; but he was too big for us to 

 tackle, so we let him go. We looked for traces of the 

 other wounded bear, but could find none, as they don't bleed 

 much, so we returned to the hollow, skinned the other 

 dead bear, and went back to camp. 



Two nights later I watched at this hole again, killed 

 two more bears, one of them the wounded one of the 

 previous occasion, and missed a leopard. 



The fact of the wounded bear having to return to the 

 same water-hole shows how curiously conservative and 

 stupid animals are, for there were several other pools 

 of water available within no very great distance. The 

 presence of the stinking carcase of the dead bear also 

 seemed to be no deterrent as far as other animals were con- 

 cerned, but for our own sakes we partly buried it under 

 the sand before we began our second watch. 



Once, on another occasion when watching for bears, I 

 had not been long on my stage when I heard a most fearful 

 hullabaloo, and presently a bear came rushing down the 



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