92 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



wounded buck under such circumstances seemed almost hope- 

 less, and entirely so if he had died during the night, but 

 eventually I decided to make an attempt. Making my way 

 as best I could by the easiest approach to the ledge where I 

 last saw the buck, I was of course wet to the skin long ere I 

 reached the spot, for forcing one's way through the twisted and 

 tangled masses of the dwarf pine, snow clinging to every twig 

 and branch, is the reverse of agreeable. However, I was to 

 be rewarded, for I had not gone far when I heard the whistle 

 emitted by the chamois when suddenly alarmed. Looking up, 

 I saw him standing on the ledge above me, his shaggy coat 

 outlined against the sky. It was his last tottering effort to 

 fly from his pursuer, and I believe I almost could have caught 

 him, so enfeebled had he become by loss of blood. A bullet 

 placed in a better place than the last one soon put him out of 

 his misery. It was a good five or six year old buck, and my 

 first bullet had struck him rather high between the spine and the 

 lungs, but ranging downwards had cut a furrow in the one lung 

 on the side of its exit. Overshooting game when firing down- 

 wards should be specially guarded against. For shots under 

 similar circumstances and at ordinary distances, it is a safe rule 

 to see daylight between the top of the bead and the body ; 

 where otherwise, if the shot were fired on level ground, one 

 would hold the bead right on the body. 



Cutting a branch or two from the nearest dwarf pine and mak- 

 ing use of the cord in my rucksack, a sort of sleigh was easily 

 improvised, and seeing a steep and uninterrupted slope near at 

 hand, I bundled the buck and myself down it in capital time, 

 and in a flying cloud of snow. At the bottom I brittled the 

 animal, for from there on I had to carry him, and finally 

 reached the hut just as dusk and snow were simultaneously 

 commencing to fall upon the landscape. A roaring fire and 

 the fact that I had brought a change of underclothing with me, 

 and discovered a pair of discarded old sabots in the adjoining 

 cowshed, together with the solacing effects of a delicious stew 

 of liver and brain, soon put a rosier hue upon things generally. 



