94 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



ages ago by lightning, and now affording in its hollow trunk a 

 safe hiding-place for his rifle and capacious rucksack, in the 

 folds of which more than one buck had, I suspect, been ' extra- 

 dited ' back to Tyrol. There was really no reason for Hans 

 to hide his rifle, for he was here on his own ground, but being 

 a wild and uninhabited stretch of country and only peasants 

 their victims, the Bavarian keepers would often defy the rules 

 of international intercourse, and would cross into Tyrol to 

 search Alp-huts they suspected of harbouring poachers — a pro- 

 ceeding which was all the more aggravating to the Tyrolese, for 

 m consequence of topographical reasons the chamois were, if 

 length of residence counted, really more their own than the 

 Bavarian King's — the peculiar lay of the country causing 

 the chamois to leave the Tyrolese mountains, which faced the 

 south, during the hot summer months to seek the cooler 

 northern aspect on the Bavarian side of the line, returning to 

 their home-range with the first September or October snow- 

 storm, after which period the south aspect of the moun- 

 tains remained their home for eight or nine months of the 

 year. The King usually held his big drives in August, an 

 exceptionally early period, and, 4s the Tyrolese persisted in 

 maintaining, they were held so early for the special purpose of 

 getting their chamois, a pretension which received some colour 

 in their eyes by the circumstance that the keepers used to take 

 special precautions at this season to prevent them escaping over 

 the line. 



My only hope for sport in that neighbourhood, those hot 

 August days, lay in the circumstance that at one point the 

 boundary line, instead of following the watershed, crossed from 

 point to point, leaving the northern declivities of one of the 

 higher peaks down to its base on the Tyrolese side. Towards 

 this spot, about two hours' climb from the hut, I shaped my 

 course early the next morning after a comfortable night in the 

 hayloft. It was necessary to get to the spot at sunrise, for 

 otherwise the chamois, who used the narrow ledges that ran 

 across the face of the exceedingly precipitous slope only for 



