300 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



^^Hl 



10,000 ft., and many of the shooting grounds are quite 

 17,000 ft. above the sea-level 



Its general colour is a light slaty grey. The ram has black 

 marks on the chest, side, and legs, and these are the points to 

 look for in a distant flock to distinguish the sex ; the ram's horns 

 being of a very pale colour, are often hardly distinguishable. 



The old rams in the summer generally live apart from the 

 ewes, and on some grounds, notably about Chumatung on the 

 Indus, the rams seem to take themselves oif to separate valleys ; 

 usually they keep to another part of the same valley, and occa- 

 sionally intermix. 



Burrel are quite the hardest animals to see on a hillside 

 unless they are moving ; their colour so exactly matches the 

 blue shale of Ladak, that when they are lying down a flock 

 may be easily overlooked by even a careful man with glasses. 

 Being pretty plentiful where they are found at all, and as a 

 rule, where not much shot at, fairly easy to approach, a visitor 

 to Ladak, if he works at all, must indeed have been behind 

 the door when the luck was served out if he cannot get a 

 few burrel heads. Ordinarily they are found on fairly broken 

 ground, and usually not very far away from rocky cliffs of some 

 sort ; they are capital climbers, no sheep better, and a wounded 

 ram is by no means an easy beast to recover. If a burrel had 

 only the horns of an ibex he would be the most charming 

 beast to hunt in the whole of the Himalayas. An old ibex 

 when he is shot stinks appallingly, and is practically uneatable. 

 A burrel on the other hand, no matter how old a ram he may 

 be, is always excellent ; his head, pretty trophy as it is, is his 

 weak point. The writer has seen burrel and ibex on the same 

 ground, though never actually feeding together ; a friend in 

 1866 saw burrel and ther feeding together between Joshimath 

 and the Niti Pass, and General Macintyre also notices this on 

 the same ground. 



As with ibex, several shots can generally be obtained at a 

 flock of burrel before they get out of range, provided the 

 stalker keeps hidden ; but he should take pains to stop his 



