INDIAN SHOOTING 311 



fully back to the top of the ridge, and starting your stalk afresh, 

 the intervening giound being impracticable. Once more you 

 try, leaving a man on the top of the hill to watch and signal 

 what the beasts do. You stalk carefully on ; the watcher makes 

 no sign ; you creep on the last hundred yards, to the exact 

 spot you wish to reach, and there is nothing. You search the 

 ground as far as you can get, and there are only a few foot- 

 prints leading over impassable ground ; you climb back again, 

 probably the only way you can go, vowing vengeance on the 

 watcher, and he tells you that the markhor lay quiet till you 

 were beginning your last crawl in — every second he expected to 

 hear the shot : suddenly they jumped up and disappeared, and 

 owing to the steepness of the ground he could not tell which 

 way they had gone. This sort of thing will happen over and 

 over again, particularly in Astor. 



Perseverance combined with good management always 

 brings luck in the end, but big bags of really fine markhor are 

 not to be expected ; one fair chance for each fortnight on the 

 shooting ground is a good allowance. 



It is always a pretty sight seeing markhor move down to 

 their feeding ground in the evening from the crags above where 

 they have been lying during the afternoon. Full gallop they 

 come, sending the stones whizzing in front of them, over the 

 most break-neck ground as if it were a level plain ; rearing 

 up on their hind legs and butting at one another, a venerable 

 old fifty-incher probably playing with his great-grandson, a 



jung spark of only twenty ; the whole lot of them thoroughly 

 enjoying the frolic. Ibex will play, and prettily too, but no 

 beast appears so thoroughly to enter into the fun of a good 

 skylark as a markhor. The master buck of the flock, how- 

 '^^'er, seems to keep the youngsters in pretty good order. 

 . ne writer was much amused once, watching a flock coming 

 down a particularly difficult cliff. The best buck led the way, 

 the flock following in single file soberly enough, the ground 

 apparently was not safe even for a markhor to frolic on ; 



irning a corner, the old fellow came to a wall of rock that, 



