ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 7 



First, then, study the habits of wild animals generally. They 

 are much the same all the world over, and a man may learn a 

 great deal by the side of an English covert, when the rabbits 

 and pheasants are running before the beaters, which he can turn 

 to good use when hunting bigger game. 



Why do you suppose some men always seem to get more 

 shots than others ; why do the birds always rise better to them 

 than to you ? Pure luck you think, and they perhaps don't 

 deny it. Don't believe it. The true sportsman knows by 

 instinct what tussock of grass will hold a rabbit as he goes by 

 it, and if a rabbit is there he won't let it lie whilst he passes. 

 You won't see him swing round, saving himself a bit and leav- 

 ing the likeliest corner in a big field unbeaten. The birds 

 would have sneaked down into the ditch and stopped there 

 whilst you wheeled by thirty or forty paces oif, but our friend 

 puts them up ; and if when those rabbits at the covert-side were 

 bolting just out of range between you and him, you think he 

 dropped his white pocket-handkerchief on the drive by mistake, 

 you don't know your man. That handkerchief just turned 

 them enough to bring them close by him, and he had awful 

 luck you know, and fired six shots to your one. 



That is the way in big game shooting too. Partly from ex- 

 perience, and partly by instinct, some men know- where to look 

 for a beast, and know the ways of it when found. Study then 

 the habits of beasts generally to begin with, and then those of 

 the particular beast you are going to hunt. Learn what it feeds 

 on at different seasons of the year, and where its food is to be 

 found ; learn at what time of day it feeds, and at what time it 

 lies down. Most animals feed early and late, just at dawn and 

 just at the edge of night, sleeping when the sun warms them, 

 using what Nature sends them instead of supplying the place 

 of the sun with a blanket as we do. Many beasts are almost 

 entirely nocturnal in their feeding hours, and these not only 

 such as one would naturally expect to prowl by night tigers, 

 lions and suchlike but ibex and mountain beasts which feed 

 on nothing worse than grass. Just at and before dawn most 



