216 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



stags may then be heard echoing far and wide in the silent 

 night. When lying down for the day, sambar, and par- 

 ticularly the solitary stags, will frequently allow one to 

 approach and pass them quite close without getting up, trust- 

 ing to concealment in the grass ; and it is really almost 

 impossible in many places for the sportsman on foot to see 

 them unless he actually stumbles on their forms. The hard 

 yellow grass, while unburnt, leaves next to no trail of the 

 passage of a single deer, and thus the search for sambar on 

 foot after the hour when they lie down is seldom very suc- 

 cessful. 



If information can be got from the people who frequent the 

 jungles for wood cutting, etc., of whereabouts the sambar are 

 feeding and resting at that particular season, capital sport can 

 be got with them in the day time with the aid of a riding 

 elephant. This enables you to see over the grass, and gene- 

 rally starts any sambar that may be lying down within about 

 a hundred yards. The elephant must be thoroughly trained 

 to stop dead short on deer getting up, and should not be 

 furnished with a howdah, the simple pad or xhdrjdmd being 

 preferable for this sort of shooting ; and the smaller and more 

 active the elephant is the better. You should start about 

 eleven o'clock and hunt till sundown, proceeding as silently 

 as possible through the longest patches of grass, with rifle on 

 full cock, for you do not generally get much time to make 

 ready once the deer get up. The presence of recently used 

 forms (which will be known by the droppings) will indicate 

 the probable proximity of deer; and it is better to beat 

 thoroughly a limited area than hastily a large extent of 

 country. Where the hills rise by steps, as is often the case 

 in the trap country, the outer edge of each step is the most 

 likely place, and the sambar will almost always run up hill. 



