BULLET AND SHOT 



antagonist, as Captain Baldwin, the author of 

 The Large and Small Game of Bengal, found to 

 his cost, since he underwent a severe pommelling 

 by a bull which he had hit. 



Although I have never bagged a specimen, the 

 wild buffalo was one of the first beasts at which 

 I fired after my arrival in India in the days of 

 my youth. 



Close to the tea estate in Assam on which I was 

 then residing, lay a large expanse of open swamp 

 and rice land, beyond which stretched a vast tract 

 of high reeds and grass, forming a very dense, 

 as well as high jungle. From the latter, a wild 

 bull buffalo used to visit and appropriate the herd 

 of tame females, which, in the season when there 

 was no rice cultivation, were accustomed to graze 

 in the swamp and in the area devoted to that 

 cereal. Upon many occasions I attempted to 

 shoot this bull, but as I had to plunge through 

 water up to my knees, and as, moreover, the 

 ground on which the herd was usually found was 

 quite open and destitute of all cover, the animal 

 would always move off before I could approach 

 near enough to put an 8-bore bullet into him, and 

 long shots at the bull, with this most unsuitable 

 weapon for long-range work, only resulted in 

 misses. One day, however, I came close upon 

 the herd, which was upon this occasion grazing 

 where there was some cover, and a bull, which 

 I took to be the wild one, dashed past me alarmed 

 at my presence, receiving as he passed a 2-ounce 

 bullet ; but this animal unfortunately proved to 



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