ioo BIG GAME SHOOTING 



distributed between the shoulders and the small of the back, 

 leaving the arms and muscles perfectly free play. The writer 

 has used them for years in the Rockies, and the alacrity ex- 

 hibited by the Indians in one's employ in taking to them 

 in lieu of headstraps and crossbands showed that there was 

 one improvement that the old world could show the new one. 

 A well-known writer on sporting subjects not long ago, when 

 recommending this bag to young shooters, stated that it was 

 originally introduced by a gentleman in Carlisle. If so, it 

 must have been a good many years ago ; for the Prince Consort 

 used them in Scotland from the first year he shot in the 

 Highlands, and the writer's father used them in the Highlands 

 forty-five or fifty years ago. In Tyrol it has been in use for at 

 least four hundred years, for we see it in prints of Maximilian's 

 day. As for clothing, the best nether garments for really 

 rough work are dark-coloured chamois leather breeches, 

 reaching to the knee, leaving it bare, with worsted stockings 

 long enough to reach well over the knees in snowy weather. 

 Ordinary woollen knickerbockers will not stand many hard days 

 of chamois stalking in a limestone formation ; in fact, the end of 

 the first stalk will probably find them seatless. 



CHAMOIS DRIVING 



What has been said will show that, to become a successful 

 stalker, practice and early training in mountain work are, if not 

 absolutely essential, at least very desirable, and even the pos- 

 sessor of these advantages has cause to pray for perpetual 

 youth. As years roll by, even the keenest stalker gradually 

 becomes more and more reconciled to the assistance afforded 

 by beaters and other extraneous aids to outwit this wary game, 

 and more and more satisfied with the buck carefully picked 

 from the band as it rushes past one's post in headlong flight, 

 or in cutting short the earthly career of a tricky old veteran 

 whose oft-repeated practice of sneaking through the line of 

 guns unobserved was attempted once too often. 



