CHAPTER VI. 



STALKING GAME. 



STALKING game belongs as much to the province of the outdoor naturalist as it 

 does to that of the hunter. For if he wants to observe game it is necessary 

 for him to approach them closely, and if he would watch them in their natural 

 state he must also remain unseen. Stalking for a camera shot is a very much more 

 difficult process than stalking for a rifle shot, for with an ordinary hand-camera 

 objects taken at forty yards look small enough and are sometimes quite invisible 

 if they have a dark background, whereas at four and five times that distance an 

 easy shot with a rifle is obtained. The average camera snap produces astonishingly 

 poor results. After infinite patience and trouble let us say, you stalk an animal 

 till at last you are as near as ever the animal is likely to let you get undiscovered. 

 Or it may be that you lay in wait for him till he comes so near to you that you 

 think at every moment he must see you, then in the excitement of the moment 

 you forget to focus correctly, or omit to roll the film, or take two photographs on 

 one plate, or any one of the thousand-and-one mischances that may occur. Finally, 

 when the film is developed you find either a complete blank or else a very bad 

 picture of some tuft of grass which has blocked the camera's eye ! At best you 

 get a photograph of a faint and hazy speck of an animal's body seemingly on the 

 horizon, when you had imagined that its bulk would fill the plate. When you are 

 as close to an animal as it is necessary to get for a fairly successful camera shot^ 

 it is practically impossible to look to the focussing or through the finder, as at 

 such close quarters the slightest movement, even that of looking down at the 

 camera, may betray one's presence. The only way is to arrange the probable focus 

 beforehand and to trust to luck for the finding. Good conditions of light and 

 shade, on which a successful picture so much depends, are rarely obtainable. 

 When the sun is out there is a heat haze to contend with, and when it is in, the 

 object is in too much shadow ; but perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of 

 the photographer is damp. The camera has often to pass day after day, during 

 the first few hours of the morning, through long, dew-covered grass which soaks it 

 quite as much as a heavy downpour of rain. After this the sun shines on it, which 

 warps it. Then there are the heavy thunderstorms which, without any warning, 



