STALKING GAME. Ill 



In stalking, the lie of the land must be appreciated and committed to 

 memory, and the line of the preliminary approach settled on. This must be 

 worked out from a distance, and once it is embarked on should be performed, 

 if possible, without again passing into sight of the game. This appreciation of 

 the country, even to the experienced, is often a very difficult matter. 



The folds of the plains are very deceptive, and from a distance it is often impos- 

 sible to tell if a stretch of ground has a gentle slope upwards or downwards. Even 

 with a valley or a bottom it is sometimes equally difficult to determine in which 

 direction lies the fall. I have been on the plains with an expert surveyor and 

 sketcher when neither of us were able to tell which was the trend of a valley 

 until we reached its bottom, and even then it was only by the direction in which 

 the grass was tangled that we were able to make certain. The plains are very 

 like the Sussex or Wiltshire Downs, except that the slopes are much more gentle 

 and the expanses more vast. As to comparative sizes, if one of the Wiltshire or 

 Sussex Downs was set in the midst of the plains it would appear something like 

 an oasis of greener grass. 



It is only by actual practice on such plainslands that the requisite knowledge of 

 country may be acquired for this preHminary part of stalking. It is only practice 

 that enables one to realise the degrees of difference in the various slopes of ground 

 and the relative heights and positions of one to the other. It is a very difficult 

 matter to decide what exact objects lie in a direct line between any two distant 

 points, and to gauge what is the probable visibility or invisibility of such objects 

 when observations are made from either point. After laying one's plans, more 

 often than not a valley or sudden sharp descent, impossible to see from one's 

 first position, upsets all the calculations. No matter how good one's knowledge 

 of country may be, it is impossible to base calculations on the things which lie 

 screened behind other objects. I might take as an example the hill of Lukenya, 

 on the Athi Plains. As you pass this hill in the train at about Kapati Plains 

 Station, it looks exactly like a round stony kopje rising alone out of the plains. 

 This kopje is in reality the precipitous bluff at the end of a long saddle-backed 

 range of hills stretching back some ten miles where it merges into the hills of 

 Wakamba-land. 



The preliminary part of stalking entails a knowledge which can alone be acquired 

 by practice ; if, in addition, the country itself is known this gives the stalker a tremen- 

 dous pull. For then, besides the formation of the hidden parts of the country being 

 included in his calculations, the probable movements of the game may also be 

 gauged, with possibilities for forestalling them. Sometimes, where the country is very 



