THE BUSH. 149 



bush according to the suitability of the wind, and strike the plain again above or 

 below camp, wherever you wish. This facilitates your finding your way back to camp 

 and also enables you to regain it by a more or less direct route in the open, besides 

 giving you the feeling that you are losing nothing, as the wind will then be adverse. 



For instance, supposing that you are camped on the edge of the bush, with the 

 plain to your west and the border of the bush running north and south, and supposing 

 the wind to be blowing from the south. You then strike eastwards into the bush and 

 gradually veer round to the south. You continue southwards through the bush until 

 you want to return, at which time you veer westwards till you strike the plain. You 

 will then be upwind of camp, and your walk will be downwind (a thankless task in the 

 bush), and performed across the open with nothing to impede you. 



When no particular animal is being sought after in bush country, and you 

 are only sauntering about to see whatever is to be seen, it is none the less necessary 

 to be constantly on the alert ; for if you are to see any animal at all, it is necessary to 

 see it either before or at the same moment as it sees you. In addition to this you 

 must always be keeping note of the direction of the wind and of your whereabouts. 

 The latter, and in fact all three of these things, grow on you with experience. The 

 more practice you have, the less strain do they put upon you to be constantly 

 thinking about them, and gradually they come to be performed mechanically. 



The inexperienced bush-hunter finds it a very severe strain indeed to be 

 constantly forcing himself to keep on the alert whilst looking in every direction, and 

 continually working out his whereabouts and thinking of the wind. Besides 

 which he must always be on the look out for spoor and landmarks, and must be 

 careful about walking silently and negotiating the various obstacles in his way, 

 and most of the time there will be a hot sun shining upon his back. At the 

 end of a long day he will feel very slack and tired, but his fatigue will be as much 

 of the mind as of the body, after having had to concentrate his thoughts the whole 

 day on all the small points enumerated, together with a few others of lesser 

 importance. But as time goes on these points will worry him less and less, till he 

 begins to find that he can go along thinking of other things, and yet noticing 

 everything that is to be seen, or, perhaps I ought to say, that he gets to observe 

 everything obvious in the way of landmarks, spoors, and country ; but to see every 

 animal in the shadow of the thick bush before it sees him is an impossibility. A 

 hurried shot is usually necessary for an animal once seen, but it will be a shot 

 at close range, for if you get a shot at all, the animal will not be far off. 



To the sportsman coming from the plains, animals in the bush will always 

 appear farther off than they actually are, for the shadow, the indistinctness of 



