tHE PRESERVATION OF GAMfi. 2^3 



Some are taking a mud bath, and some are walking down to the bath, and some are 

 leaving it. 



He creeps up close to the bath, and, selecting the biggest bull, fires. The whole 

 herd turns and gallops past him, and as they pass he fires twice, one shot at the 

 one he previously hit, and which is lagging, and one shot at another elephant. 

 One animal falls dead, but the other rushes on. As it is close upon nightfall 

 the hunter decides to camp where he is, and stops the next day cutting 

 out tusks, whilst natives are sent after the newly wounded bull and after the 

 old one. 



The one that was last wounded is found dead not far away, and proves to be a 

 fine tusker, whilst, after a delay (which the hunter spends in unsuccessful hunting), 

 the natives sent after the older bull return to say that the wounded animal has 

 crossed a big river and is now in a tract of bush on the other side. So camp is 

 at once moved there, and fresh tracks are found and followed. 



Towards the afternoon the hunter suddenly sees his old enemy standing under a 

 tree. He takes careful aim and fires, and the animal comes towards him with 

 staggering gait. He fires again, and it staggers to one side and then stands rocking. 

 He fires again, and a third and fourth time, and it rocks more and more, till with a 

 tremendous crash it falls to the ground, and he rushes to the spot in triumph to take 

 stock of the tusks. 



Such is elephant-hunting — periods of bad luck and periods of good luck, but the 

 bad luck is generally out of all proportion to the good luck. Yet, curiously enough, 

 when recalling his experiences it is only the good luck which will be remembered, the 

 hunter will treat all the long blank days, hard work, and privations as if they had 

 never been. 



In the hunting I have sketched, our hunter has been very lucky, three good 

 elephants having fallen to his rifle within as many days. He will probably begin 

 building castles in the air on this basis as to his future achievements. He will 

 altogether forget to include in his calculations the fifteen blank days spent before 

 the first of the three elephants fell. To assert that a hunter of elephants is a 

 slaughterer or no sportsman is unfair and unjust, for no form of sport calls for such 

 endurance, nor is there any sport in which fatigue, hunger, thirst, privations, and 

 dangers have to be faced in so extreme a degree. 



It bores me to hear people crabbing a man like the late A. H. Neumann because 

 of the number of elephants he has shot. The people who are so ready to criticise are, 

 as a rule, they who know little or nothing of elephant-hunting, but who are quite 

 ready to fire fusillades at the sheep-like animals of the plains. 



