WILD PIGS ANIMAL AND HUMAN 253 



had told him to do ; otherwise the pig could not possibly 

 have escaped. 



We had one more day of hunting because Smith had 

 obtained two weeks' leave. The next morning dawned 

 dark and cloudy with spurts of hail just the sort of 

 weather in which animals prefer to stay comfortably 

 snuggled under a bush in the thickest cover. Conse- 

 quently we saw nothing all day except one roebuck, 

 which I killed. It was running at full speed when I 

 fired, and it disappeared over the crest of a hill without 

 a sign of injury. Smith was waiting on the other side, 

 and I wondered why he did not shoot, until we reached 

 the summit and discovered the deer lying dead in the 

 grass. Smith had seen the buck plunge over the ridge, 

 and just as he was about to fire, it collapsed. 



We found that my bullet had completely smashed the 

 heart, yet the animal had run more than one hundred 

 yards. As it fell, one of its antlers had been knocked 

 off and the other was so loose that it dropped in my hand 

 when I lifted the head. This was on December 11. 

 The other bucks which I had killed still wore their ant- 

 lers, but probably they would all have been shed before 

 Christmas. The growth takes place during the winter, 

 and the velvet is all off the new antlers by the following 

 May. 



On the way back to camp we saw a huge boar stand- 

 ing on an open hillside. Smith and I fired hurriedly 

 and both missed a perfectly easy shot. With one of the 

 Chinese I circled the ridge, while Smith took up the 

 animal's trail. We arrived on the edge of a deep ravine 



