ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 7 
_ First, then, study the habits of wild animals generally. They 
_ are much the same all the world over, and a man may learn a 
_ great deal by the side of an English covert, when the rabbits 
__ and pheasants are running before the beaters, which he can turn 
_ to good use when hunting bigger game. 
4 Why do you suppose some men always seem to get more 
_ shots than others ; why do the birds always rise better to them 
than to you? Pure luck you think, and they perhaps don’t 
deny it. Don’t believe it. The true sportsman knows by 
instinct what tussock of grass will hold a rabbit as he goes by 
_. it, and if a rabbit is there he won't let it lie whilst he passes. 
_ You won't see Aim swing round, saving himself a bit and leav- 
ing the likeliest corner in a big field unbeaten. The birds 
_ would have sneaked down into the ditch and stopped there 
_ whilst you wheeled by thirty or forty paces off, but our friend 
puts them up ; and if when those rabbits at the covert-side were 
__ bolting just out of range between you and him, you think he 
dropped his white pocket-handkerchief on the drive by mistake, 
you don’t know your man. That handkerchief just turned 
them enough to bring them close by him, and he had awful 
luck you know, and fired six shots to your one. 
- That is the way in big game shooting too. Partly from ex- 
perience, and partly by instinct, some men know where to look 
for a beast, and know the ways of it when found. Study then 
the habits of beasts generally to begin with, and then those of 
the particular beast you are going to hunt. Learn what it feeds 
_ on at different seasons of the year, and where its food is to be 
_ found ; learn at what time of day it feeds, and at what time it 
- liesdown. Most animals feed early and late, just at dawn and 
just at the edge of night, sleeping when the sun warms them, 
__ using what Nature sends them instead of supplying the place 
__ of the sun with a blanket as we do. Many beasts are almost 
_ entirely nocturnal in their feeding hours, and these not only 
_ such as one would naturally expect to prowl by night—tigers, 
_ lions and suchlike—but ibex and mountain beasts which feed 
_ on nothing worse than grass. Just at and before dawn most 
oo 
