190 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
The beast with the best head is not unfrequently in an 
awkward position for a shot, or out of range, and the stalker, 
being unable to improve his position or get nearer for fear of 
being seen by some of the other beasts, has either to risk a 
long shot at the best head or content himself with an easier 
and more certain shot at an inferior one. In this case, it is far 
better to give up the stalk for the time, and try your luck another 
day. 
As an example of what can be done by a little patience and 
perseverance, I was successful in bagging the finest specimen 
of a bull eland ever shot by a European in East Africa, after 
a very long and tedious stalk on five consecutive days. ‘This 
grand beast was accompanied by three cows, and each day they 
were found in the same locality, never more than a mile from 
the place at which I left them the previous day. This was a 
narrow strip of open plain, some two miles long by about a 
mile in width, which opened out at each end into a large open 
plain. The narrow strip was bordered on each side by thick 
bush and clumps of forest trees, and this appeared to be used 
by the enormous herds of game as a passage from one plain to 
the other. As I always found these four elands standing out 
well towards the middle of the strip, where there were only a 
few isolated mimosa-trees dotted about, the stalking was very 
tedious work, and as there was no covert but grass twelve to 
eighteen inches high, it was necessary to makea long crawl from 
the very outskirts of the bush. On each of the first three days I 
almost succeeded in getting within range, when the elands were 
alarmed by a shot fired in the distance and moved off, after- 
wards standing in such an exposed position that a stalk was 
quite mpossible. On the fourth morning I was stalking them 
across the wind, which was blowing from my left, and was again 
nicely reducing the distance between myself and the bull, who 
was standing by himself under the shade ot a thorn-tree, whilst 
the cows were quietly feeding some twenty yards beyond him. 
As I lay under the shade of asmall bush, which was within — 
about 300 yards of the elands, taking a short rest, I noticed all — 
