HUNTING IN AFRICA 



109- 



and .600 bore expresses are cumbersome and very unsat- 

 isfactory weapons. A .450 double Cordite express will 

 kill anything in the country, but you will be wise to use 

 constantly a much lighter gun, and one with ammunition 

 easier to carry. The rifle question needs a page or two to 

 itself. 



One of the most important matters, as I have found it,, 

 and one never insisted on in any books, seldom mentioned 

 by any hunter, is to so regulate the marching of your 

 sefari, when you are changing ground, that there will be 

 time for a quiet inspection of the country, the evening you 

 make camp. 



A sefari is at best a noisy affair. Forty to a hundred men 

 will make a noise when they reach their resting-place. 

 Tent-pitching, wood-gathering, very often from a distance 

 of a mile or more, cooking and water-hunting and carrying, 

 all mean noise. Game may be found that same evening 

 of arrival, within half a mile or more of your tent, which 

 next morning you may seek in vain at five miles distance. 

 The rule is a good one, start at daybreak, and camp before 

 noon. The early hours are the coolest, six hours of hard,, 

 stony or thorny ground with sixty pounds, often more, to 

 carry, is all a humane man should ask of his porters. 

 To rush from place to place does no good, tires your sefari 

 out, and if there are many other hunting parties in the 

 country, is apt to make you deservedly disliked. 



Never under any circumstances give up an animal you 

 have wounded, unless night is falling, or you are utterly 

 done and can go no farther. In that case give your rifle 

 to your head gunboy and promise him "bakshish" if 

 he brings in head and meat. 



Perhaps even mentioning such a matter seems useless 

 to many, I wish it were so. But to see, as I have often 

 seen, poor wounded zebra, kongoni, or many another, 

 limping painfully after the herd, with month-old wounds 



