XVII DETAILS OF TENT CLUBS 285 



River is the boundary. The other side of the boundary 

 is hunted by the Ahmednagar Hunt. 



The pig are usually found along the Bheema and Mula 

 Mutha rivers, and the meets vary in distance from twenty- 

 five to ten miles from here. The most usual centres are 

 Uruli and Yewat Stations on the G.I. P. Railway, and the 

 Ahmednagar main road. The pig usually live in thick 

 patches of prickly pear along the banks of the rivers and 

 are few and far between, and the sounders are very small, 

 in fact we very rarely see any sows. The pig take a 

 tremendous lot of shifting, as no regular beating is possible 

 and the shikar ies have to cut up to them with swords. A 

 really thick cover may hold the pig all day without its 

 shifting. Occasionally we get pig out of long grass in a 

 babul jungle, but very rarely. 



The shikaries and their myrmidons are usually members 

 of criminal tribes, Bhils or Ramoses, and are good trackers 

 and extraordinarily good in the prickly pear. The usual 

 system here is to have men out over night at the various 

 covers round, who come in to fixed points in the morning 

 with their reports. 



The country is barren and intersected with nullahs with 

 a good many small patches of babul jungle, which the pig, 

 as a rule, run through. There is a lot of rocky and stony 

 going over low ridges with plough in the valleys, which is 

 very good going in the hot weather. 



There are any amount of pig in the Ghats to the west of 

 Poona, and we sometimes have beats along the outlying 

 spurs ; but the jungle is thick and there are few places 

 where you can get them to break for any distance from the 

 hills in rideable country. There is usually a deep nullah 

 every forty yards or so running out of the hills to get across. 



For the last two years I have run a week down the 

 Southern Mahratta Railway about thirty-nine miles S.E. 

 from here, along the Nira River and what they call the Nira 

 left bank canal. This is sugar-cane country, and can only 

 be hunted at the end of the hot weather when the sugar- 

 cane is mostly cut, except for small patches out of which 

 pig can be beaten ; but the country is very marshy in 



