Caccabis Chakor 103 



long half -tanned boots of red leather, are scat- 

 tered about picking up birds. One man is sent 

 down to fish up a chakor which towered and fell 

 plump into the green pool 400 feet below us, 

 while the spaniel is taken to find a runner which 

 pitched below the bluff. The bag ? Well, if the 

 drive is a good one and the shooting moderate, five 

 to ten brace is a good pick-up for one gun. But 

 I have known seventy cartridges fired at a single 

 stand by an average shot at other game for seven 

 birds, and, horresco referens, I have also heard a 

 voice exclaim "No, I didn't kill any, but, thank 

 goodness, I hurt a few ! " The best bag of driven 

 chakor I have ever participated in was fifty-six 

 and a half brace in the day; but this was the 

 result of about half a dozen drives, which is rarely 

 possible, as I have already said. Apart from the 

 intrinsic difficulty, one of the great charms of 

 shooting driven chakor is the variety of shots 

 one gets; for instance, birds below one, which 

 one gets in no other sort of shooting except per- 

 haps at rock-pigeons from a cliff. A great num- 

 ber of the shots are long ones, and if one were 

 to select a gun for the special purpose, it would 

 be made to shoot one and a quarter of No. 5 shot. 

 Smaller shot than this often means a number of 

 runners, which among rocks and boulders are 

 frequently lost altogether, for on this sort of 



