200 MELTON AND HOMESPUN 



The great bustard and ghaum paauw are probably the 

 most wary and difficult of all game birds, and when feeding 

 on an open plain or veld it is practically impossible to 

 approach to within shot-gun range. The bird is very 

 inquisitive, however, and we are told — but have never 

 tried the manoeuvre — that by riding round and round a 

 paauw and gradually narrowing the circle a mounted man 

 may often approach within easy shot of the bird, even 

 though he be armed with an ordinary 12-bore gun only. 

 As the horseman draws nearer, the bustard will usually 

 lie down, hoping to escape notice by so doing, until a dose 

 of shot lays it still lower. It is doubtless the horse which 

 excites the curiosity of this shiest of all shy birds, for it 

 is seldom that a man on foot can out-manoeuvre it, even 

 though he pursues the most cunning artifices. 



Personally what few paauw — they might be numbered 

 on the fingers of one hand — we have accounted for were 

 nearly all shot with a •303-bore " Rigby," a beautiful 

 little rifle true as a hair up to 300 yards, and just the very 

 weapon for small antelope and large feathered game. It 

 is a good deal more by luck than judgment that the 

 average sportsman bags a paauw with either rifle or shot- 

 gun. In the first place, unless viewed on a bare patch of 

 veld or first flushed far out of shot and then " marked 

 down " again, when a stalk may at least be attempted, 

 it is ten chances to one that, however numerous bustards 

 may be in the district over which the sportsman is shooting 

 comparatively few of the birds will be sighted. If armed 

 with a rifle he must perforce stalk to within range of his 

 game and take it as it sits, for big though a bustard may 

 appear when on the wing it is a powerful flyer, and will 

 require a first-rate rifle shot to bring it down. 



