82 HUNTING THE TAKIN 



Thinking it was the cow at which I had fired my 

 second shot, I fired again, and apparently missed, 

 for the beast carried on. I tried again, as he 

 blundered over some rocks stern on, and had the 

 satisfaction of seeing him fall. 



George appearing below, I joined him. He had 

 killed his bull with a shot in the brain. It had 

 pitched straight over the ledge on which it lay 

 and lodged in the centre of the stone shoot two 

 or three hundred feet below. Unfortunately, the 

 tip of one horn was broken. Whilst he told me 

 this, a cow I do not to this day know where 

 she came from suddenly shot into the air within 

 a few yards of us as though propelled through a 

 stage trap-door. I gasped, the doctor yelled, and 

 George in his rope sandals dashed round the corner 

 in pursuit. Very shortly 1 heard two shots ; my 

 companion came clambering back, and we com- 

 pared notes. He had the big bull, a cow which 

 he had just shot, and a youngster at which I had 

 made some very bad shooting earlier. The cow 

 had pitched a good fifteen hundred feet over rocks, 

 trees, and shoots, being subsequently discovered by 

 the indefatigable doctor smashed to a pulp. I had 

 the bull killed by my first shot, a calf, and the 

 animal which, as I thought, had been wounded 

 by my second shot, and afterwards, on reviving, 

 killed. Yong, however, who had been indulging 

 in some mysterious manoeuvres on his own account, 

 came up and said he had found this animal, a cow, 

 lying beside the big bull in the shoot. The other 

 beast which I had killed turned out to be the second 

 bull, with a slightly better head than the first. 



Though the bull George had killed carried a 



