THE INDIAN WILD BUFFALO. 47 



bison do. As you go along on the tracks, it is necessary to keep wide 

 awake in any long grass or thick patch of jungle the tracks lead 

 through, as if a solitary bull is sitting down, you may almost walk on 

 to him. I can remember one occasion when the bull got up so close 

 I could nearly have touched his tail ; he stood stern on looking round 

 at me. I fired for behind the ear, but the cartridge missed fire. Stete- 

 runt que comcB, et vox fancihus licesit, which the undergraduate trans- 

 lated, " My hair stuck in my throat and my jaws stood up on the top of 

 my head." The bull, however, ran away and I followed and killed 

 him. He is the one depicted in plate A. 



I generally found that I came up again to a solitary bull, which 

 had bolted, in an hour or two, and I have frequently followed 

 a bull and started him half a dozen times before I could get a 

 satisfactory shot when he kept to thick jungle or long grass. In 

 open jungle you can usually get your shot the first time. Buffalo 

 are easily killed with one shot if you hit them in the right place, 

 which is low down behind the shoulder or through the brain. I soon 

 found the folly of firing into the middle of their carcases and of taking 

 long shots. Bufialo are very easily stalked and you can always, if a 

 good stalker, get to within fifty yards and often to within twenty or 

 ten yards of them. You should go alone, leaving your men behind j a 

 second gun is no use, as you have no time to use it if he charges, and 

 if he does not charge you have no need of it. The first thing to learn 

 is that a well-directed shot at the root of the tail will not blow his brains 

 out, whereas a shot through the lungs will kill him before he has run 

 a hundred and fifty yards. If you see the points of a bufialo^s horns 

 showing above the grass he is lying in, the safest way of shooting him, 

 whether he is wounded or not, is to judge from the position of the horns 

 which way he is lying and then make for his head. He will let you get 

 within a few yards ; when he rises, his head is facing you and gives you 

 an easy shot to the brain ; a 500 express rifle, in my opinion, is the best 

 for this particular stalk and shot. If you walk up towards his tail when 

 he rises, he either goes off, showing no vulnerable spot, or he swings 

 round so as to look at you, and I find myself that this sudden swing 

 round is trying to the nerves and makes one unsteady. In following a 

 wounded bull into long grass or thick jungle, when you do not know 

 exactly where he is, a 500 express is rather small ; an 8-bore gun is 



