SOME INDIAN STALKING AND SHOOTING. 39 



Stalking is here practically unworkable. The grass is high and rank ; 

 where there is undergrowth it is dense, and the large dry leaves of the 

 sal and other Latifolia and the myriad dry twigs among them make a 

 noiseless approach quite impossible. I have usually shot these forests 

 from a howdah ; but I have occasionally, in a suitable tract, got down 

 and successfully stalked both chital and sambar. They are fairly 

 numerous, the former particularly, and not very wild. The closing of 

 the forests to all deer shooting after the end of February has 

 materially increased their numbers, while it has made them less 

 wary. The heads of the submontane forest sambar differ both 

 from those of the Central Indian and the Himalayan varieties. 

 They are shorter in the horn, but spread much more, and are more 

 massive than even a Jarao head of the same size. On the whole the 

 Mafia yields the handsomest trophy of the three, taking one thing 

 with another. The accompanying rough sketches were made from 

 three somewhat typical heads of the varieties of sambar of which I 

 have written. The Maha head, with all its points polished like ivory 

 for some six inches from the tips, is a handsome trophy. That head 

 had certainly been for more than one year carried proudly through the 

 forest. I agree with Mr. Inverarity in holding that the sambar, and 

 I think the chital also, does not, at any rate after he attains full 

 growth, shed his antlers annually. If they did so, with such numbers 

 of them in the forest, one would pick up cast horns more frequently. 

 The process of shedding is very irregular in all deer up here. I have 

 seen chital, sambar and para (hogdeer) in hard horn and in every 

 stage of velvet during one and the same shoot. You will see more 

 velvet at Christmas than you will in May ; but you will see hard horn 

 at Christmas and velvet in May. 



Cuon rutilans is as great a foe to the deer — and to the sportsman — 

 here as he is on the Taptee. If a pack takes up its quarters in a 

 jungle, everything leaves it, except the pig. Sus scropha has a fine 

 contempt for every other animal ! That reminds me of a funny thing 

 I once saw. We were beating across some sal forest with a line of 

 elephants and emerged upon a small circular opening, in the centre 

 of which was a muddy depression, with some water still remaining 

 in the middle. A large sounder of pig had been wallowing in the 

 mud and had, on our appearance, retreated into the forest on the 

 opposite side. One small half-grown boar remained in the open. 



