466 Great and Small Game of Africa 



walking towards them. I have had very similar experiences with them on 

 other occasions. When brought to bay with dogs they are about the 

 most awkward antelope to tackle we have, being very quick and vicious." ' 



But though easy to shoot in favourable situations, in parts where it has 

 been much persecuted by the natives this buck is very wary ; and, keeping 

 as it does during the hours of daylight to the dense cover, it becomes 

 difficult to get a shot at. For, let the hunter prowl ever so cautiously 

 through its dark retreats, it is impossible, except by a stroke of luck, to get 

 more than a momentary glimpse of their occupant, which has been silently 

 listening to his approach in thickets where one cannot see beyond a few yards. 

 Under such circumstances one can seldom get more than a snap-shot at the 

 cunning old buck as he projects himself into openings that seem almost as 

 impossible for his sturdy form to pass through as the needle's eye for the pro- 

 verbial camel, or creeps under briary tunnels so low that but for the evidence 

 of his spoor, one could not believe that he had really passed that way. 



The natives' method of trapping these bush -dwelling bucks is by 

 enclosing some much -frequented patch of cover in the heart of their 

 favourite haunts with a fence of brushwood, starting from the bank of the 

 river and returning to it in a semicircle. In this fence are left little gaps 

 at short intervals, and at each gap is set a snare. The snare is a stout cord, 

 made of tough fibre carefully prepared and neatly laid up, with a loop at 

 the end to form a slip-knot. The other end is made fast to a strong grow- 

 ing sapling, which is then bent down as a spring over the gap and held so 

 by a little wooden bar (fastened to a smaller cord attached to the noose) 

 being inserted in a peg in the ground in such a manner that, on any animal 

 treading on some twigs placed artfully across, the spring will be released 

 and, acting on the noose, which had been carefully laid in a circle on the 

 path, will hoist the leg of the animal disturbing it high in the air. So 



1 I regret to hear from Mr. Saunders that the inyala is among the species of game that have suffered 

 most heavily from the rinderpest plague that has recently swept through Zululand. 



