THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
early morning before he retires to his lying -up spot for the middle of the 
day, as this is often among boulders or in some hollow in the cliff, where 
he is completely invisible. 
The successful pursuit of mountain game needs a vast amount of 
patience, but those who make up their minds to stick to it day after day 
are generally rewarded with a fair chance in the end. 
The natives can usually see an animal much sooner than the visiting 
sportsman, who is new to the country, as they know what to look for and 
where to look for it; yet the hunter with a good telescope can sometimes 
spy game which is invisible to them. Few things give one greater pleasure 
than to pick up a beast with the telescope, and, after fixing it on some 
rock, to watch the faces of one’s men as they come to look through it. 
On one occasion when hunting the western tur I had the satisfaction 
of spying a beast which neither my Russian hunter, Popoff, nor a local 
native could detect with the naked eye, and I had to fix the telescope 
firmly with stones before I could persuade them that there was anything 
there. 
After making a long detour of about four hours I managed to get right 
above him, and although the distance was not great I missed the first shot 
clean, my only excuse being that I was sitting on a very uncomfortable 
stone slide at the time. Fortunately he ran down hill, and from a shoulder 
almost perpendicularly above him I had a second chance; this time I heard 
the thud of the bullet and knew that he was mine. 
After travelling about one hundred yards he collapsed; his proved to be 
quite a fair head, though one horn had been broken off some two or three 
years before. 
This kind of success, when achieved by one’s own efforts, gives much 
more satisfaction than the mere killing of a beast which has been spied by 
the local hunter and up to which one has been personally conducted. 
On another occasion I killed a tur just as darkness was coming on, 
near the border of the Grand Duke Michael’s preserve. The ground was 
very steep, it was too late to retrieve him that night, and I had to descend 
about 1 ,000 feet on the other side of the mountain before finding a place 
where I could spend the hours of darkness. At dawn it seemed the best 
plan to make the tour of the mountain and get at him from below; but it 
was much further round than I anticipated, and on reaching the spot we 
could find no possible way of getting at him, and ultimately had to leave 
without the trophy. 
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