THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
number are poisoned by the natives every winter, but so dense and 
continuous is the forest, that nothing but the supremest luck, coupled 
with the most devoted perseverance, would give a sportsman a chance of 
a shot. 
Hunters, as distinct from poisoners, north of a line drawn between Seoul 
and the Diamond Mountains south-west of Gensan, on the east coast of 
Korea, rely almost entirely on tracking in the snow; whereas those I have 
worked with in the south of the peninsula cannot be induced to attempt it, 
averring — I give the reason for what it is worth — that the ground echoes 
the tramp of footsteps more in that country than anywhere else! Be that 
as it may, of the three or four attempts I have made at snow tracking, 
none have been successful, though I once jumped the beast I was after three 
times in the course of the day without seeing him. 
Tiger are probably more numerous in the north than in the southern 
part of Korea, but from my own experience, confirmed by that of other 
British sportsmen and travellers, it is a much more difficult matter to 
find one there than in the south. Except in the vicinity of the Yalu 
River, where the timber is so dense and its extent so vast that hunting 
would be well nigh impossible, and the Siberian frontier further east, 
there is little real forest such as a tiger would choose as a more or less 
permanent haunt; and as these animals are naturally great travellers, 
it is a matter of chance whether tracks fresh enough to be worth following 
will be met with. 
In the neighbourhood of the foreign mining concessions, near the Yalu, 
dynamite is or was used with some success by native hunters, a small, 
specially constructed bomb being somehow concealed in the bait. Lately, 
however, cases having occurred of Koreans being severely injured by 
premature explosions, the Japanese police have forbidden the supply of 
dynamite for this purpose. Drop traps, weighted with stones and huge 
logs, are very common, and many tigers are accounted for in this way 
every year. 
Europeans and Americans employed on the mines acquire a certain 
number of skins, and no doubt more are brought into Seoul from the north 
than the south, but I believe a good many of these come from across the 
border from Manchuria, where the natives lay down poison wholesale. 
This is forbidden now in Korea, but even when it was resorted to, the native 
is so innately lazy that baits — and the same applies to traps — are often not 
visited for days at a time, and it frequently happens that a carcass will lie 
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