528 
African Game Trails 
anything; the shooting was necessarily at 
rather long range, but by manoeuvring a 
little, and never walking straight toward a 
beast, I was usually able to get whatever 
the naturalists wished. Sometimes I shot 
fairly well, and sometimes badly. On one 
day, for instance, the entry in my diary ran: 
‘ ‘ Missed steinbuck, pig, impalla and Grant; 
awful.” On another day it ran in part as 
follows: ‘‘ Out with Heller. Hartebeest, 250 
yards, facing me; shot through face, broke 
neck. Zebra, very large, quartering, 160 
yards, between neck and shoulder. Buck 
Grant, 2 20 yards, walking, behind shoulder. 
Steinbuck, 180 yards, standing, behind 
shoulder.” Generally each head of game 
bagged cost me a goodly number of bul¬ 
lets; but only twice did I wound animals 
which I failed to get; in the other cases 
the extra cartridges represented either 
misses at animals which got clean away 
untouched, or else a running fusillade at 
wounded animals which I eventually got. 
I am a very strong believer in making sure, 
and, therefore, in shooting at a wounded 
animal as long as there is the least chance 
of its getting off. The expenditure of a few 
cartridges is of no consequence whatever 
compared to the escape of a single head of 
game which should have been bagged. 
Shooting at long range necessitates much 
running. Some of my successful shots at 
Grant’s gazelle and kongoni were made at 
300, 350, and 400 yards; but at such dis¬ 
tances my proportion of misses was very 
large indeed—and there were altogether 
too many even at shorter ranges. 
The so-called grass antelopes, the stein¬ 
buck and duyker, were the ones at which I 
shot worst; they were quite plentiful, and 
they got up close, seeking to escape obser¬ 
vation by hiding until the last moment; 
but they were small, and when they did go 
they rushed half hidden through the grass 
and in and out among the bushes at such 
a speed, and with such jumps and twists 
and turns, that I found it well-nigh im¬ 
possible to hit them with the rifle. The 
few I got were shot when they happened 
to stand still. 
On the steep, rocky, bush-clad hills there 
were little klipspringers and the mountain 
reedbuck or Chanler’s reedbuck, a very 
pretty little creature. Usually we found 
the reedbuck and their fawns in small 
parties, and the bucks by themselves; but 
we saw too few to enable us to tell whether 
this represented their normal habits. They 
fed on the grass, the hill plants, and the tips 
of certain of the shrubs, and were true 
mountaineers in their love of the rocks and 
rough ground, to which they fled in frantic 
haste when alarmed. They were shy and 
elusive little things, but not wary in the 
sense that some of the larger antelopes are 
wary. I shot two does with three bullets, 
all of which hit. Then I tried hard for a 
buck; at last, late one evening, I got up to 
one feeding on a steep hillside, and actually 
took ten shots to kill him, hitting him no 
less than seven times. 
Occasionally we drove a ravine or a 
range of hills by means of beaters. On 
such occasions all kinds of things were put 
up. Most of the beaters, especially if they 
were wild savages impressed for the pur¬ 
pose from some neighboring tribe, carried 
throwing-sticks, with which they were very 
expert; as indeed were some of the colonials, 
like the Hills. Hares, looking and be¬ 
having much like small jack-rabbits, were 
plentiful both on the plains and in the ra¬ 
vines, and dozens of these were knocked 
over; while on several occasions I saw fran- 
colins and spurfowl cut down on the wing 
by a throwing-stick hurled from some un¬ 
usually dexterous hand. 
The beats, with the noise and laughter of 
the good-humored, excitable savages, and 
the alert interest as to what would turn up 
next, were great fun; but the days I en¬ 
joyed most were those spent alone with my 
horse and gun-bearers. We might be off 
by dawn, and see the tropic sun flame 
splendid over the brink of the world; 
strange creatures rustled through the bush 
or fled dimly through the long grass, be¬ 
fore the light grew bright; and the air 
was fresh and sweet as it blew in our 
faces. When the still heat of noon drew 
near I would stop under a tree, with my 
water canteen and my lunch. The men 
lay in the shade, and the hobbled pony 
grazed close by, while I either dozed or else 
watched through my telescope the herds 
of game standing or lying drowsily in the 
distance. As the shadows lengthened I 
would again mount, and finally ride home¬ 
ward as the red sunset paled to amber and 
opal, and all the vast, mysterious African 
landscape grew to wonderful beauty in the 
dying twilight. 
