Tahr Shooting in Chambra, India. 
The rainy morning had given way to a sunny 
afternoon and mist wreaths were scudding up 
the mountain sides as Sohnu and I started from 
camp for our afternoon climb. Steadily toiling 
up, we soon passed the village, still partly in 
ruins .from the recent earthquake which had 
devastated Dharamsala and Kangra, and had in¬ 
volved many of the villages in Southeast Chambra 
in the general destruction. Leaving behind us 
the terraced fields to which the villagers trusted 
for their wretched livelihood, we pushed up¬ 
ward into the forest and finally came out on 
the edge of a cliff overlooking from the west 
the Harser Nullah, at this point a thousand feet 
below us and deeply packed with snow, a re¬ 
sult of the earthquake which had sent the snow 
from the surrounding hills in huge avalanches 
into the bed of the stream. 
Pumped by the stiff climb, we halted under 
a fine deodar and examined the cliffs imme¬ 
diately below us and those on the far side of 
the main nullah. I found there a fascinating 
way of passing the time in watching the fall 
from cliff to cliff of an almost continuous series 
of boulders, whose hold, weakened by earth¬ 
quake and avalanche, had been finally loosened 
by the steady downpour of the last four days. 
I was deep in this pastime when Sohnu called 
my attention to a gooral he had spotted fifty 
yards below us on a ledge. As soon as I had 
seen it and negatived the proposal to kill it, he 
proceeded to mystify it by a series of imitations 
of the gooral’s alarm cry—a mixture of snort, 
sneeze and whistle. It at once gave signs of 
uneasiness, moving nervously up and down the 
narrow ledge and looking in every direction for 
its invisible friend. After a minute or so we 
showed ourselves and started it off at a break¬ 
neck pace round a great buttress of rock, whence 
it gained the shelter of the forest. 
After this we climbed a further 500 feet and 
emerged on another eyrie, overlooking a side 
nullah more or less free from snow and bare 
in its upper portion of everything but juniper 
and rose thorn, with a few dwarfed . birches. 
Here I expected to see some signs of three 
big tahr which I had seen two days before from 
the bed of the main nullah, but had been un¬ 
able to follow, owing to the rain and the un¬ 
safe state of the footholds. We had not been 
watching more than half an hour when I saw 
something moving in the shade of a fir 500 yards 
off, and an inspection with the glasses showed 
two tahr feeding slowly toward me. and shortly 
a third tahr came slithering down the hill to 
join his companions. They were all males, with 
the distinctive dirty yellow and brown ruff round 
the neck and withers, brindled flanks and choco¬ 
late middle which denote the veteran tahr, and 
I had great hopes of securing a good head as 
the first fruits of a hitherto disappointing trip. 
I tightened up my grass shoes, those excellent 
aids without which the sportsman is helpless on 
the dangerous ground which has at times to be 
crossed in the pursuit of tahr. Having done 
this and looked to my rifle, I turned to the trio. 
Sohnu had meanwhile been planning various 
routes to circumvent them, but these were re¬ 
jected one by one. Finally, as all three slid 
down to the nullah and were lost to view, we 
decided to move round the shoulder of the hill 
to a small peak of rock where we would be in 
a position to watch developments and take ad¬ 
vantage of them. A somewhat perilous climb 
across the face of an almost smooth cliff, with 
sodden earth resting on most of the sloping 
ledges, and we were at the new point. Cutting 
away a rose bush, Sohnu pushed me up and on 
to a huge boulder wedged between two spurs 
of the cliff. I in turn helped him up, then, 
wriggling forward under cover of a juniper 
which overhung the rock, we looked eagerly for 
the tahr. A rock thudding down the nullah 
might have been dislodged by them or by the 
rain; beyond this there was no sign of them. 
The minutes slipped by and at last we saw 
the looked-for splashes of yellow ap'pear along 
a juniper-grown cliff close to the nullah, but on 
our side and only 200 yards from us. One after 
the other they came, moving along almost level 
with us, and evidently suspecting nothing. The 
glasses showed the patriarch, a magnificent old 
beast, with ruff swaying about his knees and the 
brindle on his flanks almost gray. My hopes 
were at their highest, when first the big one and 
then another turned back to the nullah. The 
third remained on the cliff, cropping here and 
there at the growth in the crevices. 
It wanted little over an hour to sunset, and 
I had no time to lose. An advance over the 
intervening hillside, though presenting few diffi¬ 
culties, was impossible while the third tahr was 
still in evidence, while the noise inseparable 
from such a movement would betray us even 
should he leave the coast clear. The tahr set¬ 
tled the matter by coming out, and in a playful 
mood butting at each other and frolicking over 
the apparently pathless cliff. They advanced 
fifty yards and dived into a small ravine, but 
almost immediately one emerged on the nearer 
edge followed by another. Without comparing 
all three together it was hard to judge whether 
my selection was visible. I decided that he was 
not, and so, getting quite ready, I picked up 
my glasses and prayed for the arrival of the 
third. By the time he appeared the other two 
had climbed further up and were hidden by some 
bushes, but this time there was no doubt I had 
the patriarch before me. 
For a moderately bad shot the distance was, 
perhaps, too great—at least 150 yards—but I re¬ 
solved to try, as I knew that in such difficult 
ground I was almost certain to get in a second 
shot, particularly as they had no idea of my 
presence. As I aligned the sights, however, he 
moved and faced me, a very difficult and un¬ 
certain shot. So there I lay, waiting and watch¬ 
ing for my opportunity, gravel and rock points 
scoring my elbows, and Sohnu supporting my 
feet from below with a strained and shaky hand. 
I had nearly reached the end of my patience 
when the tahr swung round and scrambled up 
the hill toward his comrades. Another lost 
opportunity, thought I, and it certainly looked 
as if he were going on, but he stopped short 
and stood broadside on. I fired. The bullet 
smacked over his shoulders and struck a little 
cloud of dust from the rock behind him. Round 
lie swung prior to a bolt, and stood looking at 
the cliff over our heads. The rattle of the 
next cartridge being forced from the magazine 
showed him where the danger lay. He swung 
round again and was on the point of flight, when 
I got in my second shot. He plunged down the 
cliff, turning two somersaults, and landed in 
some bushes on the slope below, then he scram¬ 
bled into the ravine, a third shot apparently 
missing him. 
Sohnu left my feet to support themselves and 
joined me. His heart was set on securing an¬ 
other tahr from the remaining two, which had 
come flying down the hill, and utterly bewildered 
were making straight for us. Neither was, in 
my opinion, big enough to shoot, so I let them 
pass, one making good his escape above us, while 
the other, having lost his head, came past us so 
close that I could see his terrified eyes staring 
at us as he went by below. There was no time 
to be lost, so we went as fast as we could to 
the point where the wounded tahr had disap¬ 
peared. On arrival at the edge of the ravine 
which joined the larger nullah, we found we 
had to climb fifty yards before we could de¬ 
scend to the bed. As we did so an avalanche 
of stones came tearing down, making me wish 
I had missed. However, we had a wounded 
beast to find, so dropping into the nullah we 
made the best of our way down and found him 
forty yards further down at the foot of another 
and bigger drop with both hind legs broken. A 
desperate struggle to get on again was stopped 
by a bullet in the back, much to Sohnu’s dis¬ 
gust, who intimated that the poor brute might 
have dragged himself further, thereby saving 
him the trouble of carrying it. 
He was a fine well grown beast, horns shorter 
than I had expected, but none the less good, 
13J4 inches in length, with a well marked out¬ 
ward splay and the thin in-curving point of 
polished horn which is only found among old 
tahr. On closer examination we found that my 
second shot had smashed both hind legs above 
the hock, while the third had grazed his shoul¬ 
der. 
The sun was now near its setting and I had 
a long and difficult journey before me, so after 
removing the head, taking care to preserve the 
neck skin with its tawny ruff, I left Sohnu to 
gralloch and conceal the body, and taking the 
rifle, set off toward the main nullah. At times 
scrambling down the boulders in the nullah 
bed, at times climbing out and down the bush- 
clad slopes of the hills, I at length reached the 
snow pack and was getting over its uneven sur¬ 
face as fast as I could when Sohnu joined me 
with the head and we plodded homeward to¬ 
gether. It was nearly dark when we left the 
snow for the path which led to Harser. and 
striking through the fields in the dusk, reached 
