. On safari : big game hunting in British East Africa, with studies in bird-life . ited in hopeshe might stand; and stand he did, but not till closeon the ridge of the koppie, 200 yards off. My ballsplintered the rock a hands-breadth over his shoulder—a near thing, but a miss. Had Elmi only said, Underthe tree, that beast could hardly have escaped; what he did say was misleading in the lastdegree. Althouoh describino; this last animalas a leopard, I have since satisfiedmyself that it uas in reality a cheetah,which habitually lies out thus in theopen, whereas the leopard never doesso. It is a n
. On safari : big game hunting in British East Africa, with studies in bird-life . ited in hopeshe might stand; and stand he did, but not till closeon the ridge of the koppie, 200 yards off. My ballsplintered the rock a hands-breadth over his shoulder—a near thing, but a miss. Had Elmi only said, Underthe tree, that beast could hardly have escaped; what he did say was misleading in the lastdegree. Althouoh describino; this last animalas a leopard, I have since satisfiedmyself that it uas in reality a cheetah,which habitually lies out thus in theopen, whereas the leopard never doesso. It is a noteworthy circumstancethat the cheetah, though in generalappearance closely resembling a leopard,and certainly allied to the Felidce, yetpossesses a dog-foot—that is, its clawsare blunt and hardly, if at all, CATTLE-BELL ^ chamiing fcaturc of the shooting PICKED DP ON EXDEPJT. in East Afrlca is the bush-stalking. jNow, stalking in bush may appeara simple problem, and so, no doubt, with a single animal,when stationary, it sometimes is. Such chances, ENDERIT RIVER AND LAKE NAKURU 29 seldom occur, for the game here, such as zebra, ehmd,harteheest, impahi, waterbuck, gazelles, wart-hog andgrass-antelopes of sorts, are nearly always m herds, andthose herds, while among bush, are moving about onthe feed. Hence the problem is not simple. Firstly,the stalker must get forward at a fair speed or he willlose touch. Then in a herd, say, of a dozen, there willprobably be only one really good head. The othereleven are only so many nuisances and sources ofdanger. All the eleven must, nevertheless, be heldunder accurate observation, or else some insignificantlittle beastie, appearing at an unexpected spot, will ruinthe whole operation. Bush-stalking, in short, is an artin itself, affording difficult, but withal very pretty,manoeuvrino\ The hunter who has sin2;led out themaster-buck, held him in all his vagaries, avoided thekeen view of the other eleven, and final
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