our men, who stood a little way behind, and luckily, was looking about, said “There’s the bull.”  He had evidently heard us coming, got up, gone ten yards away, and was waiting for a favourable moment to charge, and, had he done so when we were in the thicket, he probably would have killed one of the party.  My friend, who was an old hand, and of course saw the danger at a glance, cleared out of the thicket with wonderful alertness, and the rest were not slow to follow his example.  We then passed round the upper side of the thicket, and came down upon the bull in the more open forest, and soon killed him.  Just as we had done so, news came that a herd of bison was grazing on a ridge about half or three-quarters of a mile or so away, and as our pursuit of them elucidates some points of practical importance, I give a short description of the stalk and its accompanying circumstances.

The herd of bison, it appears, were just outside a jungly ravine which ran up from the main forest through the grass land.  The jungle terminated just below a ridge of hill, along which we approached the spot.  Overhanging the hollow were some rocks which afforded us a convenient place to creep behind, and presently we lay down there, looking at the herd, which was below us, and about a hundred yards away.  And then we found (as Mr. Sanderson so often did that he at last gave up attacking herd bison) that it was impossible to fire at the bull, as he was screened by the cows.  How long we lay watching I cannot exactly tell, but as the day got hotter the bison began to move, and then we had a chance of firing at the big bull.  The herd, bull included, then entered the jungly ravine, and presently reappeared a little further down and on the right of the ravine with a calf which had evidently been left in the ravine, and filed along the slope.  The bull, however, had remained behind.  Now comes a point of great importance in following up big game, and which, curiously enough, has never been noticed hitherto, at least I have not been able to meet with any reference to it in the many big game shooting books I have looked at.  If an animal is wounded, it is a common practice to follow it up at once, the result of which is that it will often go off to a considerable distance (which is often highly inconvenient) and frequently be lost.  But if, instead of following the startled animal at once, a perfect silence is maintained, and you remain where you are, the animal, the moment it is inside the jungle, will stand to listen, and if it can neither hear nor see anything, will probably lie down to recover from the shock, and if it does so, will very probably not rise from the spot for a considerable time.  You have thus an opportunity of getting ahead of your quarry and coming back to the margin of the forest from a direction opposite to that from which it naturally expects danger, and it will thus have to pass you again in order to get further into the forest, and you will then, as I have known from experience, get another shot.  On this occasion it was of great importance to get between the wounded bull and the main forest towards the foot of the Ghauts, and we accordingly resolved to go down the grass land on the outside of the jungly ravine, enter it a good way down, and lie up to rest for some time, and then look up the wounded bull.