Page:Stalks in the Himalaya.pdf/10

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Preface

his powers of endurance and the complete harmony in working of head, hand, and eye.

To those so endowed big game shooting in the plains of India, even when that shooting consists of bison tracking on foot or that exhilarating pastime beating for tiger in the noonday heat of the hot-weather season, is not to be compared with days of hard, aye and perilous, climbing up on the fringe of the snows of the mighty Himalaya amidst scenery surely without its equal in the world—with days passed in pursuit of the red bear or the big-horned goats and sheep, whose home is on the sloping parts of the Roof of the World at elevations of twelve thousand feet and upwards.

To the lover of the science of stalking, to the man who does not go out each morn with the idea that the day will have been wasted if he does not return with at least one 'head,' the shooting grounds of the Himalaya can vie with any corner of the earth. The sportsman will never have two days alike. In my experience he will never have two stalks alike. He will not be downhearted if at the end of a long stalk, a stalk to which the greater part of a day of arduous climbing has been devoted, he may have to withhold his fire since no shootable heads are present amongst the animals he has been pursuing. For the sportsman nowadays no longer fires at immature heads and females.

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