The San Francisco call., 1896-10-11
Encounters With Forest Monsters

, dark forms and glisten ing eyes of the for
est monsters bounding toward you. 1t is
time of feverish excitement and time
for being cool as we'll, for without being,
cool it is not to be expected that you ca@
make a center shot. When you have shot
you are pretty apt to know whether the
wound you have made has been so savage
as to cause fatality. The shrieks of these
animals, combined with their rage. add
weird and fearful grandeur to the darkness
of the forest.
'.This kind of experience 1 had over
and over again. 1t is something to be re-
membered, and somehow man thinks
more of himself from having gone through
these experiences, but what l have told
| you is only part of the experience of the
| tiger hunter and leopard-killer in q coun-
! try like Cambodia. When daylight ap-
| pears, if you have been firing by aid of
the sidelights of a campfire, you are en-
abied to pursue your game that has been
wounded and fed for some distance away.
This is done OF course by following the
trails of blood, and when you follow these
trails, especially if you are proceeding
through q thlcket, you must be very alert.
"Your gun must be in position to be
Immediately used, for there is no animal
that is more apt to be revengeful at such
time than these powerful animals of the
cat kind that probably for hours have
suffered from ugly gunshct wounds. If
they are not seriously weakened they will
fight, and they will fight with an alacrity
and vigor that are simply astonishing to
man who has not had experiences with
them. 1t is like battle with a grizzly to
~ III,
animals seem to make a more desperate
fight than those who have not been
wounded at all. They are endowed with
phenomenal strength, and their rem arka-
BILE quickness make them frightful COM
batants at short range.
'The only way to do, at the instant you
catch sight of your wounded animal and
can see that he has any life remaining-i1
him, is to pour forth volley of lead. If
you don't do so. or if by chance you are so
nervous as to miss your animal, he will fly
to the fore and make IL so interesting for
you that you may never again participate
in tiger hunt
ssLucKily for us we succeeded in killing
ali the wounded tigers as we'll as the
leopards that we came upon. Their skins
we took and preserved. and they will ever
remain so long as they last with US as me-
mentos of our experiences in the Cambo-
dian woods.
But have ON mitted to speak OF some
other kinds of game In whose quest we
enjoyed ourselves also very much; the
spice of danger, it is true, was gone in
some instances. but skill was required
nevertheless. l refer for one thing to the
peculiar little brown deer indigenous to the
hills of fair Cam bodia. All deer you
know differ a little in different countries,
and man who will pick mp textbook on
zoology will soon ascertain that in North
America there are a great many different
species of deer. The noble buck which
Daniel Boone killed in the Kentucky for
est is different from the deer that is to be
found in the Sierra Nevadas. Lik ewlse
again, these are different from the deer in
Southern Mexico and Central America.
The Cam bodis deer, with their beautiful
brown color, sometimes shading to dap-
pie, and with their magnificent antlers.
are sight to see."